Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland takes a dim view of US arms sales to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Hoagland’s criticism is more about Obama’s foreign policy management than about the possibility of Israel using the weapons against Iran.
Such supplies now inadvertently weaken the only containment strategy that Obama has consistently practiced in the Middle East — the containment of Israel.
• Western sanctions are indeed having an influence on Iran’s nuclear policy, argues Meir Javedanfar.
Arab Spring Winter
• IDF intelligence is certain that Bashar Assad’s army used chemical weapons — most likely sarin — against civilians last month.
• Jordan denies reports it’s providing Syrian air corridors to IDF surveillance drones.
Boston Terror
• The BBC discovered a six-letter word beginning with a T and rhyming with error.
Meanwhile, over at The Guardian, columnist Glenn Greenwald wonders why the Boston attack is “terrorism” but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine? Good question. Maybe he’ll also discuss why his paper uses the word terror when the targets are North Americans, but not Israeli. More on Al-Qaida’s busted Canadian terror plot at the CBC.
• Alan Dershowitz (Haaretz) compares how the Israeli and US legal systems handle prosecuting terrorists like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
• What Boston hospitals learned from Israel.
• Following up on John Kerry equating Israel’s flotilla raid with Boston terror, Jennifer Rubin got this clarification from the State Dept.:
A State Department official authorized only to speak on background retreated but stopped short of apologizing for his boss’s gaffe: “In light of the recent events in his hometown of Boston, Secretary Kerry was expressing his own personal connection to the impact of tragedy on a community and was not comparing the two events — only the pain caused by violence. He has long said that both Prime Minister Erdogan and Prime Minister Netanyahu deserve a great deal of credit and he welcomes the restoration of positive relations.”
Rest O’ the Roundup
• First, the BBC announced that James Harding and his pro-Israel bona-fides was replacing Helen Boaden as director of news. Now, the Beeb announced that its new director of television is another member of the tribe, Danny Cohen. Cue the Jews-control-the-media conspiracies . . .
• Reuters sacks social media editor indicted for helping Anonymous hack a newspaper web site. The wire service suspended Keys weeks ago after the indictment; however, a combination of erroneous tweets about Boston terror followed by “a public spat with his boss” culminated in his canning. The Atlantic Wire had the most detailed, link-rich coverage.
(Image of passport via Flickr/stormwarning)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
