Democratic leaders believe Iran deal secure in Congress
(JNS.org) Democratic leaders in Congress believe that the Iran nuclear deal is secure despite nearly unanimous Republican opposition and intense lobbying efforts to defeat it.
“More and more [House Democrats] have confirmed to me that they will be there to sustain the veto,” said House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Reuters reported.
President Barack Obama has promised to veto any Congressional disapproval of the deal. In order to override the veto, at least 44 Democratic House members and 13 Democratic members of the Senate must join Republicans in opposing the deal.
Many Jewish Democrats who hold powerful positions on their respective chambers’ foreign affairs committees, including U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), are still on the fence about the deal.
“There’ll be a lot of pressure on Democrats to support the president,” Engel told Reuters.
Schumer has come under intense pressure from constituents to oppose the deal, with his office being flooded with more than 10,000 phone calls over the past two weeks, Politico reported.
“I haven’t made up my mind,” Schumer told Politico. “There are expectations all over the lot. I’m doing what I’m always doing when I have a very difficult decision: Learning it carefully and giving it my best shot, doing what I think is right. I’m not going to let pressure or politics or party get in the way of that.”
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Iran’s Khamenei writes 416-page book on long-term plan to destroy Israel
(JNS.org) Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has written a 416-page book titled “Palestine” that details his long-term plan to destroy Israel, the Gatestone Institute think tank reported.
Khamenei states that his plan is rooted in “well-established Islamic principles” rather than the “European phenomenon” of anti-Semitism, according to Iranian-born author Amir Taheri.
“One such [Islamic principle] is that a land that falls under Muslim rule, even briefly, can never again be ceded to non-Muslims,” Taheri wrote. “What matters in Islam is control of a land’s government, even if the majority of inhabitants are non-Muslims.”
While using the ayatollah’s usual incendiary descriptors for Israel such as “a cancerous tumor,” Khamenei’s book does not recommend “classical wars” to wipe the Jewish state off the map, but instead advocates “a long period of low-intensity warfare designed to make life unpleasant if not impossible for a majority of Israeli Jews so that they leave the country,” wrote Taheri.
“His calculation is based on the assumption that large numbers of Israelis have dual-nationality and would prefer emigration to the United States or Europe to daily threats of death,” he wrote. “Khamenei makes no reference to Iran’s nuclear program. But the subtext is that a nuclear-armed Iran would make Israel think twice before trying to counter Khamenei’s strategy by taking military action against the Islamic Republic. In Khamenei’s analysis, once the cost of staying in Israel has become too high for many Jews, Western powers, notably the U.S., which has supported the Jewish state for decades, might decide that the cost of doing so is higher than possible benefits.”
The book, according to Taheri, “has received approval from Khamenei’s office and is thus the most authoritative document regarding his position on the issue.”
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Wildfire sweeps through hills near Jerusalem, burns 74 acres
(JNS.org) Dozens of firefighting teams rushed to the hills surrounding Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon as a wildfire broke out near Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital and the community of Even Sapir.
Due to the hot, dry weather, firefighters feared the blaze would reach both the hospital and Even Sapir, and evacuated residents from the community. Some damage was caused to houses in the area. Over the course of the day, a total of 69 firefighting teams—including 160 staff and volunteers, five Jewish National Fund teams, five Israeli Air Force teams, and 13 firefighting planes—became involved in the efforts to put out the fire.
A total of 74 acres were burned. Some of the houses affected contained asbestos, prompting warnings for nearby residents to remain indoors to avoid potentially toxic air pollution.
“The firefighters worked bravely,” said Eyal Cohen, deputy head of the Jerusalem Fire and Rescue Services, Israel Hayom reported. “The assistance we received from all the fire and rescue departments and emergency services helped stop the fire from spreading and prevented a much bigger disaster.”
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Temple Mount sheikh: Jewish doctors create diseases, control pharma industry
(JNS.org) Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi, a teacher of Islam at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, claimed that Jewish doctors manufacture diseases in labs and almost completely own the global pharmaceutical industry.
“They own about 95 percent of the world’s pharmaceutical industry,” Al-Mughrabi said in his most recent class, Palestinian Media Watch reported Sunday, citing a July 31 post on the Al-Msjed Al-Aqsa YouTube channel. “Why do I mention the pharmaceutical industry? Many diseases were created in labs—viruses created by doctors who were bought, trained, and taught by the Rothschild family, the Freemasons, the Zionists, or the Jews to create and spread disease so they will be able to sell medicine for it. More than 95 percent of the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceutical trade is owned by the children of Israel.”
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Canada to purchase technology from Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system
(JNS.org) Canada has announced a deal to purchase radar technology used in Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system.
“Much like Israel’s successful Iron Dome radar technology, the Medium Range Radar system will be able to instantly track enemy fire aimed at Canadian armed forces personnel and help keep them safe during operations,” Canadian Defense Minister Jason Kenney said, AFP reported.
The radars will be manufactured by Rheinmetall’s Canadian branch with support from ELTA Systems, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries.
“Together with our partners in Rheinmetall-Canada, we will provide the most sophisticated C-RAM, air-surveillance, and radar available, with a significant portion of the production to be performed locally in Canada,” ELTA President Nissim Hadas said.
The U.S.-funded Iron Dome system reportedly had a 90-percent interception rate for projectiles fired at Israel during last summer’s Gaza war.
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Iran nuclear deal prompts Israel to redeploy Iron Dome along northern border
(JNS.org) Col. Yoni Saada Marom, commander of the Israeli military’s Active Defense Air Wing, said the Jewish state has redeployed the Iron Dome missile defense system to northern Israel amid fears that the Hezbollah terror group could get an infusion of cash from Iran after the recently reached nuclear deal.
“Now we are dealing with the challenges and scenarios that we think the enemies from the north will bring. One of the scenarios could be that, like Hamas, they (Hezbollah) will try and challenge us with a variety of threats simultaneously—which is a great challenge—but we are developing our concepts of operation,” Marom said, Fox News reported.
Israeli officials believe Hezbollah may have up to 100,000 rockets in its arsenal, with several thousand capable of hitting Tel Aviv and hundreds that can strike the entire country.
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Hamas threatens terror attacks, ‘day of rage’ after killing of Palestinian toddler
(JNS.org) The Hamas terrorist group said every Israeli is now a legitimate target in the wake of a terror attack that killed a Palestinian toddler.
Hamas also called for a “day of rage” to “protect the al-Aqsa Mosque,” the Jerusalem Post reported. On Friday, 18-month-old Palestinian boy Ali Dawabsha was killed and three members of his were family injured when a suspected Jewish extremist threw a Molotov cocktail into their home in the West Bank village of Duma.
Israeli leaders swiftly condemned the attack.
“This is a terror attack in every sense of the word. The State of Israel deals forcefully with terror, regardless of who the perpetrators are,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon called the attack a “most severe terrorist act that we cannot tolerate, and we condemn in every way.”
Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited the Dawabsha family.
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