Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will dispatch Mossad Director Yossi Cohen to Washington in the coming weeks to lay out Jerusalem’s red lines that the White House might consider before re-entering the nuclear deal with Tehran, local media reported on Saturday. Cohen will be the first senior Israeli official to meet US President Joe Biden. He is also expected to meet with the head of the CIA.
The Mossad chief will reportedly present the following demands that the Israeli government believes must be incorporated into a revised version of the deal: namely, that Iran must stop enriching uranium, halt the production of advanced centrifuges, cease supporting terror groups (foremost Lebanon’s Hezbollah), end its military presence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, end terror activities against Israeli targets overseas, and grant full access to UN atomic agency inspectors to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said at his confirmation hearing last week that the administration would consult with Israel and other allies before the United States rejoined the deal.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal, pointing at its failure to address Iran’s missile program or growing regional aggression.
It was also reported over the weekend that Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat spoke by phone with his new American counterpart Jake Sullivan, in the first confirmed high-level conversation between Israeli officials and the Biden Administration. Iran was among the subjects discussed.
These diplomatic developments come as a senior figure in the Gaza-based terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad revealed that the organization had received “direct orders” from Iranian Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani up until his assassination in a US drone strike last year, and that rockets supplied by Tehran were used to attack Israel.
The Israeli cabinet is slated to approve the recent normalization deal with Morocco, which is then expected to be rubber-stamped by the full parliament as early as Sunday. An initial declaration to resume ties with Morocco, severed 20 years ago, was signed in Rabat last month, at a ceremony with Israeli, Moroccan and US officials.
The agreement with Morocco was the last of four normalization deals former president Donald Trump’s administration brokered under the umbrella of the Abraham Accords. The agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were both sent to the Knesset for a vote and then returned to the government for ratification. The deal with Sudan has not yet been voted on.
The agreement between Jerusalem and Rabat promises to “pursue cooperation on trade; finance and investment; innovation and technology; civil aviation; visas and consular services; tourism; water, agriculture and food security; development, energy and telecommunications; and other sectors as may be agreed.” The two countries also pledged to reopen liaison offices.
The Israeli government announced that the estimated COVID-19 reproduction number has dipped below 1 for the first time since the country launched the world’s fastest vaccination drive, suggesting that the pandemic may be starting to recede. An “R” number above 1 indicates infections will grow at an exponential rate, while below 1 points to their gradual decrease.
Israel’s “R” number hit 1.3 on December 11. The country began vaccinating citizens the following week. With the contagion surging, it imposed a third national lockdown two weeks later that is still in effect.
“Are we seeing the light? We see a chink in the blinds,” Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said after Israel logged an ‘R’ number of 0.99. “We have achieved a halt, but we have achieved a halt at high levels of morbidity.”
Despite these positive developments, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly planning to suspend most outbound flights from Ben Gurion Airport, in response to new highly infectious coronavirus strains. The British and South African COVID-19 mutations account for 40 percent of recent infections in Israel.
Johns Hopkins University has opened an investigation after a teaching assistant (TA) was caught tweeting messages about possibly lowering the grades of pro-Israel students. She also made derogatory remarks about Jewish students.
In November, the TA posted a poll on her personal Twitter account, asking if she should fail “Zionists students” because they “support ethnic cleansing.” In a different tweet, she mocked a Jewish student who had taken a Birthright trip to Israel. The Twitter feed has since been taken down.
In a statement, the university wrote that its Office of Institutional Equity had launched a probe. “We wish to assure you that we take seriously any and all allegations of discrimination, harassment, or other misconduct — including antisemitism,” it said.
Despite her tweets, the teaching assistant claimed that she acted with “the utmost integrity and fairness” while grading students. She was reportedly assigned to the university’s Applied Chemical Equilibrium and Reactivity course for two years and served as the head TA during last year’s fall semester.
A Jewish surfing star from Hawaii may have broken the record for riding the largest wave. Last week, Makua Rothman conquered a wave estimated to be at least 100 feet (30 meters) tall.
The 36-year-old posted a video of the remarkable achievement:
Whether the Jewish surfer actually broke the world record will be announced in May, at the annual XXL surfing awards.
Rothman, who first got on a board at age 2, has been considered one of the world’s best surfers since he was a teenager. He visited Israel in 2007 for an event that sought to unite Jewish and Arab Israelis through surfing.
- No, Twitter Did Not Suspend Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader (Ben Sales, Jerusalem Post/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
- ‘Jews Don’t Count:’ Former New York Times Editor Bari Weiss Breaks Down Antisemitism on Left and Right in Megyn Kelly Interview (Algemeiner)
- The Battle Against the Bomb (Yoav Limor, Jewish News Syndicate)
- Not an “Existential Threat”—A Vital National Interest (Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies)
- In This Original Holocaust Film, a Jewish Inmate Makes up a Language to Survive (Cnaan Liphshiz, Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
