[All notes below by Tom Gross]

This dispatch concerns Iran and is a follow-up to Iran prepares Salman Rushdie’s coffin, as Hillary Clinton cancels appearance at NY rally against Ahmadinejad.

 

AHMADINEJAD: ZIONISTS RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered an anti-Semitic tirade before world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week – and received applause from many.

“The American and European nations are being manipulated by a small but cunning group of people called Zionists who control the important centers of the economy,” he said, in a speech to which many other heads of state, diplomats and dignitaries applauded.

His also warned of “Zionist murderers” and said that not just Israel, but also America would disappear as was Allah’s will. Iran is now seeking a seat on the UN Security Council.

 

PERES AT UN: AHMADINEJAD IS A “DISGRACE TO ISLAM”

Following Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic tirade, Israeli President Shimon Peres (filling in for outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) said Iran presents “a danger to the entire world” and Ahmadinejad was a “disgrace to Islam.”

In a press conference, Peres also criticized the UN for allowing itself to be used as “a platform for anti-Semitism.” He said: “This is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the head of a state is appearing openly and publicly with the ugly and dark accusations of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.”

Peres was referring to the anti-Semitic hoax concocted in tsarist Russia which later paved the way for the Holocaust.

Addressing the General Assembly, Peres, 85, refrained from criticizing the UN itself, but at the end of his address, he paused and took a simple black skullcap out of his pocket and placed it on his head, making clear that he was standing not just as a president of Israel but also as a Jew.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said the move had been unrehearsed and had come as a surprise to her as she sat watching from Israel’s seat.

“Tehran combines long-range missiles and short-range minds. The situation is pregnant with tragedies,” Peres said in his address, which was made a day after Russia effectively torpedoed chances of the UN reaching agreement on a new round of sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program.

 

MCCAIN, OBAMA SPEAK OUT; OTHER POLITICIANS SILENT

American Jewish leaders expressed disappointment that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refrained from repudiating Ahmadinejad’s statements.

“The repugnant ideas and prejudiced sentiment asserted by President Ahmadinejad must not go unanswered,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a letter to Ban. “We ask you to speak out against his vile words and denounce his outrageous claims and abuse of the UN platform.”

Senior American politicians, including John McCain and Barack Obama, swiftly denounced Ahmadinejad’s tirade against Jews and denial of the Holocaust. Politicians from other countries were largely silent.

The Iranian website Asr-e Iran claimed that Obama’s condemnation of the Iranian president was being directed by a small Zionist group who control the media and only proves the truth of the Iranian president’s warnings. (In Persian here.)

 

LIVNI: AHMADINEJAD’S SPEECH MAKES MOCKERY OF UN VOW OF “NEVER AGAIN”

Israeli Foreign Minister (and Prime Minister designate) Tzipi Livni blasted the United Nations for granting Iran’s president a platform to deliver an anti-Semitic address that contradicted its vow to prevent another Holocaust.

“Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN demonstrates the absurd state of affairs of the organization whose founding motto was ‘Never Again.’ But, that is not even the worst of it. Iran is now asking to be included as a member of the UN Security Council. This is like allowing a criminal to be his own judge and jury,” she said.

 

NETANYAHU: “THE YEAR IS 1938 AND EUROPE IS SLEEPING, UNFORTUNATELY NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME”

Israel’s Likud party opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said the Iranian leader’s statements heighten the urge for Western action against Tehran’s nuclear activities. “The president of Iran unites all of Israel given the threat. There is no difference between myself and [Kadima party leader] Tzipi Livni and [Labor party leader] Ehud Barak on this matter. The West still does not spot the danger and even if it does spot it, it is still not acting. Israel needs to do what is needed so that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said

“The year is 1938 and Iran is analogous to Germany. Europe is sleeping, it’s napping, unfortunately not for the first time but Israel must not absorb the negative consequences of that.”

 

IRAN’S PRESIDENT TAKES MESSAGE TO GULLIBLE U.S. MEDIA

Meanwhile, during his stay in New York this week, Ahmadinejad was allowed to further his aims by being invited to give interviews to the “useful idiots” of the American media, including National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition”, and CNN’s Larry King show.

He toned down his remarks for Larry King in a masterful propaganda effort to make him seem respectable.

But in various interviews to other American media, Ahmadinejad continued to express his view that Israel has no future, describing the Jewish state as “an airplane that has lost its engine.”

***

In Israel, the media took rather a different line. The headline of Israel Hayom was “Ahmadinejad At UN: The Most Anti-Semitic Speech”; and Ma’ariv’s headline was “The Ahmadinejad Horror Show.”

***

Please also read the article below from The New York Sun titled “Ahmadinejad gets a warm reception” about how 400 American students and professors flew to New York’s Hyatt hotel from all over America – in many cases their transport paid for by their colleges – to listen to and lap up Ahmadinejad’s ugly propaganda. Professors from Harvard, Columbia and MIT attended.

 

“ISRAEL CAUSING PALESTINIAN HOLOCAUST”

In a separate speech given to reporters at a press conference prior to his UN address, Ahmadinejad said Israel was “perpetrating a holocaust on the Palestinian people.”

He also again said that the Holocaust by Nazi Germany was a “fake” and “an invention.”

He added that the Jewish state wouldn’t survive “in any form.”

He also downplayed the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran. “The Zionists are in a weak position to launch attacks against any other country,” he was quoted by Iran’s Press TV as saying.

Meanwhile, Iranian Vice President Mashayee said in Iran this week that “Israel is a dead corpse whose burial has been delayed.” (In Persian here.)

And in an open letter to Supreme Leader Khamenei immediately after the Supreme Leader’s Friday prayer sermon in Tehran, Vice President Mashayee wrote: “I am convinced about the annihilation of world Zionism and find it within our reach.”

 

JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS CAVE IN TO BULLYING FROM OBAMA CAMP

This item of mine was published early last Friday on the website of the National Review. Might this be a foretaste to the way an Obama-Biden administration might pressure Israel if elected?

Jewish organizations cave in to bullying from Obama camp
By Tom Gross
National Review Online
September 19, 2008, 04:29 AM

Yesterday I noted that Senator Hillary Clinton canceled an appearance at a major New York rally next week because Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was also due to speak. The rally will be held outside UN headquarters on Monday to protest against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The UN General Assembly opens that day, and the Iranian dictator (repressor of women, children, Christians, homosexuals, Kurds and Bahá’ís, as well as being the biggest anti-Semite on the international stage since Hitler) is scheduled to address the body the following day.

But following what is described as heavy muscle pressure from the Obama-Biden camp, the Jewish groups who are organizing the rally (which is also expected to be attended by Iranian dissidents and other human rights activists) have now disinvited Palin. (Obama and Biden say they won’t accept invitations to attend either.)

So thanks to pressure from Obama and his foolish foreign policy advisors, as well from the far-left George Soros-financed group “J Street,” neither major Democrat nor Republican heavyweights will now attend the rally.

Do Obama and Biden actually want Iran to get a nuclear weapon?

***

UPDATE 1: HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS: WHERE THEN ARE OUR FAMILES?

Monday’s rally was attended by several thousand people, but obviously had Sarah Palin been allowed to attend or had Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden chosen to come, the crowd demonstrating against Ahmadinejad, would have been much bigger, and the international media attention much greater.

Many liberal American Jews are apparently more concerned about hounding Sarah Palin than stopping Iran getting a nuclear arsenal which it may well use to wipe out Israel. Prominent American Jews in the media and Hollywood were also notoriously silent during the (first?) Holocaust, with only a very few exceptions.

Among those attending Monday’s and yesterday’s rallies in New York were elderly survivors of Nazi death camps in Europe, who said they were the living rejoinders to Ahmadinejad’s lies about the Holocaust.

One Holocaust survivor in attendance, named Elaine told an Iranian opposition radio station: “Ahmadinejad said that the Holocaust never happened – that it is invented. So where are my parents? Where is my whole family? I had five sisters and two brothers... Six million Jews were killed and a million and half of them children. So he comes and he says that we invented the Holocaust.”

(Please see the last item on this dispatch for the remarks Sarah Palin would have given at the rally had she been allowed to speak.)

***

UPDATE 2: CATHOLIC LEAGUE CRITICIZES OTHER CHURCHES

The Catholic League sent a mass email to its membership, saying in part: “Catholics need to stand with their Jewish brothers and sisters in protesting... Ahmadinejad is a menace to freedom-loving people the world over, and the sight of religious groups embracing him is nauseating. The Catholic League is proud to take part in this rally and we encourage people of all religious groups to have a contingent represent them on Thursday evening.”

Among the religious groups honoring Ahmadinejad at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City were the Americans Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, Religions for Peace, and the World Council of Churches.

***

UPDATE 3: EVANGELICALS: INDICT AHMADINEJAD

A prominent evangelical organization, angered by the decision of other Christian organizations to meet and honor Ahmadinejad in New York (see last week’s dispatch for details) has said it would deliver a petition to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon signed by 55,000 Christians from 128 countries demanding that Ahmadinejad be indicted for incitement to genocide against Israel.

Malcolm Hedding, the organization’s executive director (and who is also a subscriber to this email list), said: “The silence of most Christian clergy in the face of Germany’s horrific bid to annihilate European Jewry left a deep stain on the churches. Yet from it has arisen a sense among multitudes of Christians today that we have an inescapable moral duty to earnestly speak out whenever another genocidal campaign threatens the Jewish people.”

 

AMERICAN PRESS WAKES UP TO THE NUCLEAR THREAT

In America, the press this week ran a series of editorials warning of the dangers of a nuclear Iran.

In a lead editorial in The Washington Post on Tuesday titled “Iran Slips Away,” the paper said “Even as its nuclear program accelerates, the impetus to stop it loses steam.”

“As Iran races toward accumulating enough uranium for a bomb, the sense of urgency about the threat it poses is lower here and in Europe than it was six months or a year ago... There seems to be little prospect that the Security Council will agree anytime soon on a fourth round of UN sanctions.”

In The Wall Street Journal, Democrats and Republicans came together to co-author a piece titled “Everyone needs to worry about Iran.”

The four authors were Richard Holbrooke (a former U.S. ambassador to the UN), R. James Woolsey (a former director of the CIA), Dennis Ross (the Middle East envoy for President Clinton) and Mark Wallace (a representative of the U.S. to the UN for management and reform). Woolsey and Ross are both subscribers to this email list.

And in an editorial in The New York Times titled “Remember Iran?” The New York Times remembered Iran but drew precisely the wrong conclusions, essentially calling for the appeasement of Iran’s regime by America.

After Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators – famously referred to by Winston Churchill as “feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat one last” – appeared to be permanently discredited. But apparently not by The New York Times.

 

THE GUARDIAN: BUSH “TURNED DOWN ISRAELI REQUEST TO BOMB IRAN”

According to an “exclusive” published today in London in The Guardian (and reprinted courtesy of Reuters and other news agencies elsewhere) “Israel’s then prime minister Ehud Olmert reportedly spoke to President George W. Bush about the possibility of a strike on Iran during the American leader’s visit to the Jewish state in May.”

The revelations were sourced to European diplomats.

The author of The Guardian’s article, Jonathan Steele, is a notorious polemicist against America and the West.

Mark Regev, Olmert’s spokesman, reacted to The Guardian’s story saying: “The need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is raised at every meeting between the prime minister and foreign leaders. Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to this issue but all options must remain on the table. Your unnamed European source attributed words to the prime minister that were not spoken in any working meeting with foreign guests.”

Tom Gross adds: During Saddam Hussein’s rule in 1981, Israeli aircraft successfully destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak shortly before it was due to start operating. At the time the entire world, including President Reagan, attacked Israel, and newspapers like The New York Times were scathing in their criticism of the government of Menachem Begin. Since then, many politicians and journalists in the West and Arab world have acknowledged that Begin’s action was necessary and correct.

 

ISRAELI MILITARY INTELLIGENCE: IRAN HALFWAY TO NUCLEAR BOMB

Iran is halfway to a nuclear bomb, and Hizbullah, Hamas and Syria are using this period of relative calm to significantly rearm, Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz, the Military Intelligence’s head of research, told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday during a particularly gloomy briefing on the threats facing Israel.

Baidatz warned there was a growing gap between Iran’s progress on the nuclear front and the West’s determination to stop it. “Iran is concentrating on uranium enrichment, and is making progress,” he said, noting that they have improved the function of their 4,000 uranium centrifuges.

According to Baidatz, the Iranian centrifuges have so far produced between one-third to one-half of the enriched material needed to build a nuclear bomb.

“The Iranians are pleased that the gap is widening,” Baidatz said. “Their confidence is growing with the thought that the international community is not strong enough to stop them,” he added.

Baidatz said the Iranians were playing for time, and that time was working in their favor since the longer the process dragged on, the wider the rifts appearing among the countries in the West become. “Iran is in control of the technology and is moving with determination toward a nuclear bomb,” he said.

 

FORMER IDF HEAD: MILITARY STRIKE AGAINST IRAN MAY BE INEVITABLE

General Moshe Ya’alon, the former head of the Israeli army, has said that Iran threatens the West in the same way Hitler once did and that if economic and political sanctions failed, a military conflict will be inevitable. “Today, we in the West are facing the same situation, the same lack of decisiveness towards a threat that is no less severe than that which Hitler posed in 1939,” Ya’alon said. “We can still stop Iran using political and economic measures but if we do not, then a military confrontation is inevitable.” Ya’alon served as chief of staff of the IDF from 2002 to 2005.

 

RUSSIA, CHINA THWART IRAN SANCTIONS

Russia and China (both of whom are permanent members of the UN Security Council) are blocking U.S. and European efforts to slap new sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, reports the Associated Press.

Writing in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz yesterday, Yossi Melman said:

“The UN’s sanctions on Iran have collapsed. That is the only conclusion one can draw from Russia’s announcement earlier this week that it is no longer willing to support the Security Council’s permanent members’ proposal for a new set of sanctions, the fourth of its kind, against Iran.

“Though no funeral has been held or death certificate issued, Moscow has rendered clinically dead the joint international efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“The sanctions imposed two years ago were not strong, as they were the result of a compromise between the U.S., EU, Russia and China. But they expressed a moral stand by the international community that it would not come to terms with a nuclear Iran.

“Russia, which will complete constructing a nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr this year, was never enthused by the idea of sanctions. It did everything it could to stall and weaken them. Eventually, it always agreed on watered-down versions while exploiting U.S. weaknesses such as its involvement in Iraq, the presidential elections and its severe economic crisis. Thus, Russia is strengthening the Iranian regime and signaling to it that the basic, though superficial, international consensus against it has ceased to exist.

“... Now, thanks to support from Moscow, the Iranian president and his patron, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, can feel more relaxed and claim that the international sanctions will soon be lifted, deflecting criticism against them... Iran is only months away from crossing the technological threshold of building an atomic bomb.”

***

Here are some photos of this week’s military parade in Iran:
www.tabnak.ir/pages/?cid=18934
www.jahannews.com/fa/pages/?cid=33395

“Iran’s latest domestically-manufactured military arms, naval weapons and air force equipment, including the Shahab-3 missile with the ability to hit targets within a range of 2,000 km, as well as the 300 km range Shahab-1, the 500 km range Shahab-2, and the upgraded 2,000 km range Gadr-1 ballistic missiles were also displayed,” Iran’s Press TV said.

Meanwhile, Russia is negotiating the delivery of more air defense systems to Iran, said the General Director of Russian arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

 

STILL NO WORD ON MISSING AMERICAN IN IRAN

Christine Levinson, the wife of former FBI agent Robert Levinson who disappeared in Iran l8 months ago, says Iranian officials are refusing to give her any information about her husband. “I know nothing about his welfare, or his whereabouts. He is 60 years old and has diabetes and high blood pressure, so that makes me extremely concerned.”

The Iranian delegation visiting New York for the UN General Assembly refused to meet with Mrs. Levinson.

* More in Persian here
* Background in English here.

 

IRANIAN GENERAL KILLED IN CLASHES WITH REBELS

Iran’s government-controlled Fars News Agency reports that four members of the Iranian security forces, including a general, have been killed in clashes with rebels in Sistan-Baluchestan province, in southeastern Iran.

“The general was killed during mopping up operations in the Nosratabad area northwest of the provincial capital Zahedan... Several rebels were also killed,” reports Fars.

Sistan-Baluchestan has seen a surge in attacks by the Jundullah (Soldiers of God) group in recent years. Over three thousand Iranian police and security forces have been killed in clashes with militia in southeastern Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

 

MEDIA GROUP CRITICIZES JAILING BY IRAN OF ETHNIC MINORITY JOURNALISTS

This website has long urged international human rights organizations to speak up for persecuted Iranians.

On September 24, 2008, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders finally called on Iran to stop what it called Tehran’s “all-out repression” of ethnic-minority journalists.

The Paris-based group criticized the holding without charge of four ethnic-Azeri journalists – Alireza Sarafi, Said Mohamadi, Hassain Rashedi, and Akabar Azad – and the sentencing of another, Shahnaz Gholami, on September 20 to six months in prison for her online articles.

Reporters Without Borders said it was “disturbing” that 11 out of 12 journalists detained in Iran last week were from the Kurdish, Azeri, or Arab minorities.

It said the journalists were being held in prison for criticizing social inequality and demanding equal treatment for non-Persian minorities.

 

“NUCLEAR PYONGYANG IS HELPING IRAN”

The leading French daily, Le Figaro, reported on September 23, 2008 that “North Korean experts are involved in developing nuclear missiles for the Iranian regime on a site that was previously not identified, according to the exiled opposition group, the National Council of Resistance Iran (NCRI).”

According to NCRI, these experts have been working “for at least two years” on a secret military site in the Hemmat Khojar region, south-east of Tehran, where they are involved in the adaptation of ballistic missile medium-range Shahab-3 with nuclear warheads.

The NCRI said their information is based on sources “within the regime.”

 

HALF OF MIDDLE-EAST INTERNET USERS LIVE IN IRAN

Iran has the second highest percentage of its population online in the Middle East. Over 23 million Iranians use the Internet, representing 34.9 % of the population. Only Israel has a higher proportion of users; just over half the Israeli population has Internet access.

According to the Internet World Stats, Iranians comprise nearly 54% of total Internet users in the Middle East. There are thousands of anti-government blogs illegally operating in Iran

Selected statistics from “Internet World Stats”.

Iran: 23,000,000 users as of March 08, 34.9% penetration.
Israel: 3,700,000 users as of July 06, 52.0% penetration.
Palestine (West Bank and Gaza): 355,500 users as of March 08, 13.6 % penetration.
Syria: 2,132,000 users as of March 08, 10.8% penetration.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

TZIPI LIVNI TODAY STARTS TO TRY TO FORM A NEW ISRAELI GOVERNMENT

Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has narrowly won the vote to replace Ehud Olmert as head of Israel’s governing Kadima party. Provided she is able to stitch together a coalition within the next few weeks, she will become Israel’s second female prime minister. Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister, held office from 1969-74.

When voting ended at 10.30 pm local time last night, the pollsters predicted a big win, by 10- to 12-point margins, for Livni. However, by the time all the ballot papers were counted this morning she had won by a mere 431 votes – or just one percent of the ballots cast. 74,000 Kadima members were eligible to vote.

Olmert is only expected to formally stand down once Livni confirms she has formed a working coalition. Olmert’s standing as prime minister never recovered from Israel’s failure to beat Hizbullah, after the Iranian-backed militia attacked Israel in July 2006.

“LIKE CHOOSING BETWEEN TWO SHADES OF GRAY”

Olmert was then embroiled in a series of minor corruption scandals which forced the early Kadima leadership race. Livni’s attempt to broker a coalition agreement will not be helped by the imminent Jewish holiday season during which political activity is normally suspended.

If she fails to create a coalition within 42 days, a general election will be called, according to Israel’s election law.

The election failed to interest the wider Israeli public. Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s best-selling newspaper, said the choice between Livni and her opponent Shaul Mofaz was “like choosing between two shades of gray.”

There were two other candidates, longtime cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit and Avi Dichter, a former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security service. Neither garnered many votes.

 

LIVNI’S MOSSAD BACKGROUND EXAGGERATED IN FOREIGN MEDIA

Some foreign press have been quick to play up Livni’s past Mossad connections.

For example, a large heading on Monday in The Independent newspaper in London read “Israel: The spy who would be PM.”

And the Times of London started its report yesterday by describing Livni as the “Mossad agent-turned-politician Tzipi Livni.”

In fact Livni, a 50-year-old mother of two, has spent most of her career as a commercial lawyer, and more lately as a politician, serving in various posts, including foreign minister.

Livni’s role in the Mossad was limited to a period when she was in her early 20s and she occupied a safehouse in Paris to give it the semblance of a normal apartment. Foreign news reports suggesting she was on “the frontline of the hunt to bring Arab terrorists operating across Europe to justice” are incorrect.

For example, a recent article in the (London) Sunday Times stated: “From her base in Paris Livni traveled throughout Europe in pursuit of Arab terrorists... She blended in well in European capitals, working with male agents, most of them ex-commandos, taking out Arab terrorists.” This is incorrect.

WHY MENTION SABRA AND SHATILA?

It is also typical of the Times of London’s slanted reporting against Israel that in its news report last night about Livni beating Mofaz to replace Olmert, it couldn’t resist writing about the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon – which was in fact carried out by Christian Arabs not by Israel, and is only one of dozens of similar massacres by Muslim and Christian Arabs against one another throughout Lebanon’s long civil war, and in any case has nothing to do with yesterday’s candidates or vote. (The sections on the Sabra and Shatila massacre have been edited out of the updated Times news report on the election today, after reader complaints.)

Livni also used to work as a waitress in cafes in the Sinai desert, when the area was controlled by Israel.

 

NETANYAHU: “JOINING A COALITION UNDER LIVNI IS LIKE JOINING LEHMAN BROTHERS”

Many Israelis are angry that Kadima wants to choose a Prime Minister for the rest of Israel without asking the wider electorate. Even among Kadima’s 74,000 party members, there was a very low turnout, at about 50 percent.

Ma’ariv, Israel’s second highest circulation newspaper, says in an editorial: “Don’t let them form a government. Kadima’s random voters are allowed to choose themselves a leader, but not a Prime Minister for us all. For that there are elections.”

Another Israeli newspaper, Yisrael Hayom, writes in an editorial “The state of Israel is being held prisoner by a faction [Kadima] which is destroying our political and security resources, and is engaged in a useless race for political achievements considered as such only by those who shape public opinion.”

The Jerusalem Post asks if Kadima can offer a genuine “third way” alternative to Likud and Labor. The editorial questions whether Kadima is indeed a third way, or simply another dead end.

MORE PEOPLE AT PAUL MCCARTNEY CONCERT

Yediot Ahronot says today that, “More people will go to the forthcoming Paul McCartney concert than those who bothered to go to the polls yesterday to choose the person who will likely be the next prime minister.” The editors add: “Let us not be mistaken – the victory still does not assure Livni the premiership. An uneasy period awaits her.”

If general elections were held today, the Likud party, led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would likely win. Netanyahu called on other smaller parties not to join Livni in a new coalition, which he predicted would in any case soon collapse. “Joining a Kadima coalition is like joining Lehman brothers,” Netanyahu said.

 

LIVNI FAVORS A QUICK PEACE DEAL WITH THE PALESTINIANS

Left-wing activists in Israel welcomed Livni’s election as “a boost for the current Israeli-Palestinian peace process as she is one of Israel’s strongest supporters of attempts to reach a quick negotiated agreement with moderate Palestinians.”

Her opponent, Iranian-born Mofaz, a former chief of staff, campaigned on security issues and would likely have taken a much stronger line than Livni against Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah. Many Israelis regard the center-left Livni as naïve on these issues.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday evening that outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has discussed with the Palestinians transferring 98.1 percent of the West Bank to them. This would mean giving up territory vital to Israel’s ability to defend itself.

 

PALESTINIANS PLEASED WITH LIVNI’S WIN

Palestinian Authority officials said this morning that they were pleased with Livni’s victory and were looking forward to continuing peace talks with her.

PA officials anxiously followed the Kadima primaries throughout the day yesterday, and like Livni’s associates, were concerned about the low turnout rate. Palestinian sources were concerned that a Mofaz victory would halt the diplomatic process, while a Livni victory was perceived as recipe for continued talks.

A senior PA official told Yediot Ahronot: “We’ll work with anyone, but it’s no secret that working with Livni will be much easier. She knows her stuff so there’s no need to start from scratch with her. We hope very much that she’d be able to put together a coalition so that we can continue to negotiate.”

 

CARNAGE IN GAZA

Since Monday night at least 12 Palestinians, including at least one young child, have been killed and dozens wounded in fighting in Gaza between Hamas and the Palestinian Dughmush clan. Hamas launched its assault on them shortly after midnight, hours after a member of the Dughmush clan killed a policeman while resisting arrest.

There has been very little reporting about these deaths in the international media and none of the dozens of “human rights” groups which constantly raise money for themselves on the basis of scare stories about Israeli “crimes” in Gaza have apparently had anything to say in the matter.

No doubt these deaths will be added to the death toll of “Palestinians killed by Israel” given periodically by prominent international media, as has happened in the past when Palestinians killed Palestinians.

According to Palestinian media reports, Hamas gunmen “knee-capped” about 30 female members of the Dughmush clan, by shooting them in the knees. This may make it harder for them to have children in future.

A Fatah spokesman condemned Hamas for carrying out an “enormous massacre.” Another Fatah leader, Ziad Abu Ein, accused Hamas of “war crimes” and urged Arab states and western aid groups to stop supporting Hamas.

Eleven people died in early August in another clash between Hamas forces and a separate clan aligned with its Fatah rivals.

 

NEWS BRIEFS

PALESTINIAN WOMAN THROWS ACID ON SOLDIER’S FACE AT CHECKPOINT

An Israel soldier stationed at the Hawara checkpoint, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, sustained facial injuries last week after a Palestinian woman poured acid in his face.

The woman was attempting to cross into Israel using a new “humanitarian aid lane,” meant for emergencies and sick people, at which minimal security checks are made. These lanes were increased after Condoleezza Rice insisted Israel do so against the better judgment of Israeli security experts.

In other incidents at checkpoints over the past few weeks, a 16-year-old boy was arrested after he was found carrying two bombs and a knife, and an 18-year old Palestinian was arrested after he was caught carrying six pipe bombs, a rifle magazine and gun powder.

***

ISRAELI SOLDIER STABBED BY PALESTINIAN IN THE JORDAN VALLEY

A Palestinian man stabbed and moderately wounded an Israeli soldier at the Almog junction, in the southern Jordan Valley. The Palestinian man snatched the soldier’s weapon and fled the scene.

***

TWO ISRAEL AIR FORCE PILOTS KILLED IN HELICOPTER CRASH

Two leading Israel Air Force pilots were killed after a “Cobra” type combat helicopter crashed while on a training mission a few days ago near the Israeli kibbutz of Ginegar in northern Israel. Between them they leave eight young children, including 18-month-old twins, without a father.

***

MORE ROCKET ATTACKS FROM GAZA

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to temporarily close crossings to the Gaza Strip after a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza landed on the outskirts of a Sderot neighborhood on Sunday afternoon, close to Israeli homes. Hamas are meant to be observing a truce with Israel.

Since the period of what has come to be known as the “calm,” there have been 36 mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza. This is in comparison to some 300 incidents registered in the month before the ceasefire.

 

IRAQI MP HOUNDED AFTER VISITING ISRAEL

The Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat reports that Iraq is “in uproar,” following the news that a Member of Parliament has visited Israel for the second time.

Anti-Baath Iraqi MP Mithal al-Alousi, head of the Democratic party, visited Israel last week. While there he called for the establishment of a joint intelligence network with Israel and the U.S.

I met Alousi last week, and on his previous visit to Israel in September 2004. When word of that visit got out, his two sons were murdered by Baath Party sympathizers in 2005, as reported on this website at the time. Former Iraqi Culture Minister Asaad al-Hashemi was found guilty in absentia last month and sentenced to hang for involvement in the killings.

A Shi’ite MP called the current visit “an act of treachery against the Iraqi nation.” Another MP said that Alousi’s visit to Israel had “crossed all red lines” and was a “provocation of Iraqi and Arab sensibilities.”

Given the fact that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other prominent Palestinian politicians visit Israel all the time, it is difficult to understand the ferocity of their reaction.

Agence France-Presse reported that Iraq’s parliament on Sunday lifted Alousi’s immunity and banned him from traveling outside Iraq or attending sessions of the assembly. The decision against Alousi, the only member of his own independent political party in the parliament, was taken by acclamation.

Alousi is one of several Iraqis that subscribe to this email list.

Among previous dispatches on this subject, please see:
* Mithal al-Alousi: Paying a heavy price for recognizing Israel’s existence (Feb.10, 2005)
* Iraqi official wishes “shana tova” to the Israeli people (Sept. 15, 2004)

***

The following editorial is from The New York Sun:

Al-Alusi and Israel
September 16, 2008

The events in Baghdad involving the trip to Israel by a member of Iraq’s parliament, Mithal al-Alusi, are shaping up as quite a test. On Sunday, members of Iraq’s parliament moved to strip Mr. Alusi’s parliamentary immunity from prosecution in order to charge him with treason for visiting the Jewish state.

Mr. Alusi has attended this same counter-terrorism conference for the past four years. The law under which he is to be prosecuted is a 1969 statute dating back to the initial Baathist purges of Israeli agents. The moment is a clarifying one. Will Iraq become a model of freedom for the Middle East, or will its politics devolve into the same cycle of corruption and violence that plagues its neighbors?

When we reached Mr. Alusi in Baghdad he was in good spirits. He told us he sought to explore an alliance of nations – America, Israel, Kuwait, Iraq – that are victims of Iranian aggression. “The real problem was because I was saying Iran is a problem and we need to free ourselves from the Iranian danger. I was calling for an alliance of Iran’s victims,” he said. Mr. Alusi says that for too many years the regimes in the Middle East have used the Jewish state as an excuse for their own misrule. “I have visited Israel before. I have been open about this. I won elections, my party is more popular now because of this than before,” he said.

Mr. Alusi spent the day Monday campaigning on the issue and says he has received overwhelming support. We would not count him out. He made his name in the Iraqi opposition by briefly taking over Iraq’s embassy in Berlin in 2002 and spent time in a German prison for his beliefs. He lost two sons at the hands of terrorists inside Iraq’s government and has survived multiple assassination plots. What a turnabout and a victory it would be if a visit to Israel actually made an Iraqi politician more popular.

 

AL-QAEDA’S AMERICAN-BORN PROPAGANDA CHIEF MAY HAVE DIED IN PREDATOR ATTACK

Attacks by unmanned U.S. predator aircraft have caused carnage among the middle ranks of al-Qaeda terrorist leaders in Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan.

Adam Gadahn, originally from California – also known as Azzam al-Ameriki – has been credited with helping transform al-Qaeda’s al-Sahab propaganda wing into a slick operation which communicates in fluent English.

He was al-Qaeda’s best-known Westerner and became the poster boy of would-be jihadis around the world who are radicalized on the Internet.

Last week leading intelligence experts said that he may be dead. I first reported this on this website in March, but other mainstream newspapers have reported on this only in the past week

Gadahn, whose birth name is Adam Pearlman, is of Jewish origin, but converted to Islam before moving to Afghanistan. After he joined al-Qaeda, his family disowned him.

Gadahn is one of a small but active number of extreme self-loathing Jews or people of Jewish origin who have dedicated themselves to demonizing Jews and trying to destroy the state of Israel.

 

AND ON A LIGHTER NOTE...

Because this website so often contains very serious, depressing stories, I occasionally send items of light relief.

* Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton open Saturday Night Live together. (One should bear in mind that NBC slants left and is therefore unfair on Hillary Clinton, and even more so on Sarah Palin, but generally avoids even the hint of ridiculing Barack Obama.)

* Sarah Palin’s first political ad.

* Obama satire of the movie “Downfall” (certainly not to everyone’s taste, and in response to the videos comparing John McCain and Hillary Clinton to Hitler which Obama supporters posted earlier in the campaign).

* And, away from politics, it is a pleasure to rewatch The Zimmers, the world’s oldest pop group (other than the Rolling Stones). The grandfather of a subscriber to this email list is a leading member of the band. The lead singer is 90-years-old, the lead guitarist is 83, and the backing chorus include pensioners aged 99 and 100. The Zimmers’ “My Generation” was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios in London, where the Beatles recorded many of their hits. I first sent it on this list last June shortly after it was released. I note it has now been watched almost 5 million times on YouTube.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

IRAN PREPARES SALMAN RUSHDIE’S COFFIN

Photo of the Day. From the Iranian government-controlled Fars news agency:

Salman Rushdie’s coffin being prepared at the “International Exhibition of the Koran,” at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in central Tehran this week. (There is also a coffin for the state of Israel in the background.)

The International Exhibition of the Koran also features an exhibit glorifying Palestinian suicide bombers. Visitors have been paying their respects besides large portraits of these murderers while reading prayers for the destruction of Israel.

 

ITALIAN PM WARNS: AHMADINEJAD MEANS WHAT HE SAYS

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday of “lunacy” and warned fellow Europeans against not taking Ahmadinejad’s words seriously.

“I think we must pay the utmost attention to the lunacy of someone who says, perhaps for internal reasons, that Israel must be wiped off the map,” Berlusconi said in a speech in Paris.

 

HILLARY CLINTON CANCELS APPEARANCE AT NY RALLY AGAINST AHMADINEJAD

Senator Hillary Clinton has canceled an appearance at a major New York rally next week because Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin will also attend. The rally will be held outside UN headquarters on September 22 to protest against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The U.N. General Assembly opens that day, and Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the body the following day.

Jewish groups say they are disappointed that Clinton appears to care more about petty partisan bickering than protesting the abysmal human rights record of the Iranian regime, which also sponsors terrorism in several countries and is openly flouting the international community as it rushes to build nuclear weapons.

“DOESN’T WANT TO APPEAR WITH PALIN”

The rally is sponsored jointly by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, the United Jewish Communities, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Clinton is a senator for New York.

Some political commentators say the move by Clinton is foolish and may drive more of her supporters, concerned about the danger to the world of nuclear arms falling into the hands of jihadist extremists, to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket in November.

Iranian dissidents, Jewish leaders, and other human rights activists say they will join Sarah Palin as speakers at the 11.45 a.m. rally. Iran is one of the most brutal regimes in the world, repressing the rights of women, children and homosexuals, among others. In a speech at Columbia University in New York last year, Ahmadinejad said homosexuals no longer existed in Iran.

 

QUAKER ORGANIZATION TO HOST AHMADINEJAD AT GRAND HYATT HOTEL

There is anger by opponents of the Iranian regime that the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, is holding a dinner in honor of Ahmadinejad at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan in central New York on Sept. 25.

The dinner is to be co-sponsored by other American-based religious organizations, including the Mennonite Central Committee and the World Council of Churches.

Representatives from a broad range of Christian ecumenical organizations, including the Episcopal Church, say they plan to attend the dinner.

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League pleaded with the groups not to honor Ahmadinejad, calling the planned event “a perversion of the search for peace and an appalling betrayal of religious values.”

A FEAST TO ELIMINATE ISRAEL?

“It simply defies belief that these organizations with a mission of promoting peace through dialogue would choose Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from among the hundreds of world leaders and ambassadors who will be in New York next week for the U.N. General Assembly, as an appropriate and legitimate interlocutor on world peace,” the ADL said.

In addition to persecuting many religious minorities, such as the Bahá’ís, Ahmadinejad frequently denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel and its people to be destroyed.

Last month, according to a report (in Persian) from the government Fars News Agency, Ahmadinejad said “Soon the feast for elimination of Zionism [Israel] and destruction of the arrogant ones [Jews and Americans] will be held.”

 

IRANIAN CHRISTIANS CHARGED WITH APOSTASY

Two Iranian Christians, Mahmoud Matin-Azad and Arash Basirat, who were arrested in May in Shiraz, have now been formally charged with apostasy. Sources say they were charged on September 5. A prominent Iranian Christian told Radio Farda that the pair may face the death penalty.

 

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS SENTENCED TO JAIL

Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi told the pro-democracy Radio Farda that four women who are members of the One Million Signature Campaign – Parvin Ardalan, Maryam Hosseinkhah, Jelveh Javaheri and Nahid Keshavarz – have been sentenced to six months in jail for writing on women’s issues on the Internet.

 

ONLY MILITARY ACTION CAN STOP IRAN, SAY EXPERTS

Diplomatic efforts to stop an Iranian nuclear crisis may have run their course, a panel of leading experts on proliferation said in Brussels on Monday.

Among those in attendance at the special symposium were experts such as Ian Anthony from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, former Mossad official Uzi Arad, and Alfred Pijpers from the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.

On nuclear terrorism, the unanimous view was that in order to prevent disaster a “more energetic leadership” is needed.

It seems that sanctions have next to no chance of working before Iran acquires a nuclear bomb. Some 10,000 companies in Europe are believed to be collaborating with Iran on the development of its gas and oil industry, an industry with an approximate turnover of $100 billion.

Prospects for a fourth round of U.N. sanctions against Iran are extremely slim, given that Russia and China, both veto-wielding members of the Security Council, oppose them.

 

IAEA SAYS URANIUM FOR SIX BOMBS IS MISSING

Separately, the (London) Daily Telegraph reports that the nuclear experts at the IAEA responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear program have discovered that enough enriched uranium, which if processed to weapons grade level could be used to make up to six atom bombs, has disappeared from the main production facility at Isfahan. The Daily Telegraph adds that American spy satellites have identified a number of suspicious sites, which the Iranians have not declared to nuclear inspectors, that intelligence officials believe are being used for covert research.

The Isfahan complex, which enriches raw uranium “yellow cake” into material that can be used for atomic weapons, is supposed to be subject to close supervision by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

But the Iranians only allow IAEA inspectors access to the final stage of the production process, where the uranium in gas form – UF6 – is stored. By conducting a careful study of the amount of material stored at Isfahan, and the amount of “yellow cake” known to have been processed at the plant, nuclear experts believe between 50-60 tons of uranium – sufficient to produce five or six atom bombs – has gone missing from the plant. “If Iran’s nuclear intentions are peaceful, then why are they doing this?” an IAEA nuclear official told the Telegraph.

 

BUSH AGREES TO SELL BUNKER-BUSTING BOMBS TO ISRAEL

After delaying the request for some time, American President George W. Bush has come down in favor of selling Israel sophisticated weapons for use against heavily fortified targets, including bunker-busting bombs. Contrary to previous reports suggesting that the Bush Administration would not sell Israel the equipment, that could be integral to any future Israeli military strikes upon Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities, the U.S. Department of Defense announced it would sell the Israel Air Force (IAF) 1,000 new smart bombs, rumored to significantly enhance the IAF’s military capabilities.

The Pentagon said the U.S. will provide Israel with 1,000 units of Guided Bomb Unit-39 (GBU-39) – a special weapon developed for penetrating fortified facilities located deep underground.

The $77 million shipment, which includes launchers and appurtenances, will allow the IAF to hit many more bunkers than currently possible.

The GPS-guided weapon is said to have a 50-percent probability of hitting its intended target within 5-8 meters, which should greatly reduce the risk of collateral damage.

 

BBC: IRAN SENDING WEAPONS TO TALIBAN

The Iranian regime is sending weapons across the border to the Taliban in Afghanistan, claims a new BBC investigation.

“Taliban members said they had received Iranian-made arms from elements in the Iranian state and from smugglers. The UK says its troops have intercepted arms which it believes were given by a group within the Iranian state,” reports the BBC.

“Iranian-made weapons have improved the Taliban’s ability to attack the American military deployed in his area. ‘There’s a kind of mine called Dragon. Iran is sending it, we have got it,’ a Taliban commander told the BBC. ‘It’s directional, it destroys. If you lay an ordinary mine, it will cause only minor damage to Humvees or one of their big tanks. But if you lay a Dragon, it will be destroy it completely.’”

The British ambassador to Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, confirmed the BBC findings. “It’s a very dangerous game for Iran, a Shia state, to be supplying Sunni extremists like the Taliban,” he said.

 

CHIEF HAMAS AIDE “ASSASSINATED IN SYRIA”

Syrian opposition groups report that the chief aide to supreme Hamas leader Khaled Meshal was assassinated last week in the city of Homs, north of Damascus. The Freedom Party of Syria, which is exiled in the U.S., says Hisham al-Labadani was slain in broad daylight by unknown gunmen. The Syrian government has refused to comment on the report. Hamas has also stayed silent. If true, Labadani would be the most senior Hamas figure killed outside the Hamas heartland of Gaza.

Some experts say that the nature of the attack – carried out in broad daylight in front of many witnesses – pointed to the likelihood that the Syrian regime was itself behind it. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz speculated that it may have been a message from the regime of Syrian President Basher Assad for Hamas to halt cooperation with Iran. There is apparently a split among Assad’s inner circle between those that want to maintain close ties with Iran and those that want to distance Syria from Iran.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported earlier this month that Hamas head Meshal would soon leave Damascus to live in Sudan, another radical Islamic state, in a move stemming from Syria’s desire to advance indirect peace talks with Israel.

Meshal has been based in Damascus since his expulsion from Jordan ten years ago. Hamas denied the report of the move to Sudan.

 

CIA DIRECTOR CONFIRMS SYRIA WAS TRYING TO BUILD NUCLEAR WEAPONS

CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden confirmed on Tuesday in a speech in Los Angeles that Syria was pursuing nuclear weapons last year.

“We were able last year to spoil a big secret, a project that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons,” Hayden said, according to a Reuters report. He also confirmed that North Korea was assisting in the Syrian effort.

The air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor last year was the result of intelligence cooperation that included a “foreign partner,” Hayden added. “Our foreign partnerships were critical to the final outcome,” he said. Hayden declined to say whether that partner was Israel.

Among past dispatches that dealt with this subject, please see:

* Syrian nuclear chief eliminated (& IDF soldiers risk lives to rescue Fatah men) (Aug. 5, 2008)
* Al-Jazeera: “U.S. Air Force, carrying tactical nuclear weapons, flew with Israel during Syria raid” (Nov. 2, 2007)
* Der Spiegel: North Korea trained Iranians at Syrian nuclear site (in the dispatch: Libya’s Gaddafi says Israel will kill Obama – “as it did JFK”) (June 23, 2008)
* Syria update: “This was one of the five most important acts in Israel’s history” (Oct. 22, 2007)

YOU DON’T HAVE TO SUPPORT PALIN TO BE DISTURBED BY THE SMEARS

I attach an article by myself published in America today. It was also scheduled to be published in leading newspapers in Britain and Canada. However, senior editors at those papers overruled their commissioning editors, saying they would publish it but didn’t want to draw their readers’ attention to the fact that they too were caught out by the “Palin membership of the Alaska Independence Party” hoax. At least The New York Times, unlike other papers, have to their credit apologized to their readers for being caught out and running that hoax of their front page.

-- Tom Gross

 

FULL ARTICLES

HOW DARE THEY BE WORKING CLASS – AND HOW DARE SHE BE A WOMAN?

The NY Times retracts one Palin story, but other smears continue
By Tom Gross
National Review Online
September 8, 2008

New York Times writers are still sneering at Sarah Palin and her family on a daily basis. After all, these snobs will never forgive her for going to the University of Idaho, or for having a husband who isn’t a lawyer or an investment banker, but a member of the United Steelworkers union, who doesn’t have a degree, whose mother (who is part Yup’ik) is a former secretary of the Alaska Federation of Natives, and whose grandmother is a member of the Curyung tribe.

But at least The New York Times has now retracted the outrageous fabrication it printed on the front-page of Tuesday’s edition: that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990s.

Other papers around the world continue to print this falsehood (in London, The Guardian’s front page had a banner headline which read “My fellow Alaskans”) and other lies generated by left-wing smear blogs continue to be lapped up by many in the mainstream media.

No, Sarah Palin didn’t support Pat Buchanan in the 1999-2000 campaign; she was an official on the campaign of Republican presidential contender Steve Forbes.

No, her eldest son Track (who is deploying to Iraq this week) didn’t join the National Guard because he was a drug addict.

No, her daughters Willow and Piper aren’t named after witches on TV.

No, she has nothing in common with a “porn actress” as one taxpayer-funded Canadian TV columnist suggested.

No, she’s not anti-Semitic. In fact, she has an Israeli flag in her office, and quietly turned up for services at a newly opened Wasilla synagogue to pay her respects.

No, she didn’t cut funding for unwed mothers, but increased it by 354 percent (and no, The Washington Post doesn’t appear to have corrected its story about this despite being asked to do so).

NO, SHE’S NOT A HORSE

But, yes, she did try to cut her own salary by $4,000 a year when she was mayor of Wasilla; and yes, she voted against the $4,000-a-year raise while on the city council.

And yes, she (like John McCain) did get it right when she supported the surge in Iraq, while Barack Obama and Joe Biden got it badly wrong.

And yes, she did take on the corrupt Republican Party establishment in Alaska, while hardly anyone is asking why Obama failed to ask questions about the notoriously corrupt Democratic Party machine in Chicago, or was happy to take huge donations from the now-jailed crook Tony Rezko.

Whatever else happens in this too-close-to call 2008 presidential election, I think we can happily conclude that America has come a long way in getting over its race problem. Thankfully, there has been very little racism directed against Barack Obama by anybody except for people on the absolute fringes.

But, as Hillary Clinton came to realize when she was given unfair treatment by the Obama-infatuated media, and as Sarah Palin has seen to a much greater extent in the period of a mere week, clearly the same cannot be said of America’s sexist problem.

Personally, I don’t find it funny when New York magazine runs a headline “Levi Johnston and Fat Girlfriend Arrive in St. Paul.” Or when The Washington Post’s online magazine, Slate, launches a “Name Bristol Palin’s Baby” contest.

Richard Cohen, leading columnist at The Washington Post thought it was acceptable (even amusing) to compare Sarah Palin to a horse, and so, judging by many of their online comments, did his readers. I don’t want to even begin imagining the outcry if The Washington Post had instead compared Barack Obama (or any other political candidate) to an animal.

I’m someone who shares the left’s purported views on equal rights, and essentially agrees with them on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and gun control (though firmly disagreeing with them on bigger issues such as the economy, foreign policy, and helping spread democracy abroad). But it is precisely the kind of McCarthyite-style witchhunt we have witnessed in the past week against the Palins by the left’s phony feminists and snooty media establishment that makes me – and many others I know – stay well clear of the official left.

(Tom Gross is a former Middle East correspondent for London’s Sunday Telegraph.)

[Note by Tom Gross]

IRAN EXPELS AL-ARABIYA REPORTER; JEWS “BUYING UP IRAQ”

Iran on Tuesday banned the Tehran bureau chief for the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel and told him to leave the country as soon as possible. Iranian student organizations supporting the Ahmadinejad government have welcomed the move against Al-Arabiya, saying some Arab countries are involved in a conspiracy against Islam in the same way that “the Jews conspired against the prophet Muhammad.”

And Aftab News today quotes a report by the Qatari newspaper Arab Online claiming Iraqi Jews who had been living in Israel are buying real estate “five times the real price” in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk in order to “erect a new Jerusalem.”

 

AHMADINEJAD: ZIONISTS BEHIND SOUTH OSSETIA, ABKHAZIA CONFLICTS

In the latest in a series of lies about Jews and Israelis, Iranian President Ahmadinejad has alleged that there is “evidence at hand which prove Zionists are behind the South Ossetia and Abkhazia events,” reports the Iranian Islamic news agency, IRNA.

Ahmadinejad made the remarks during a visit to Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan, formerly known as Stalinabad.

“We have information which show Zionists have a central role in the South Ossetia and Abkhazia cases,” said Ahmadinejad in an interview with reporters on the sidelines of the 8th Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has announced that the Georgian region of South Ossetia will join “one united Russian state,” and Russia will open military bases there.

(For background on the Georgia crisis, please see “The lessons for Israel and other small democracies from the Georgian conflict.”)

***

Incidentally, in the peak week of fighting between Georgia and Russia (the second full week of August), when thousands of civilians were killed, injured or driven from their homes, the leading human rights group, Amnesty International, harshly condemned Israel in three separate documents (even though the death rate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at an 8-year low), but issued only four neutral statements related to the war in the Caucuses, reports NGO Monitor.

 

HAMAS WELCOMES RUSSIAN RECOGNITION FOR ABKHAZIA, SOUTH OSSETIA

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has become one of the only groups outside Russia to recognize Georgia’s breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Last week, in a move condemned by virtually the entire world, even by China, Russia recognized the provinces as independent states. The Georgian population was ethnically cleansed from the area by Russian-led forces last month.

Perhaps Hamas would like Russia to recognize Gaza as an independent state too.

 

POLL: 63% OF AMERICANS SUPPORT ISRAELI STRIKE ON IRAN

A new poll has found that 63 percent of Americans say they would support a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, should international diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear program fail, and 55 percent of those polled said they would support a surgical strike by the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

96 percent of those polled said a nuclear Iran would pose an imminent threat to Israel, and 87 percent said it would pose a threat to the U.S.

Furthermore, 90 percent said that should Iran possess nuclear weapons, they were concerned it may pass them, or related technology, to terror organizations such as Hamas and Hizbullah.

The poll, commissioned by The Israel Project, was conducted by leading pollsters Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies and Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. 800 U.S. adults were surveyed.

 

IRAN SAYS 4,000 ATOMIC CENTRIFUGES WORKING

Reuters reports that Iran has succeeded in installing 4,000 working nuclear centrifuges in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility – enough to churn out weapons-grade uranium for dozens of nuclear warheads.

The Islamic Republic has also announced it will install an additional 3,000 centrifuges in coming months, followed by thousands more.

 

ISRAEL “WON’T ALLOW IRANIAN NUKES”

Israel has put plans for a unilateral military strike against Iran into high gear, reports the Israel daily Ma’ariv.

The paper said that – fearing the U.S. won’t now take action in time – the Israeli cabinet held a special session three weeks ago where it approved plans to stop Iran from going nuclear “at any price” should diplomatic efforts to derail Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program fail.

There is a very real possibility that Iran under its present messianic Islamic government, whose president genuinely believes in “end of days” theories, and in the virtues of destroying Jews and infidels even if he makes “martyrs” of his own people, could launch a nuclear strike against Israel.

Ephraim Sneh, a Labor party Knesset member, has sent an eight-point document to both U.S. presidential candidates, saying, “There is no government in Jerusalem that would ever reconcile itself to a nuclear Iran. When it is clear Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, an Israeli military strike to prevent this will be seriously considered.”

Sneh said the maximum window of opportunity for non-military options to stop Iran from going nuclear is 18 to 24 months.

 

U.S. REBUFFS ISRAELI REQUEST FOR ARMS GEARED TOWARD IRAN STRIKE

Given the fact American-led forces control most of the airspace around Iran (in Iraq, Afghanistan, the gulf states, and so on), without American cooperation it would be extremely difficult for Israel to carry out any such mission.

So far, Israel has not received American authorization to use U.S.-controlled Iraqi airspace. The U.S. has also refused to sell to Israel advanced U.S.-made warplanes which would make it possible for Israel to strike without the need to land planes in one of the countries neighboring Iran in order to refuel.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen both visited Israel in June and, according to The Washington Post, told senior Israeli defense officials that the U.S. would not allow Israeli planes to overfly Iraq en route to Iran.

Vice President Dick Cheney is apparently willing to help Israel (in part because he sees it as a U.S. national interest and also because the Saudis are privately begging the Americans to let Israel take out Iran’s nuclear program) but Secretary of Defense Robert Gates opposes an attack on Iran.

Instead, the Americans have offered Israel permission to use a global early warning radar system, implying that the U.S. is pushing Israel to settle for defensive measures only. This is not something Israel can live with when it comes to nuclear weapons, say analysts.

The U.S. says it will deploy high-powered, early-warning missile radars in the Negev desert, to be manned by U.S. military personnel. The radars, known as X-Band, will be linked to a U.S. satellite-based alert network.

 

GERMAN, AUSTRIAN AND DUTCH FIRMS HELPING TEHRAN

Ephraim Sneh also visited Switzerland and Austria last week in an attempt to lobby those two states. Both countries have announced massive long-term investments in Iranian gas and oil fields for the next decade. “Talk of preventing another Jewish Holocaust didn’t interest these guys,” Sneh said.

Separately, the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Austrian political organization “Stop the Bomb” have sharply criticized Austrian energy giants OMV and Royal Dutch Shell over their sponsorship of the 2nd Iranian Gas Export Conference to be held on October 4 and 5 in Tehran.

OMV has signed a $35 billion deal with Iran to develop the South Par gas field. The Austrian government is the largest shareholder in OMV.

And a Jerusalem Post investigation of the gas conference has found that Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, two German Banks who pulled out of in Iran in October 2007, are listed as “correspondent banks” on the registration form for the fee covering conference attendance in Tehran. The U.S. Treasury Department is pressuring German banks to sever financial transactions with Iran.

Jewish and other groups demonstrated last week in Siegen, Germany, to protest against a major business deal by a local gas technology company, Steiner-Prematechnik-Gastec (SPG), to provide its expertise in turning gas into liquid fuel at three plants in the Islamic Republic. By contrast, the French company Total and the Norwegian company Statoil have now pulled out of projects in Iran.

 

“DUTCH SPY AGENCY: U.S. TO STRIKE IRAN IN COMING WEEKS”

Contradicting other reports that say a U.S. airstrike on Iran’s nuclear program is off the table for the present time, the largest daily paper in the Netherlands, De Telegraaf, reported last weekend that its nation’s intelligence agency has been working closely with the CIA to help prepare a planned U.S. air attack on Iran.

De Telegraaf added in a front-page article that the Dutch intelligence service, the AIVD, has called off an operation aimed at infiltrating and sabotaging Iran’s weapons industry due to an assessment that a U.S. attack on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is imminent.

The report claimed that the Dutch operation had been “extremely successful,” and had been halted because the U.S. military was planning to hit targets that were “connected with the Dutch espionage action.”

The impending airstrike on Iran was to be carried out by unmanned aircraft “within weeks,” the report claimed, quoting “well placed” sources.

According to De Telegraaf, information gleaned from the AIVD’s operation in Iran has provided several of the targets that are to be attacked in the strike, including “parts for missiles and launching equipment, and this information has been shared with the CIA.”

 

RUSSIA THREATENS TO SUPPLY IRAN WITH TOP NEW MISSILE SYSTEM AS “COLD WAR” ESCALATES

The (London) Sunday Telegraph reported last weekend in what the paper calls “an exclusive” (in fact it was already reported on this website some days earlier) that: “U.S. intelligence fears the Kremlin will supply the sophisticated S-300 system to Tehran if Washington pushes through NATO membership for its pro-Western neighbors Georgia and Ukraine, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.”

“The proposed deal is causing huge alarm in the U.S. and Israel as the S-300 can track 100 targets at once and fire on planes up to 75 miles away. That would make it a ‘game-changer,’ greatly improving Iranian defenses against any air strike on its nuclear sites, according to Pentagon adviser Dan Goure. ‘This is a system that scares every Western air force,’ he said.”

Tom Gross adds: The S-300, is one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft-missile systems in the world. It has a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 kilometers and can hit targets at altitudes of 27,000 meters.

A senior Israeli airforce officer said last week that Israel needed to do “everything possible” to prevent the S-300 from reaching the region.

 

RUSSIAN NAVY PLANNING GREATER PRESENCE IN SYRIA

Russia is also stepping up cooperation with Iran’s close ally, Syria.

The Russian navy will make more use of Syrian ports as part of increased military presence in the Mediterranean, a Russian diplomat said at the end of last week.

The announcement comes as tensions rise between Moscow and the West over Russia’s role in Georgia. As noted in a previous dispatch, Syrian President Bashar Assad was one of the only leaders in the world to back Russia in its recent assault on Georgia, and even flew to Moscow on a solidarity visit in mid-August as Russian troops were ethnically cleansing Georgians from South Ossetia.

“Our navy presence in the Mediterranean will increase. Russian vessels will be visiting Syria and other friendly ports more frequently,” Igor Belyaev, the Russian charge d’affaires, told reporters in the Syrian capital.

Russia has sold Syria weapons systems in the past, including the advanced surface-to-air Strelets system, and its warships already had been calling on Syria’s northern port of Tartous. Many of Iran’s weapons systems also come from Russian suppliers.

 

AHMADINEJAD LAUDED BY KEY NATO MEMBER TURKEY

There is concern in Israel that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was so strongly lauded during his visit last month to Turkey, which is supposedly a close ally of Israel and a key NATO member. Photos here.

 

IRAN “SUPPLIES HIZBULLAH MISSILES THAT CAN HIT MOST OF ISRAEL”

The London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi reports that Iran has equipped Hizbullah with longer-range advanced missiles capable of accurately hitting targets throughout most of Israel. The paper added that they are much more lethal than the missiles that Hizbullah used to kill over 100 Israeli civilians in towns and villages throughout northern Israel in the 2006 Hizbullah-Israel war.

According to the report, the rockets can accurately hit civilian targets in most of Israel, including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and would be used if Israel launches a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In a separate report, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Siyasa reported last Tuesday that 300 Iranian experts were working to build an array of weaponry in the mountainous regions of western Lebanon.

Iranian defense experts are also reportedly in Lebanon in an effort to assist Hizbullah in developing anti-aircraft capabilities.

 

HIZBULLAH DOWNS LEBANESE HELICOPTER

Iran’s client militia Hizbullah shot down a Lebanese government helicopter over a village 12-miles north of the Israeli border last Thursday, apparently thinking it was an Israeli helicopter. The officer who was piloting the chopper was killed and two others were wounded.

 

HIZBULLAH ATTEMPTS TO KIDNAP ISRAELIS ABROAD PREVENTED

Israeli counterterrorism officials have revealed that they have prevented five separate attempts by the Iranian proxy militia Hizbullah to kidnap Israeli citizens outside Israel in recent weeks. Details of the events remain subject to Israeli government censorship to prevent Israeli operatives being exposed.

All of the attempts were foiled with the assistance of foreign intelligence agencies, according to Yediot Ahronot. Hizbullah is known to have cells in West Africa, South America, Asia and Canada.

 

ATTACK ON EL AL IN CANADA THWARTED

Plans by an unknown group to attack staff of Israel’s national carrier El Al in Canada have been thwarted, Israel’s Channel Two television reported yesterday.

Security procedures for crews overnighting at hotels between flights have now been changed, it added. Security sources said that the cell apparently belonged to Hizbullah.

El Al has been targeted for attack several times in the past. For example, two people were killed in July 2002 when a gunman opened fire on El Al passengers at Los Angeles International Airport. An Israeli security official shot dead the gunman before he murdered any more passengers.

In 2005, seven Dutch youths planning to attack an El Al plane were arrested. In June 2006, Swiss authorities revealed an attempt by a Muslim terror cell to attack an El Al plane. In November 2006, the German government arrested six Muslims on suspicion of planning to blow up an El Al plane after takeoff from Frankfurt.

 

SAUDI AUTHORITIES “ARREST THOSE WHO DISPLAY PICTURE OF HIZBULLAH LEADER”

According to the Iranian weekly Sobh-e Sadeq, the mouthpiece of Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei circulated among the Revolutionary Guards, Saudi authorities have arrested a man for public display of Lebanese Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s picture.

 

ANOTHER MINOR EXECUTED

One week after the execution of Reza Hejazi, another child offender, Behnam Zare, has been hanged in Iran. Zare’s lawyer – who represents 25 other minors on death row – says his client’s execution was unexpected. He claims Zare was hanged on a day when sentences are not normally carried out at Shiraz prison.

There is a photo of Zare here.

 

THERE ARE TWO MAIN VALUES IN LIFE: HOLY WAR AND MARTYRDOM

The veteran Iranian affairs analyst Menashe Amir comments, in a MERIA symposium:

I would like to say that I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the future of the Iranian impact on the Middle East, because it very much depends on the policy and the action of the Western countries, especially Europe and the United States, and also the Arab countries.

Regarding Ahmadinejad’s philosophy, he thinks that Islam is a young and dynamic movement that is winning, and he is ready to sacrifice. Ahmadinejad believes that there are two main values in life: One is jihad (holy war) and the other is shihada (martyrdom).

Because we are ready to fight and ready to kill and be killed, the final victory will be ours. The reason is that the Western countries don’t want war, they are not ready to make a sacrifice, they want to have their good life. That is the reason that the final victory will be ours. So it very much depends now on the policy of the Western countries as to how to confront Iran and how to confront this kind of ideology.

I think the West can defeat the Iranian regime if it acts very decisively and united. The Iranians are very afraid of the U.S. military, especially U.S. marines power. If the Americans put a real serious and direct threat on Iran to create this impression that they are going to attack, and if they bring in sanctions against Iran, and if the important powers cooperate and implement the sanctions against Iran, and if the West helps the 60 to 70 percent of Iranians who aren’t happy with their current rulers, the regime will be changed. I am not saying this will lead to democracy, that’s not so easy, but it can lead to a regime in Iran that will think about the interests of the people and not export Islamic revolution or support terror organizations.

 

FIRST IRANIAN SIGNS DEAL WITH AN NBA TEAM

And finally, on a lighter note, Hamed Ehadadi has signed to play with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, making him the first Iranian to earn a slot in the world’s top basketball league.

The 23-year-old center shined with Iran’s national basketball team at this month’s Beijing Olympics, averaging 16.5 points and 10 rebounds a game, making him the only player in the tournament to average a “double double.”

The 7’2”, 254-pound Ehadadi made headlines off the court last month when he was photographed embracing Russian national team coach David Blatt after Iran lost to Russia at the Beijing Olympics. Boston-born Blatt has played at and coached several Israeli teams since the 1980s.

-- Tom Gross

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON SARAH PALIN

I would like to thank Ha’aretz for pointing out in their main news report about John McCain’s choice of running mate, that I was one of the few political commentators to predict as early as July that McCain would pick Sarah Palin. Last paragraph here (Hebrew edition only).

***

Those of you who wish to read my short article for the National Review (titled “Don’t discount Palin’s foreign-policy credentials”) published just hours after her selection on Friday, can do so at the foot of this dispatch.

The article was widely picked up over the weekend. For example, it was reproduced in full on the website of America’s CBS television network. And it was commented on and sometimes criticized in various prominent blogs, such as that of Andrew Sullivan, a subscriber to this email list.

 

MOST PEOPLE HAVE NOT PROPERLY THOUGHT THROUGH THE REALITIES OF A NUCLEAR IRAN

I realize, of course, that not everyone on this list will agree with my article on Palin. The article concerns the issue of Iran’s rapidly advancing pursuit of nuclear weapons, which I believe is the most pressing issue in the world today.

As I have mentioned before, seeing the weakness of the so-called international community towards Iran’s nuclear program, at least seven other Middle East countries have already begun nascent nuclear programs of their own.

Once nuclear weapons spread into the Middle East and beyond, there is no turning back. No country in the world will have the power to police nukes in the hands of so many unstable countries with unreliable military structures often infiltrated by radical Islamists, some of whom would welcome the “martyrdom” of their own populations, since they genuinely believe in what they consider to be the next world, not in this one.

BIDEN AND IRAN

Meanwhile, while most American politicians were yesterday rallying together to deal with Hurricane Gustav, Obama’s running mate Joe Biden was again attacking John McCain for his tough stance against Iran.

And Israel’s Army Radio and Ha’aretz newspaper reported yesterday that Biden told Israeli officials in closed conversations three years ago that he was firmly opposed to an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and that “Israel would likely have to come to terms with a nuclear Iran.” (Biden’s spokesman has today denied the report but Israeli officials say it is accurate.)

ALASKAN HELP FOR ISRAEL

Some senior Jewish Democrats who have never met Palin have been telling reporters that she is anti-Israel, and some even alleged she is anti-Semitic. For example, Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida said McCain’s choice of Palin was an “affront to all Jewish Americans.” This is ridiculous. Palin enjoys very good relations with Alaska’s Jewish community and keeps an Israeli flag in her office (along with flags of others U.S. allies).

She also recently passed a resolution noting Alaska’s special connection to Israel dating back to Alaska Airlines’ participation in the rescue of 40,000 Yemenite Jews when it airlifted them from Yemen to Tel Aviv during 1948 and 1949.

 

“AS LOW AS ANYTHING AMERICA HAS EVER WITNESSED IN A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN”

Despite yesterday’s media frenzy concerning Sarah Palin’s family, I would stand by my assessment that Palin was a wise pick by McCain.

From the moment she was chosen, the smears from some on the far left were as deplorable as anything one is likely to find on a ku klux klan website. The attacks and lies about her children, particularly about her Down’s syndrome infant, are as low as anything America has ever witnessed in a presidential campaign and it is to my profound disappointment that they have been repeated on the websites of supposedly respectable newspapers like The Guardian.

Barack Obama has repeatedly pleaded with his supporters over the last few days to stop the vicious personal and misogynistic attacks that began on Sarah Palin and her children from almost the moment she was nominated.

A senior aide to Obama told Reuters: “The despicable rumors that have been spread by liberal blogs, some even with Barack Obama’s name in them, is a real anchor around the Democratic ticket, pulling them down in the mud in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their campaign of change.”

BREAST PUMP? GO-GO BOOTS?

Meanwhile “feminists” such as Maureen Dowd, star columnist at The New York Times, has revealed herself (unsurprisingly) not to actually care about the advancement of women, if those women, like Sarah Palin, are ordinary people. Instead Dowd has published one of the most snobby, sexist columns I have ever seen in The New York Times (with comments about Palin’s alleged “breast pump,” “go-go boots,” hairstyle, the fact she goes shopping, the fact she didn’t go to an Ivy college, and so on.) It seems that Dowd and her colleagues are only interested in promoting elitist, moneyed, privileged women like themselves.

Such attacks come as little surprise given the track record of many who wrongly regard themselves as liberals for not caring about women and other minority rights if it doesn’t suit them, as indicated by their silence over the events in Iran documented below and on previous dispatches on this website.

WILL SHE ONE DAY BE VOTED AMERICA’S FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT DESPITE THE MEDIA ONSLAUGHT?

I too disagree with Palin’s views on abortion but that doesn’t excuse brutal, sexist attacks on Palin, and the way the mainstream media, particularly in Europe are now prominently printing every single rumor and innuendo about Palin and even about Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend, while all but ignoring some very real scandals about Joe Biden’s son and brother, for example, or deliberately censoring for months the fact that John Edwards fathered a baby with a former campaign employee during his campaign last year.

Hardly any of these sexist critics bother to mention that due to her highly successful policies, she currently enjoys an approval rating of between 80 and 90 percent in Alaska from voters of all parties, an approval rating unparalleled by almost any other politician in America.

Not all feminists share Dowd’s condescending attitude, however. Camille Paglia, the cultural critic, said on Friday: “We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling. That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician.”

-- Tom Gross

***

 

[Notes below on Iran by Tom Gross]

IRANIAN MULLAH COMPARES WOMEN TO DONKEYS

Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Borhan, a prominent prayer leader in Mahriz, announced on Friday that the authorities would no longer tolerate the presence of any woman dressed in a manteau (a long overcoat traditionally worn by women in Iran) and all women must wear the chador (a full-length head-to-toe garment without any hand openings or closures).

He said “some people may get used to the presence of naked donkeys without getting sexually excited, but if anyone saw women dressed in anything other than the chador, this would instigate immorality.” (In Persian, here.)

He also ruled that no cinema should ever open in Mahriz because this “would serve as a den of immorality, since the dark of the cinema could provide opportunity to exchange telephone numbers between young men and women.”

 

PHOTOS OF THE DAY

Here are some photos from Iran’s official Fars News Agency:

* Eating “sheep head soup” in Iran in a pre-Ramadan meal over the weekend.

* Children celebrating the second anniversary of Hizbullah’s “victory” over the Zionist entity, in Tehran’s “Palestine Square.”

* Those who are so against the West use modern western instruments to determine the start of Ramadan yesterday. Here, here, and here.

 

AHMADINEJAD WILL HAVE NY SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT “LIKE THE ONE LAST YEAR AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY”

The director of the Iranian president’s office, Sheikh al-Eslami, has announced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will have a speaking engagement “like the one last year at Columbia University” during his next visit to New York. He is expected to visit New York again later this month for the UN General Assembly. (In Persian here.)

I have never understood why the UN General Assembly commands such respect among many Western media, human rights groups and academia since a majority of the leaders attending it are dictators or despots.

 

IRAN CONTINUES ITS SURGE OF YOUTH HANGINGS

Iran, the world’s most prolific executioner after China, last week hanged another four men and a woman. This brings to 232 the number of known executions in Iran so far this year, compared to 317 executions in all of 2007.

Of particular concern is the number of youths facing execution for crimes they committed as children. There are at least 132 juvenile offenders on death row.

Iran leads the world in executing juvenile offenders, ahead of China, a much more populous country. Almost no other country in the world executes individuals for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.

A day after the European Union condemned the August 19 execution of Reza Hejazi for a murder he committed when he was 15, another child offender was hanged in Iran.

 

AUSTRALIAN AND CANADIAN UNIONS PROTEST FLOGGINGS AND EXECUTIONS

In the last two weeks trade unions in both Australia and Canada have lodged protests against the spate of lashings, floggings and death sentences recently meted out by the Iranian regime to workers and trade unionists there.

But why the virtual silence from the so-called “human rights” organizations in Europe and North America? Are they too busy staging pro-Hamas publicity stunts and boat trips?

Meanwhile, Iranians in Sweden, and in the German cities of Cologne and Berlin, last month held vigils to commemorate the mass killings of political prisoners in Iran in 1988.

And prisoners from Iran’s brutally persecuted Kurdish minority have begun a hunger strike against the death penalties, torture and appalling conditions that Kurdish political prisoners are subjected to in Iranian jails. (In English here.)

 

IRANIAN JOURNALIST EXECUTED

Yaghoub Mehrnahad, a 28 year-old journalist, who was also a student in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, has been executed.

His “crime” occurred in April 2007, when he criticized the regime during a debate at a conference called “Youths question, Officials reply” in Zahedan, the capital of Baluchestan. Yaghoub was arrested at the debate and then condemned to death.

He had criticized the regime for refusing to help women and children suffering from AIDS.

During Yaghoub’s trial neither he, nor his family, nor his lawyer, nor a jury were present. His family last saw him in Zahedan prison in December saying he showed “obvious signs of torture.”

Where are the protests from Western journalists’ associations, student groups and AIDS activists?

 

WHO ARE THE BALOCHIS?

Yaghoub was a member of the Balochi minority, one of many repressed minorities throughout Iran (not that most Western newspaper editors and “human rights” groups seem to care).

There has been a sharp increase in the persecution of the Balochis by the Iranian regime over the past few months. Balochis, most of who belong to the Hanafi sect of Sunni Islam, are a minority in three countries, and have been oppressed for generations.

The Balochis are to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan what the Kurds are to Turkey, Syria and Iran, that is, a people spilt by the borders of newly created twentieth century states in the, trying to maintain their identity.

About six million Balochis live in Pakistan, three million in Iran and one million in Afghanistan.

In other words there are about twice as many Balochis as Palestinians but I doubt that most Western human rights activists have ever heard of them.

 

BBC PERSIAN TV SACKS JOURNALISTS WHO CRITICIZE THE MULLAHS

The Tabnak News Agency reveals that the BBC’s new Persian Television Service (which is run and funded by the British Foreign Office and the state-funded BBC) has devised a strategy to get rid of critical journalists to preserve its license to operate in Iran.

Perhaps the British members of parliament from all three main British political parties who subscribe to this email list will take up this matter with the BBC Director-General?

 

PALIN, BIDEN AND IRAN

Don’t discount Palin’s foreign-policy credentials
By Tom Gross
The National Review
August 30, 2008 10:36 AM

Critics are already trying to damn Sarah Palin for her perceived lack of foreign-policy experience, but what they are not allowing for is something more important – that she has the right basic attitudes and sense of priorities. If one looks at her impressive record during 13 years of elected office (she enjoys over 80 percent approval ratings in Alaska from voters of all parties), one can see that she understands that aggression has to be resisted and commitments have to be honored.

Certainly there is every sign that she will be better for at least one of America’s closest friends and allies, Israel, than Joe Biden.

It is true that Biden talks of his support for Israel in principle, but the reality is that he has done his utmost to thwart keeping the possibility of a military option open to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. As a result he was even praised recently on the Iranian regime’s official propaganda arm, Press TV.

It is no accident that Biden was dubbed “Tehran’s favorite senator” in an article in The Washington Post last week.

By contrast, the very first reference to foreign policy that Palin made in her acceptance speech after being chosen as John McCain’s vice-presidential candidate Friday was that Iran must be stopped from getting nuclear weapons. She mentioned this even before she mentioned the issues of Iraq and Russia.

Palin has a record for integrity and for getting the job done matched by very few politicians, as shown by her success in tackling the corrupt Republican-party establishment in Alaska, and her highly effective economic program there.

The U.S. and Israel can have every confidence that, like McCain, she is a doer who means what she says – not someone like Joe Biden who may come out with fine sentiments but seems unwilling to get to grips with fundamental problems posed by Iran and Syria.

(Tom Gross is a former Mideast correspondent for London’s Sunday Telegraph.)