IRAN BOASTS OF END TO US-ISRAEL ALLIANCE
by Rachel Hirshfeld (IsraelNationalNews)

An Iranian newspaper tied to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently boasted that United States has “rejected” Israel within recent months.

“It can be said that within the last 60 years, this is the first time that the Zionist regime, since its illegal inception, has had to endure rejection by the West over its vision and interest in the region,” wrote Sadollah Zarei, according to a translation by Reza Kahlili.

The author writes that the only “obstacle” remaining is the Saudi Royal Family and once it falls, Israel can be destroyed.

“With diminishing support for Israel and with the (upcoming) collapse of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, there won’t be any obstacles left facing Iran with its policy of annihilation of Israel,” Zarei wrote.

While Democrats continue to endorse President Obama’s polices with regard to Israel in hopes of emerging victorious in the upcoming elections, the President’s record on the Jewish state has hardly been favorable, to say the least.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama reportedly held an off-the-record foreign policy meeting with nine editors and columnists, widely known for their extreme criticism of the State of Israel, in order to seek foreign policy advice in light of the November elections.

ABBAS’ RIDICULOUS CLAIM OF ISRAELI ETHNIC CLEANSING
by Ryan Jones (Israel Today News)

Israel’s “moderate” Palestinian peace partner Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday marked the “catastrophe” (Nakba) of Israel’s modern rebirth by publicly claiming that the Jews are trying to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem of its Arab population. If that is true, then Israel is the absolute worst practitioner of ethnic cleansing in history.

In a televised speech, Abbas accused Israel of “building settlements in Jerusalem and around it…while there is a massive destruction of [Arab] houses in the city and their original inhabitants are being uprooted on a daily basis.”

While it is true that the Jerusalem Municipality occasionally demolishes Arab homes, it does so because those structure were built without proper permits. The reality is that Jerusalem only demolishes a small fraction of the illegally-built houses for fear of international backlash, and that many local Arabs are getting away with breaking the law simply because of their ethnicity.

Abbas continued by regurgitating the conspiracy theory that Israel is targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque that sits atop the Temple Mount and that it is “trying to make Muslims and Christians flee the city by imposing heavy taxes, a policy which can only be called ethnic cleansing.”

As a non-Arab resident of Jerusalem, this writer can confidently say that those high taxes are shared by all the city’s residents.

But countering Abbas’ specific points is not necessary, since the numbers simply do not support his wild outburst.

Since Israel took control of the eastern half of Jerusalem in 1967, the local Arab population has grown by an amazing 257 percent, far faster than the growth rate of the city’s Jewish population at 140 percent. Even in recent years, which is presumably what Abbas was focusing on, the Arab population’s growth rate has far outstripped the Jewish growth rate. For instance, in 2009 there were approximately 285,000 Arabs living in Jerusalem. A year later, that number had grown to over 293,000. Officials speculated that by 2035, Arabs would constitute 50 percent of the city’s population. (Numbers provided by the Central Bureau of Statistics)

Again, if Israel is what Abbas says it is, then it is the most incompetent ethnic-cleanser in history, and Jerusalem’s Arabs have little to fear. But that won’t stop Abbas, who knows well by this point that the international media laps up negative accusations made by himself and others of Israel’s antagonists with little or no reservation.

OBAMA SEEKS FOREIGN POLICY ADVICE FROM ISRAEL’S CRITICS!
by Rachel Hirshfeld (Arutz Sheva News)

President Barack Obama reportedly held an “off-the-record” foreign policy meeting with nine editors and columnists to discuss Afghanistan, Israel, NATO and the G8 Summit at Camp David. Many of the participants are widely known for their extreme and unwarranted criticism of the Jewish state.

According to the reports, the meeting included Peter Beinart, author of the recent much-criticized book, “The Crisis of Zionism,”, which bashes the American Jewish establishment, claims US Jewish youth are abandoning Israel because of its actions and advocates a boycott on the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, calling the area “non-democratic Israel”. He calls Obama the “Jewish President” and blasts Netanyahu and his father, barely mentions Arab terror while excoriating “Jewish terror.”

The meeting also included The New Yorker’s David Remnick, who has compared the democracy of the State of Israel to that of Syria and Egypt, and Time’s Joe Klein, who has disregarded the threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, stating that the regime is doing so merely to “deter Israel.”

Sources would not discuss the specific details of the conversation, as it was “off the record”, but did indicate that Obama looked to the group to “help improve messaging” on the aforementioned foreign policy matters in the run-up to the 2012 election, reported Politico.com.

White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor clarified the last point stating, “The President didn’t ask for messaging advice. He simply noted that before writing that we haven’t offered enough ‘specifics’ on a given issue, that we’d appreciate it if they called over and gave us the opportunity to provide more information.”

“If President Obama believes Peter Beinart’s opinions are credible or anywhere near mainstream thought, then that is a five-alarm fire for Israel supporters all across the world,” said one senior GOP adviser, according to the Free Beacon.

ARCHAEOLOGIST FINDS NEW SUPPORT FOR BIBLE’S ACCURACY
by Ryan Jones (Israel Today News)

A Hebrew University archeologist says finds at a new dig site near Jerusalem are backing up the biblical narrative of an Israelite kingdom centered on Jerusalem in 1000 BC, around the time of King David and his son, King Solomon.

Professor Yosef Garfinkel has been digging at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh since 2007. Carbon dating of unearthed olive pits has put the period of activity at Khirbet Qeiyafa at 1020 BC – 980 BC, almost exactly the period of time the Bible says David and Solomon were active in the region. The dating, together with the uniqueness of the finds, has made Khirbet Qeiyafa one of the most important biblical archeological digs.

Less than a year after working Khirbet Qeiyafa, Garfinkel unveiled what is believed to be the oldest Hebrew inscription found to date. At the time, Garfinkel said the inscription proved that vibrant, centralized and literate Hebrew kingdom existed in the area 3,000 years ago, just as the Bible says it did.

Last week, Garfinkel shared his latest find – two ancient models of shrines that very closely resemble the biblical description of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. The models would have presumably been used in religious rites.

Garfinkel also says it is now clear that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a walled town, which means it must have been part of a centralized larger kingdom.

Perhaps most importantly, Garfinkel says the site is completely devoid of pagan idols and imagery, and contains no pig bones, despite being well endowed with the bones of sheep, goats and cattle. Together this means the site must be Israelite remains, as the Israelites were the only local people forbidden from eating swine or engaging in pagan rituals.

All of this evidence combined is important because it counters the claims of some archeologists that the Bible is full of myths, which until now have been based on the lack of evidence for a large and centralized Israelite kingdom around 1000 BC.

“For the first time in history we have actual objects from the time of David, which can be related to monuments described in the Bible,” Garfinkel said in a press release. “Various suggestions that completely deny the biblical tradition regarding King David and argue that he was a mythological figure, or just a leader of a small tribe, are now shown to be wrong.”

Still, not everyone is convinced, and many Israeli archeologists and professors continue to label the Bible as national folklore. Garfinkel hopes that continued work at Khirbet Qeiyafa and other sites will eventually lay bare the truth.

CIVIL UNIONS DIE – TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE WINS!
Zionica News

In back-to-back victories in the culture war on traditional marriage, Colorado’s civil union bill died in the Colorado House and North Carolina voters decided to uphold the biblical one woman-one man marriage definition.

By a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent, North Carolinians voted to become the 31st state to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, applauded North Carolina voters for joining voters in 30 other states in upholding the historic and natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

“At every opportunity, the American people have demonstrated a deep appreciation for the unique benefits that marriage between a man and a woman brings to families and society,” Perkins says. “They recognize that marriage is the only kind of union that results in natural procreation and keeps a mother and father together to raise the children produced by their union.”

As Perkins sees it, this overwhelming support for marriage is the reason why President Obama and liberal congressional candidates across the country have not expressed open support for same-sex marriage.

PALESTINIANS REFUSE NETANYAHU’S PEACE OVERTURE!
by Ryan Jones (Israel Today News)

The Palestinian Authority on Sunday dismissed a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas suggesting that the two men return to the negotiating table.

Netanyahu’s letter was a response to a letter sent by Abbas to the Israeli leader last month in which Abbas insisted that since the peace process had already dragged on so long, Israel must now agree to meet all Palestinian demands before negotiations resume.

Abbas’ letter concluded by demanding that Netanyahu:
1.
Accept the two-state solution on the 1967 borders with possible minor and mutually agreed upon land swaps of equal size and value;

2.
Stop all settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem;

3.
Release all prisoners, in particular those imprisoned prior to the end of 1994; and

4.
Revoke all decisions taken since 2000 which undermine agreements signed between Israel and the PLO.

While Netanyahu has already verbally agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, freezing and even uprooting Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and setting free thousands of blood-soaked Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons are red lines that almost no Israeli is prepared to cross.

While details of Netanyahu’s response were scarce, it reportedly reflected those Israeli concerns, and insisted that the Palestinians return to the negotiating table without preconditions, as the two sides had clearly not yet reached the “final status” phase as stipulated by the original “Oslo Accords.” Netanyahu is said to have stressed that Israel’s new unity government offers Abbas the perfect face-saving opportunity to resume talks without first making hardline demands.

Netanyahu’s letter also presumably reminded Abbas of the things he left out of his own letter, namely that while the peace process has dragged on far longer than anyone hoped, that fact is primarily the result of not only continuing, but escalating Palestinian violence against Israel over the past decade.

The Oslo Accords obligated the Palestinian Authority to stop all violence against Israel, combat and dismantle any groups that engage in violence, and educate its people for peaceful coexistence. Numerous surveys show that the PA continues to violate those terms, despite Abbas’ public commitment to “non-violence.”

Palestinian officials were hoping no one noticed the discrepancies between their demands and claims and their behavior of the ground, and tried to paint Netanyahu and his policies as the sole obstacle to peace.

The content of Netanyahu’s letter did not represent grounds for returning to negotiations,” Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi told Reuters.

Barring any about-faces by either Israel or the Palestinians, it is assumed that Abbas’ next move will be to again approach the United Nations to recognize a State of Palestine in the absence of a peace agreement with Israel. Abbas tried a similar stunt last year, only to be shot down by the UN Security Council, where the United States threatened to veto the Palestinian motion.

AHMADINEJAD: “ISRAEL NOTHING MORE THAN A MOSQUITO!”
by Rachel Hirshfeld (Arutz Sheva News)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad compared Israel to an annoying insect Saturday, maintaining that the Jewish state poses no threat to Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Israel is nothing more than a mosquito which cannot see the broad horizon of the Iranian nation,” he said in northeastern Iran’s Khorassan province, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Ahmadinejad said “regional states” were being duped into buying billions of dollars worth of arms from “arrogant and imperial powers,” driven, in part, by increasing speculation of an imminent war involving Iran and Israel, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.

Such military purchases, he said, are unnecessary because there is no such war on the horizon.

The Iranian President alluded to “rulers” who sold “their petrol” for $60 billion worth in arms. While he did not explicitly mention the names of countries, Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a 20-year, $60 billion arms deal with the United States, including nearly $30 billion for F-15 fighter jets announced late last year.

Ahmadinejad also maintained that war is not essential to achieve the “destruction of Israel,” IRNA reported. “If countries of the region cut ties with the Zionists and give them dirty looks, it will spell the end of this puppet regime,” he said.

Ahmadinejad has long denied the Holocaust and has threatened to obliterate the Jewish state, calling it a “cancerous tumor.”

Only a few months after taking office in October 2005, the Iranian President asserted that, “With the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism,” according to an IRNA report.

Last week Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “blasted the U.S. war-mongering rhetoric against Iran,” including President Barack Obama’s assertion that “all options are on the table.” He added that war “can be 10 times more harmful to the United States than Iran,” according to a Fars report.

Fearful of an imminent Israeli attack, Western powers continue to impose sanction on the regime, exhausting diplomatic solutions in an effort to curtail Iranian ambitions and the likelihood of an Israeli strike.

Last month nuclear talks were held in Istanbul, Turkey between international and Iranian diplomats in an effort to curb the Iranian program, which EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton described as “constructive and useful.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said last week that he was optimistic that there would be progress in continued talks with the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain – the so-called P5+1, Fars reported. The parties are scheduled to meet again in Baghdad on May 23.

Prior to the meeting in Baghdad, discussions will be held in Vienna, Austria on Monday and Tuesday to address “outstanding issues and remove ambiguities,” Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency Ali-Asghar Soltanieh said, according to Fars.

MEDIA DISTORTIONS OF TERRORIST THREATS
by Ryan Jones (Israel Today News)

The Israeli army complained in a blog post last week that both the international and the Israeli medias paint a grossly incomplete picture of the terrorist threat facing the Jewish state by regularly ignorning significant security incidents.

In the post, army officials listed a selection of nine abortive or thwarted terrorist attacks in 2012 that received almost no media coverage. Most of the incidents involved Israeli soldiers apprehending armed terrorists before they could reach Jewish targets. For instance:

On January 2, soldiers arrested two Palestinian men armed with automatic rifles as they attempted to leave the Samarian town of Nablus. Had the two reached a Jewish settlement or a town in Israel proper, a massacre could have ensued.

On April 11, again at the Nablus checkpoint, soldiers stopped a Palestinian man carrying several homemade bombs, three knives and 50 bullets. The incident occurred over the Passover holiday, a time when Israeli regularly congregate in public in large numbers.

On April 21, two Palestinian teenagers were arrested after soldiers found them to be in possession of five pipe bombs, a gun and ammunition.

In addition to the incidents listed, it should be noted that towns and villages in the western portion of Israel’s southern Negev region continue to suffer regular mortar and missile attacks from neighboring Gaza. Most attacks are not reported, as they have become a regular occurrence.

The sad reality is that terrorist incidents have become so commonplace in Israel that they rarely make headlines, even in Israel, unless people are hurt or killed. The unfortunate result of that practice is that the security situation in Israel is painted as far less severe than it really is.

The IDF stressed that terrorists are still trying to kill Israelis every single day. Thanks to the efforts of Israel’s security forces, the vast majority of those attempts are thwarted, but that does not diminish the fact that Israel is facing an enemy as determined and hostile as ever.

While these incidents are probably often ignored simply because without casualties they wouldn’t sell newspapers or bring in viewers, there are many in the media that gloss over the unrelenting terrorism facing Israel because it does not mesh with their political agendas vis-a-vis the region.

NASRALLAH: HIZBULLAH CAN STRIKE ANYWHERE IN ISRAEL
by Reuters

Hezbollah chief says his group can “hit specific targets in Tel Aviv and anywhere in occupied Palestine.”

BEIRUT – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Friday his terrorist group was capable of striking any target in neighboring Israel, claiming “the days when we fled and they did not are over”.

“Today we are not only able to hit Tel Aviv as a city but, God willing, we are able to hit specific targets in Tel Aviv and anywhere in occupied Palestine,” Nasrallah said in a televised address.

IDF builds barrier to protect Metula from HIzbUllah.

“For every building destroyed in Dahiya, a building will be destroyed in Tel Aviv,” he said, referring to HIzbullah’s stronghold in a suburb of southern Beirut.

Nasrallah’s comments were some of his harshest words against Israel in several months, and came amid rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah’s main backer, Iran.

Israel argues Iran’s nuclear enrichment project is being used to make an atomic bomb and has warned it could launch a strike to stop Tehran. Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

Hizbullah has long been seen as a proxy for Iran and Syria and many analysts believe that in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran, Hizbullah could return fire.

“The days when we were forced from our homes and they were not forced from theirs are over,” Nasrallah said, to cheers from a crowd of supporters watching his speech.

“The days when we were afraid and they were not are over,” he said. “And we say to them: The time has come when we will remain and you will be the ones who disappear.”

Nasrallah was speaking at an event to mark the completion of Hizbullah’s renovation projects for neighborhoods in southern Beirut that were damaged by IDF bombing during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

ASSAD’S RUSSIAN LIFELINE
by Jonathan Spyer (Jerusalem Post)

As West remains on sidelines in Syria, Moscow continues to arm Assad regime, underwrite its survival.

The port of Oktyabrsk is situated on the left bank of the Bug River, 58 km. north of the entry to the Black Sea. Close to the city of Nikolayev, this anonymous Ukrainian port could not seem further from the strife-torn Middle East.

Yet in the last year, Oktyabrsk has played a key role in the international structure that enables the survival of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. It is the main point from which ships bearing the Russian arms that underwrite the Assad regime’s survival set off undisturbed on their journey to the Syrian coast.

Chartered by the state-owned Russian arms corporation Rosoboronexport, the ships make their way from Oktyabrsk to the Black Sea. They cross the Bosphorous Straits to Limassol in Cyprus and continue to the Russian deep sea port in Tartous, Syria. These shipments form a vital node in Moscow’s tireless effort to prevent revolution in Syria.

They have received insufficient international attention.

If Syria constitutes, as some believe, the central linchpin to understanding events in the Middle East, then the signs are not positive. The Western preference for disengagement from the Mideast mess is not being mirrored by non-Western powers. Rather, as the determined and efficient arms line to Assad shows, Moscow’s Syria policy combines clear goals with a brutal effectiveness in their pursuit.

Why is Russia so determined to preserve Assad’s rule? The first reason is economic. As Russia returned to international prominence over the last decade, arms exports to Syria increased exponentially. Between 2007 and 2011, imports from Russia accounted for 78 percent of all Syrian arms imports, according to a recent report by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The second-largest supplier of arms to Assad in the 2007 to 2011 period was Belarus, which accounted for 17% of Syrian imports. The isolated Lukashenka regime in Minsk does not pursue an independent policy in terms of arms supplying. Rather, it sells Russian arms systems in coordination with – and probably under the direction of – its Russian patrons.

So put the figures together and you have 95% of Syrian arms imports arriving from Russia or its satellites. It doesn’t end there. The remaining 5% of arms imports, says SIPRI, come from Iran. But the Iranians, too, are largely providing Syria with Russian arms systems.

Moscow’s economic interests in Syria are not limited to the sphere of arms exports. Russian companies are heavily engaged in infrastructure projects and oil and gas exploration.

Total investment in Syria amounted to $19.4 billion in 2009.

The second reason Russia is invested in Assad’s reign is strategic. The naval base at Tartous gives the Russian Navy the capability to operate in the Mediterranean and thus to reach the Red Sea via the Suez Canal, and the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar, in reduced time.

The Russians also have an interest in maintaining a troublesome client in the Levant in order to act as a potential tool of disruption and political pressure against the West in its own backyard. Moscow sees itself as threatened by NATO expansion eastwards.

It is useful to have a well-placed client whose capacity for trouble-making might act as a deterrent to Western schemes.

This element, which dovetails perfectly with the Assad regime’s well-known practice of creating problems and then offering its services to help solve them (at a price), dates back to the period of the Cold War.

More nebulously, Russia fears the spread of Islamism to the North Caucasus and Central Asia, and perhaps also the spread of the belief that dictators are fallible further west of Russia itself.

Finally, Russian support for Assad produces a self-evident reason for doubling down on itself: namely, the fact that the opposition to Assad is well aware who is keeping him afloat, and is keeping accounts. As a Free Syrian Army officer in Antakya told this reporter, a post-Assad Syria would “neither depend on, nor have relations with, nor take weapons from Russia.”

How important are the Russian weapons to the dictator’s survival? They constitute a single but vital component in the determined international coalition gathered behind Bashar Assad. The Iranian Quds Force and Hezbollah are there on the ground, providing assistance and engaging where relevant in direct combat. Russia and China are blocking any moves for real action against the regime by way of the UN.

Were the Russian lifeline to be removed, perhaps Iran, China or North Korea might try to make up the difference. But as of now, it is Russia which is pumping the iron lifeblood into the veins of the regime.

Against this, the Free Syrian Army is still running its meager arms smuggling operations across the mountains from Turkey and Lebanon, backed by myriad and confused channels of Sunni Islamist, Qatari and Saudi money. The demonstrators are still going out to be killed in Deraa, Homs, Idlib and Hama.

The West, meanwhile, is still backing the stillborn Annan peace plan.

The lost blue-bereted UN observers are floating around those parts of Syria they are permitted to enter.

The Obama Administration may well still be seeking to convince Russia of the need to make Assad step aside. Washington correctly assesses that only Moscow might have the power to achieve this. The problem is that Russia shows no interest in assisting the US.

Instead, it is backing its client to the end. In so doing, Moscow is demonstrating that it well understands the harsh and Hobbesian nature of patron-client relations in the Middle East. If the dictator survives, Moscow and Tehran’s triumph will be well-noted by regional elites.

As will the West’s hapless flailing.

Day by day, the killings and the chaos in Syria are continuing. Day by day, the guns and ammunition are being loaded aboard at the quiet port of Oktyabrsk in southern Ukraine. And day by day, Russia is building political and strategic capital in the traditional way – through strong will, clear direction, and the backing of clients – in the face of a Western policy in utter disarray.