Russia to build second nuclear plant for Iran, deliver S-300 anti-aircraft system
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Russia will supply Iran with a modified version of the vaunted S-300 anti-aircraft system and will build a new nuclear reactor for the Ayatollah’s regime, the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported Wednesday.
The report comes on the heels of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles under international supervision and thus avoid a U.S. strike on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Kommersant reported that the deal between Moscow and Tehran was formulated as part of Russia and Iran’s “commonality of views on the situation in Syria.”
Russia will reportedly also build a second nuclear reactor at Bushehr. Iran and Russia signed an agreement in 1995 to repair and complete the 1,000-megawatt reactor, which was finished in 2011. Atomic Energy Organization of Iran chief Ali Akbar Salehi told IRNA this week that Russia would likely hand over the operation of the first plant to Iran in three months.
According to the sources close to the Kremlin, Russia will supply Iran with five battalions of the S-300VM Antey-2500 system, a modified export version of the S-300V. A key condition of the transaction is that Tehran withdraw its $4 billion lawsuit over Moscow’s failure to deliver the systems under the previous contract. Quoting a security policy expert, Kommersant said the anti-aircraft batteries Russia would provide were even better than the ones Iran originally bought.
Israel, ex-Mossad agent Zygier’s family reach $1.1 million settlement
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The Israeli government will pay the family of Australian-born Israeli Mossad agent Ben Zygier 4 million shekels, or $1.1 million, in compensation as part of a settlement deal reached over Zygier’s 2010 suicide, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Tuesday.
Zygier, who became known as “Prisoner X,” was arrested in January 2010 over serious national security-related charges. He committed suicide in December that year, while he was held in solitary confinement at the maximum-security Ayalon Prison.
The agreement between the state and the family followed months of negotiations. The settlement includes no admission of responsibility by the Israel Prison Service over Zygier’s death. The family has also agreed not to bring a civil suit against Israeli authorities and has reportedly signed a nondisclosure agreement barring it from ever revealing the full terms of the settlement.
Report: Israeli-Palestinian conflict talks ‘guaranteed’ by Kerry to start from 1967 lines
(JNS.org) Nabil A. Shaath, the Palestinian Authority’s commissioner for international relations, said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “guaranteed” the Palestinians in writing that the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations would start from the 1967 lines, the New York Times reported.
The U.S. State Department denied Shaath’s assertion.
“We have always said that if you don’t hear news about the talks from senior U.S. officials, you can’t count on it being reliable,” Marie E. Harf, a State Department spokeswoman, told the Timesin an email. “This is a good example.”
Shaath did not provide the Times with a copy of Kerry’s signature, but insisted that the signed document exists and said the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t have entered into renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations without it.
If true, Kerry’s guarantee to the Palestinians would fall in line with U.S. President Barack Obama’s May 2011 statement that the starting point for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal should be “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately responded to Obama by calling the 1967 lines “indefensible borders.”
Obama on Syria retaliation: Israel ‘can defend itself,’ has ‘unshakable’ U.S. support
(JNS.org) President Barack Obama said Tuesday night that if Syria were to attack Israel as retaliation for an American military strike on Syria, Israel would be able to defend itself with “overwhelming force” and “unshakable” U.S. support.
Israelis have rushed to gas mask distribution centers as a precaution for possible Syrian retaliation, if the U.S. were to strike. But U.S. action has been delayed, with Obama saying Tuesday in a nationally televised address that he has “asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force” while American pursues a diplomatic solution with Russia, which has proposed a deal involving the transfer of Syrian chemical weapons to international supervision.
“Neither [President Bashar] Assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise,” Obama said. “And our ally Israel can defend itself with overwhelming force, as well as the unshakable support of the United States of America.”
Obama said that failing to respond to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against civilians “would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran, which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon or to take a more peaceful path.”
Israeli leaders have reacted to Russia’s plan—which does not include punitive measures against Syria for using chemical weapons—with skepticism. President Shimon Peres warned that the Syrians, who welcomed the Russian proposal, have “proved they are not credible and that their integrity should not be trusted.” Member of Knesset Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) stressed that the details of the Russian proposal are unclear, and that Israel should remain uninvolved in the Syrian civil war.
“Assad must understand that he and his associates will become a legitimate target, if he drags Israel into the conflict,” Lieberman said.
D.C. Federation asked to end support for theater group due to ‘anti-Israel’ plays
(JNS.org) Robert Levi, chairman of the board of the National Council of Young Israel, has called on the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington to end its financial support for the Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center’s Theater J, due to the theater group’s promotion of plays that “advance an anti-Israel point of view.”
Theater J is scheduled to perform “The Admission” from March 20-April 27, 2014. The play is an Israeli homage to the popular Arthur Miller play “All My Sons.” Set in Haifa during the first intifada in the late 1980s, the play features an Israeli man engaged to a Palestinian girl. The man and his father confront wartime secrets and experiences, according to Theater J.
In an Aug. 26 letter addressed to the Greater Washington Federation’s CEO, Steven Rakitt, Young Israel’s Levi wrote that the play “reflects a neo-anti-Israeli perspective, which is contrary to the mission of the Federation,” while expressing his outrage over the Federation’s support of Theater J.
“The climactic scene of play implies a fictitious 1948 massacre conducted by a colonel in the Israeli defense brigade,” Levi wrote.
“Artists who denigrate the Jewish State or its citizens should not be supported by the Federation,” he added.
Other efforts have been made to encourage the D.C. Federation to cut off funding for Theater J. The grassroots organization Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art (COPMA) was formed in 2009 to protest Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth’s production of “Seven Jewish Children.” In that series of seven one-minute plays, parents repeat anti-Israel narratives while mulling how to speak to their children about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as a line in which an actor advises a parent not to tell a child that “Arabs used to sleep in her bedroom.”
Theater J and the D.C. Federation did not immediately return requests for comment from JNS.org.
John Kerry comment that Syria strike would be ‘unbelievably small’ criticized by ZOA
(JNS.org) The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) slammed Secretary of State John Kerry for his comment that a U.S. strike in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against civilians would be “unbelievably small.”
“We’re not going to war,” Kerry said Monday in London. “We will not have people at risk in that way. We will be able to hold [Syrian President] Bashar Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we’re talking about doing—[an] unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”
ZOA National President Mort Klein on Tuesday called Kerry’s statement “ill-conceived” because the U.S. “should do all that is necessary to eliminate Assad’s biological and chemical weapons to the fullest extent possible.”
“What if knocking out, for example, a WMD site or command center requires an extra strike, another missile, a small incursion by special forces on the ground, or a further strike a day after some arbitrary cut-off date? Secretary Kerry’s statement undermines any sense of Obama Administration resolve and will reduce the support it seeks from Congress,” Klein said in a statement.
Al-Qaeda-linked rebel forces withdraw from Syrian Christian village
(JNS.org) Reports indicate that Al-Qaeda-linked rebel forces have withdrawn from the Syrian Christian village of Maaloula after heavy fighting that saw many Christian residents come under attack and flee.
Maaloula, located 56 kilometers from Damascus, is an ancient Christian town where many of the residents still speak Aramaic, the same language spoken by Jesus. The village has also played an important role in early Christianity. According to legend, Taqla, an early Christian saint and pupil of St. Paul, was being pursued by Roman soldiers when she came upon a mountain, and after praying, she was able to escape. Today, the village is home to numerous Christian churches and monasteries, including one named after Taqla.
The assault on Maaloula began Sept. 4 when a Jordanian suicide bomber from Jabhat Al-Nusra attacked a Syrian Army checkpoint outside the town and then stormed the town’s square, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Syrian Army and popular defense committees then launched a counter-attack that lasted several days.
Videos posted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights showed heavy fighting in Maaloula between the Jabhat Al-Nusra rebel terrorists and the armed popular committees on Sept. 6.
Christian residents in Maaloula reported that the rebels attacked Christian homes and churches, threatening them with beheadings if they didn’t convert to Islam, the Associated Press reported.
These “popular defense committees” are militias that are armed and trained by the Syrian government to supplement the Syrian army and protect their own neighborhoods or villages from attacks by rebels. Many of these militias are comprised of Syrian minority groups such as the Christians, Druze, and Alawites.
According to AFP, Syrian rebel fighters announced Sept. 10 that they withdrew from the village. Despite the withdrawal, many of the town’s roughly 3,000 residents have fled. Overall, more than 450,000 Christians have fled since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in early 2011.
“If Maaloula survives, it will be a miracle,” Mother Pelagia Sayaf, who runs the ancient Mar Taqla Monastery, told the New York Times. “Maaloula is empty. You see ghosts on the walls.”
Syrian Christians are faced with a difficult situation due to their country’s civil war. Many Christians support President Bashar al-Assad out of fear that if he is overthrown and replaced by Islamists, they will face greater persecution, especially from al-Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim rebel groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, who have attacked Christians. At the same time, Assad and his government are supported by Iran and its Lebanese terror proxy, Hezbollah, and have used chemical weapons against the Syrian people.
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Preceding provided by JNS.org