State Department report: Iran terror activity surges
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism and Hezbollah’s terrorist activity have reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2012, released Thursday.
The report noted that on Feb. 5 this year, the Bulgarian government publicly implicated Hezbollah in the July 2012 Burgas bombing that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen, and injured 32 others. On March 21, a Cyprus court found a Hezbollah operative guilty of charges stemming from his surveillance activities of Israeli tourist targets, while Thailand was prosecuting a Hezbollah member for his role in helping plan a possible terrorist attack in that country.
The Quds Force is suspected of directing planned terrorist attacks in Georgia, India, Thailand and Kenya in 2012, and is also implicated in a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Additionally, both Iran and Hezbollah are providing a broad range of critical support to President Bashar al-Assad regime’s as it continues its brutal crackdown against the Syrian people.
Fourteen Israelis, meanwhile, were killed as a result of terrorist attacks in 2012. Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist organizations continued rocket and mortar attacks into Israeli territory, and multiple terrorist attacks were launched along the Gaza security fence as well as on the Israel-Egypt border.
*
Russia says missiles not yet delivered to Syria
(JNS.org) Russia has denied Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s reported announcement that he has already received the first shipment of the vaunted S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, but the Kremlin stated on Friday that it could deliver the S-300 system to Syria “in accordance with contract no earlier than the autumn,” Israel Hayom reported, citing the Russian Interfax news agency.
Interfax said that 10 Russian MiG-29 combat airplanes would also be delivered to Syria “in accordance with contract.” According to Russian experts quoted by the Kommersant newspaper, after the weapons systems are shipped and tested, and their local operators are trained, Assad could have fully operable S-300 systems by the spring of 2014.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on Thursday had published excerpts from an interview Assad gave to Hezbollah’s Al-ManarTV station in which he claimed that Syria had already received the S-300 Russian anti-missile system. But two senior U.S. officials privy to sensitive intelligence matters confirmed the shipment had not yet been made, Fox News reported.
*
TIAA-CREF tables Israel divestment resolution
(JNS.org) U.S. pension giant TIAA-CREF has announced that it will not vote on an Israel divestment resolution at its upcoming shareholders meeting.
The announcement by TIAA-CREF, a financial services company that manages retirement funds for more than 3.7 million people mainly in academic and medical fields, comes after it received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “take no action” regarding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution as well as warnings from the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, an Israeli civil rights group, that the passage of the resolution would violate New York State and federal anti-discrimination laws.
The pro-Israel education group StandWithUs—which has actively worked on this issue for years, attending TIAA-CREF shareholders meetings to counter efforts by Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) and other groups who lobbied the pension giant to divest from Israel—praised TIAA-CREF’s decision.
“StandWithUs commends TIAA-CREF for not putting the BDS resolution to a vote this year, thereby ensuring the shareholders meeting will focus solely on TIAA-CREF business,” Avi Posnick, the New York regional coordinator for StandWithUs, told JNS.org.
Additionally, StandWithUs noted that JVP and other pro-BDS groups falsely claimed that Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) was dropped from TIAA-CREF’s “socially responsible” fund due to their pressure over CAT’s involvement in Israel. According to a press release from MSCI, a research firm that provides portfolio assessment, CAT was actually dropped from the fund over its closure of a locomotive plant in Canada.
“It is clear that the anti-Israel movement will continue to obsessively spread misinformation about Israel, which will do nothing to advance peace between Israelis and the Palestinians,” Posnick told JNS.org.
IRS may have targeted five pro-Israel nonprofits
(JNS.org) The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), already the subject on an ongoing national scandal due to its admission of targeting conservative groups, may have also targeted at least five pro-Israel organizations in the auditing process, an investigation by the Washington Free Beacon revealed.
It is not illegal for charitable organizations to contribute money to Israeli groups or people who live beyond the Green Line, but according to the Wall Street Journal, Z Street, a pro-Israel group in Pennsylvania, was told by the IRS in 2010 that its tax approval application was taking a long time because auditors were required to inspect more thoroughly any groups “connected with Israel… to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the administration’s public policies.”
In addition to IRS auditing, lobby groups aligned with the White House have criticized the organizations’ tax-exempt status in the media. “Our concern at that time was that these articles… may have reflected an evolving policy shift in the Obama administration to scrutinize charitable giving by organizations on behalf of Jewish communities and institutions over the Green Line,” said Jerusalem-based attorney Marc Zell, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Specifically, a New York Times cover story in July 2010 quoted Daniel Kurtzer, a senior Obama Middle East adviser, as saying charities donating to Jews living beyond the Green Line “drove us crazy.” HaYovel, one of the five pro-Israel groups reportedly targeted by the IRS, was the first group mentioned in the New York Times story.
“They really kind of focused on us,” HaYovel’s founder, Tommy Waller, told the Washington Free Beacon regarding the New York Times story. “Then six months later we had an [IRS] audit.”
Vatican reports 100,000 Christians killed annually
(JNS.org) More than 100,000 Christians are killed annually because of their faith, a Vatican spokesman said.
“Credible research has reached the shocking conclusion that an estimate of more than 100,000 Christians are violently killed because of some relation to their faith every year,” Vatican spokesman Monsieur Silvano Maria Tomassi said Tuesday in a radio address to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Fox News reported.
In particular, Christians residing in the Middle East have faced unprecedented violence from Islamic fundamentalists related to the larger “Arab Spring” upheavals. Meanwhile, Christians residing in other countries, such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria, have also come under assault from Muslim extremists.
Pope Francis has made the protection of Christians a top priority under his leadership. At the canonization ceremony on May 12 of 800 15th-century saints who were killed for refusing to renounce their faith, Pope Francis spoke out against the persecution of Christians.
“While we venerate the Otranto Martyrs, we ask God to sustain the many Christians who, today, in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence and give them the courage to be faithful and to respond to evil with good,” Pope Francis said, Reuters reported.
*
Preceding provided by JNS.org