Today’s Top Stories
1. Biggest story of the day is a Wall St. Journal report (click via Google News), that Israel managed to eavesdrop on the nuclear talks and then used the info to undermine US diplomacy by sharing its findings with US Congressmen. It’s all based on anonymous sources, and whenever you come across them, you must ask yourself the following questions:
- Who is the source?
- Is he really in a position to know what he claims? Has the reporter provided enough background info on the source to help us make our own judgment?
- Why can’t he be identified for the story? Are readers given a plausible explanation?
- What are the source’s possible motives for speaking to the reporter?
- Is he fudging anything?
- Could the info have been obtained on the record from somewhere else?
In any event, the US outrage is a bit misplaced. They say they learned of the alleged snooping from their own snooping on Israel.
The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.
Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they received their information through other means, including close surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
2. The Obama administration continued bearing down on Israel. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough told J Street the occupation must end, and the US offered a mixed reaction to Netanyahu’s apology (to Israeli Arabs, not to the US)
On the Israeli side, two former Israeli envoys, ambassadors Danny Ayalon and Michael Oren, said Obama’s “childish” attacks on Israel cause “strategic harm,” and another Israeli government official (anonymous, sigh) told the Times of Israel that the White House was directly involved in efforts to oust Netanyahu.
3. Houthi advances in Yemen could put Iran in de facto control of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which links the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, and from there, to both Israel and the Suez Canal. A little more than one-third of international maritime trade passes through the strait. AFP picked up on international concerns.
4. AP Questions Israeli Democracy: Wire service questions Israeli democracy, failing to mention that Palestinians have been denied the vote by their own leaders.
5. Who’s Dashing Palestinian Hopes?: Who is really responsible for the collapse of the peace process?
6. HR Radio: When the “Media Poodles” Attack: Yarden Frankl discusses Charles Krauthammer’s column about “media poodles” bemoaning the re-election of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and a MarketWatch report claiming that Israel times its military operations around sporting events and other events that the world is “distracted” by. Click below to hear the interview on Voice of Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• British Prime Minister David Cameron leaned on Netanyahu to pursue the two-state solution.
• Jerusalem Post: The IDF’s training elite troops for tunnel combat.
• Armed with new website, Hamas resumes info war.
• Hamas continues brainwashing and training kids to fight Israel. CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen learned that the latest cannon fodder graduates are only getting a week of training because the Gaza blockade has limited Hamas’s supply of arms.
• There’s no smoking gun, just circumstantial evidence in this Foreign Policy report digging up old allegations that Israel may have diverted uranium from the US. Either that, or the uranium was buried in the ground in the 60s and 70s, is poisoning the people of Apollo, Pennsylvania, and making for a complicated cleanup.
Commentary/Analysis
• Ron Ben-Yishai on why the espionage allegations are coming up now.
In addition, the government is trying to influence the political platform of the next Israeli government. The administration wants it to be explicitly stated in the government’s basic guidelines that Israel adheres to a two-state solution and will do everything possible to bring it to fruition now, rather than in the distant future.
Washington would also prefer to see a unity government in Israel, and is exerting pressure to achieve this end. The US government is also trying to pressure Netanyahu to end a freeze on the transfer of tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
This is what the US means when it says it is interested in deeds rather than words from Israel.
• Bret Stephens‘s advice to Israel on how to deal with Obama (via Google News): Go rogue.
• Michael Ramirez of Investors Business Daily weighs in.
• For more commentary/analysis see
– Boaz Bismuth: White House intervention has gone too far
– David Bernstein: Don’t believe Obama’s faux outrage at Netanyahu
– Mario Loyola: Obama, not Netanyahu, killed the two-state solution
– Luke Baker: Israelis fret about risk of isolation but concern may be overdone
– The Daily Iowan (staff-ed): Troubling signs for a two-state solution
• Got some emails about a sick Joe Fournier cartoon published in today’s Chicago Tribune print edition. I assume it’ll be online in a few hours; Fournier tweeted it.
• In an important Washington Post op-ed, Michael Hayden, Olli Heinonen and Ray Takeyh debunk the idea that a one-year breakout time is sufficient to detect and reverse and Iranian violations of a nuclear deal.
In a nutshell, they point out that once there’s reason to believe Iran cheated, it would take months to confirm it, months for the IAEA to dicker with Iran for access and info, an unknown amount of time for the US to convince the UN Security Council to take action, and months for Iran to feel the effects of reimposed sanctions.
And the reality is that any cheating by Iran would always be incremental and never egregious. Throughout the duration of an agreement, there would be occasional reports of Iran enriching to unacceptably high levels and revelations of unreported nuclear installations and experimentation in weapon designs. Iran’s habit of lulling the world with a cascade of small infractions is an ingenious way to advance its program without provoking a crisis. In the end, a year simply may not be enough time to build an international consensus on measures to redress Iranian violations.
• For more commentary/analysis, see David Brooks (How to fight anti-Semitism).
Image: CC BY flickr/woodleywonderworks
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