Chavez defeats grandson of Jews in Venezuela presidential elections
(JNS.org) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was re-elected Sunday, beating his opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, a Catholic whose grandparents were Jewish and Holocaust survivors. Chavez won 54.4 percent of the vote to Capriles’s 44.9.
Radonski represented the Democratic Unity coalition, which combined 30 parties that oppose the Chavez government. During the election, the Jerusalem Post reported on a study by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, which found that Chavez insulted his opponent by directly referencing his Jewish roots.
“This is done in a variety of methods, such as defamation, intimidation and conspiracy theories, many of which portray Capriles as a Zionist agent, and by mixing classic and neo-anti-Semitism… A Capriles victory, it is claimed, will inevitably lead to Zionist infiltration,” said the report.
Chavez’s government is known to have strong ties with Iran, and severed its relationship with Jerusalem in 2009. The study found the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment in the country is widespread. The Jewish community of Venezuela used to number about 18,000, but shrunk to half of that by 2010.
Romney slams Obama on ‘daylight’ with Israel, Middle East ‘passivity’
(JNS.org) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Monday that President Barack Obama’s Middle East strategy is perceived as “not one of partnership, but of passivity” and that Obama has distanced the U.S. from Israel, its “closest ally in the region.”
Romney, speaking on foreign policy at the Virginia Military Institute, said America “can’t support our friends and defeat our enemies in the Middle East when our words are not backed up by deeds.”
“The president is fond of saying that ‘the tide of war is receding,’” he said. “And I want to believe him as much as anyone else. But when we look at the Middle East today, with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region and with violent extremists on the march, and with an American ambassador and three others dead—likely at the hands of al-Qaida affiliates—it’s clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office.”
The former Massachusetts governor said Obama’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has suffered great strains.”
“The president explicitly stated that his goal was to put ‘daylight’ between the United States and Israel, and he’s succeeded,” Romney said. “This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran.”
Romney said it would be his policy to “work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination” and “reaffirm” America’s ties to the Jewish state. “The world must never see any daylight between our two nations,” he said.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki responded to the Republican’s remarks by calling them evidence of his tendency for “chest-pounding rhetoric” and “saber-rattling.” That is something “we think the American people should take a look at,” she told reporters.
Think tank: Iran could have enough material for bomb in 2-4 months
(JNS.org) Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to arm a nuclear bomb within two to four months but would still face serious “engineering challenges”— and much longer delays—before it succeeds in making the other components needed for a functioning warhead, a respected U.S. think tank said Monday.
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) did not make a judgment on whether Iran plans to turn its enrichment capabilities toward weapons making. But in its report Monday, it drew a clear distinction between Tehran’s ability to make the fissile core of a warhead by producing 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium from its lower-enriched stockpiles and the warhead itself, Israel Hayom reported.
“Despite work it may have done in the past,” Iran would need “many additional months to manufacture a nuclear device suitable for underground testing and even longer to make a reliable warhead for a ballistic missile,” the report said.
In addition to its payload of weapons-grade uranium, a nuclear warhead also needs to have a complicated trigger mechanism that sets off a chain reaction in the weapons grade uranium—the fissile core of such a weapon—resulting in the high-power blast and widespread radiation characteristic of such weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran may have worked secretly on testing such a nuclear trigger.
Gaza terrorists fire more than 55 rockets and mortars at Israel
(JNS.org) Gaza terrorists fired a Qassam rocket toward Israel on Tuesday after having fired more than 55 rockets and mortar shells into Israel the previous day. The rocket exploded inside Palestinian territory near the border fence, causing no injuries or damage, Israel Hayom reported.
Monday’s barrage came in response to an Israel Air Force strike in the Gaza Strip that critically wounded two Islamic Jihad operatives in Rafah, one of which has since succumbed to his wounds. The two had been involved in extensive terror activities against Israel.
The two operatives were Talaat Halil Mohammed Jerbi, 23, and Abdullah Mohammed Hassan Makawi, 24, both members of world jihadist organizations. A source within the Israeli defense establishment reported that Jerbi had been involved in the planning and execution of a terror attack along the Israel-Sinai border on June 18, in which an Israeli civilian was killed. Jerbi was also in the midst of planning a fresh attack, according to other Israeli defense officials. After being hospitalized, Makawi died on Monday.
American and French-Moroccan Jew win Nobel physics prize
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Frenchman Serge Haroche and American David Wineland have won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing and developing methods for observing tiny quantum particles without destroying them. Haroche is from a Jewish family; he was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1944.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two scientists Tuesday “for groundbreaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.” Haroche and Wineland, both 68, work in the field of quantum optics, which deals with the interaction between light and matter.
“Their groundbreaking methods have enabled this field of research to take the very first steps toward building a new type of superfast computer based on quantum physics,” the academy said. “The research has also led to the construction of extremely precise clocks that could become the future basis for a new standard of time.” Each Nobel Prize award is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million.
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