Today’s Top Stories
1. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration upped their media offensives for and against the Iran deal. Bibi made his case in a webcast to American and Canadian Jews yesterday and answered some pre-submitted questions. See Times of Israel coverage or watch the video. President Obama hosted a delegation of top American Jewish leaders in the White House. Participants told Haaretz, and YNet the same thing:
US President Barack Obama told Jewish leaders on Tuesday that if the nuclear deal signed between world powers and Iran is rejected by Congress, the United States will be forced to attack Tehran, which will lead to Hezbollah retaliating with rockets on Tel Aviv.
John Kerry defended the Iran deal in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. The Secretary of State maintains that Congressional rejection will “screw” Ayatollah Khamenei, confirm Tehran’s suspicions that the US can’t be trusted lead to war.
As this roundup went to press, the President was due to deliver a speech at American University.
2. Following an outcry of criticism, Britain’s National Union of Teachers pulled a package of one-sided educational material designed to teach kids about “the daily struggles of Palestinian children” to UK kids as young as three or four. More at the Daily Telegraph and Jewish Chronicle.
3. According to Arab reports picked up by the Jerusalem Post, Hamas is focusing its efforts on rebuilding its ability to launch terror attacks from the West Bank in order to avoid devastating IDF reprisals in Gaza. What will be the strategic game changer?
Hamas will not return to open war with Israel until it obtains anti-aircraft missiles to prevent IAF attacks on its positions . . . .
4. HR Radio: Cecil the Lion and Saeb Erekat: Were recent the murders of Ali Dawabsha and Shira Banki the acts of a select few or the product of a “culture of hate?” Yarden Frankl discusses that and more on the Voice of Israel. Click to listen to the interview.
5. PLO Still Lying About Arafat’s Legacy: Yasser Arafat wasn’t a freedom fighter, and he certainly wasn’t born in Jerusalem. Why does it matter?
Israel and the Palestinians
• If you’re trying to get a handle on Israel’s Jewish extremism in the news, check out AP‘s background piece.
• New York Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren visited a new dirt road Hamas bulldozed along the border with Israel and touts as a symbol of victory against Israel. The best angle, unfortunately, is buried in the last paragraph, and it was raised by Palestinian tweeter Abdelrahman Thabet.
But the celebration was not universal. “I think the houses of people and the streets that were destroyed during the war should be rebuilt first,” said another Twitter user, identified as BenThabet71, “instead of building a new street that will be bulldozed in the next war.”
Hamas border patrols began using the road in June.
Commentary/Analysis
• The US couldn’t possibly defend Israel from an Iranian nuclear attack, Ron Ben-Yishai argues.
If Iran decides to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon – or even not with a nuclear weapon – it is completely reasonable to assume that it will be a surprise attack. There is no chance that the US will be able to defend us against such an attack, especially a nuclear attack, unless the Americans deploy a significant amount of forces on Israeli territory – tens of thousands of soldiers with missile batteries, radars and other measures, who will be on constant alert and ready to intercept ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and planes arriving with a deadly cargo from Iran or from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, Iran’s allies.
Stationing tens of thousands of American soldiers on Israeli territory will be the most efficient way to deter Iran or anyone else from attacking Israel with a mass destruction weapon – nuclear, chemical or biological.
Such a deployment of American defense forces against missiles will violate the principle reiterated by all Israeli prime ministers and defense ministers, starting from David Ben-Gurion in the 1960s, that “Israel will defend itself on its own, and I don’t want even one American soldier to shed blood for our sake.”
• Heavy world interest in Iran’s natural gas will fuel a breakdown in sanctions, even if Congress votes down the nuclear accord. According to Emmanuel Navon, the EU wants to lower its dependency on Russian gas, the Russians want to form a cartel with Iran, and China has its own interests.
Those who think that building a two-thirds majority in the US Congress would derail the deal with Iran are deluding themselves.
• Former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer plugs the Iran deal in a CNN op-ed.
To be sure, nothing in this agreement commits Iran to change its aggressive behavior in the region or its support for terrorism. But likewise, nothing in the agreement commits the United States and its partners to tolerate that behavior and that support.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Clifford May: Mounting a defense against economic warfare
– Daniel Gordis: The terror consuming Israel from within
– Shoshana Bryen: What society says children are murdered
– Eli Lake: Obama plays politics of fear to get Iran deal
– Tony Badran: There will be neither snapback nor pushback
– Danielle Pletka: How Congress can make a bad Iran deal better
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Max Talbot-Minkin with additions by HonestReporting; Arafat crossing the Delaware public domain images of Yasser Arafat and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” via Wikimedia Commons, remixed by HonestReporting
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