(JNS.org) While the U.S. and Israel engage in air defense cooperation such as Austere Challenge 12, a drill meant to build soldarity, Iran’s current air defense exercise is intended as a “slap” to West.
Iran has modeled a new air defense system after the U.S. Hawk system, successfully testing the system in a move the country’s air defense chief on Tuesday called “a message and a strong slap to those countries that threaten [us],” the Associated Press reported.
Gen. Farzad Esmaili was referring to the U.S. and Israel, and constrasted those countries with others by saying the Iranian military exercise was “a message of peace and friendship to friendly countries.”
The Islamic Republic’s new system, “Mersad” (meaning “ambush”), can lock onto a flying object from 50 miles away and hit such an object from 28 miles out, according to Iranian state TV.
UC Irvine student senate resolves to divest from Israel
(JNS.org) The University of California, Irvine student senate passed a non-binding resolution Tuesday night asking the school to divest from eight companies doing business with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of “apartheid.”
The resolution has not yet earned the approval of the UC Irvine student government’s executive board, a body that would pass on the resolution to the school’s administration. If UC Irvine adopts legislation recommending divestment from companies doing business with Israel, it would be the first California campus to do so.
Associated Students-UC Irvine (ASUCI) voted 16-0 to request divestment from Caterpillar, Cement Roadstones Holding, Cemex, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Raytheon, Sodastream, and L-3 Communications, according to the resolution (http://is.gd/A3NwN6). ASUCI—using language resembling that of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement—said those companies “have promoted and been complicit” in “ongoing human rights violations systematically committed by the Israeli government.”
Roz Rothstein, CEO of the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs, told JNS.org: “This is extremely disappointing and divisive to the students on campus.”
“We sincerely hope that the executive board of the student government will reject this extremist resolution,” she said.
Oren at GA: See Israel as a ‘real country,’ not an ‘issue’
BALTIMORE—Despite being in the midst of a “golden age,” global Jewry is tasked with overcoming divisiveness stemming from Israel being seen “as an issue, as a society either to be idealized, demonized, or ignored” rather than “a real country,” Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) General Assembly on Tuesday.
Oren—who said he has “the best job in the world”—explained that the American and Israeli Jewish communities should be asking themselves not how they can coexist, but instead how they can “co-flourish.”
Israel’s battle for survival is not only being waged militarily, but also in college campuses, the media and supermarkets where Israeli products are boycotted, the diplomat said. He said that instead of tanks Israel can see, the Jewish state is faced with an Iranian nuclear program it cannot see. Regarding the Arab-Israeli peace process, Oren said even moderate Palestinian leaders glorify terrorists, deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and attempt to unilaterally establish a state.
Given what Israel is facing, Oren said that when some Americans are critical of Israel, he is “startled sometimes when the criticism is ill informed”—for example, when that criticism ignores Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s endorsement of a two-state solution. The ambassador lamented that he once had to speak with an incoming class of rabbinical students who were opposed to spending a year studying abroad in Israel.
In terms of how polarized American Jewry is politically, Oren recalled the time he once tried to arrange a meeting between American Jewish Republican activists and American Jewish Democratic activists.
“Once, I tried,” he said. “Never again.”
Oren said that before criticizing each other, American and Israeli Jews “must pause to clarify.” He said, “To succeed we must reexamine some of our most basic assumptions.” Israelis should acknowledge the American-Jewish experience as a source of enrichment for Israeli Jewry, while American Jews should respect Israel as a polity of human beings who must make life-and-death decisions and bear the consequence of those decisions, according to the ambassador.
“The future of the Jewish people is ours alone to forge,” Oren said.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org