WarSclerotic

Column One: Israel and the new Munich | JPost | Israel News.

The Iranians have given no indication that they would be willing to suspend all uranium enrichment.

Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz explained Israel’s concerns about the nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva. “We’re worried Geneva 2013 will end up like Munich 1938.”

Well, the time for worrying has passed. The statements from the Obama administration and the EU following the closing of the first round of talks all made clear that Geneva 2013 is Munich 1938.

The White House was unable to restrain its excitement at the prospect of a deal with the genocidal, nuclear weapons-developing mullocracy.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “The Iranian proposal was a new proposal with a level of seriousness and substance that we had not seen before.”

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who led the six-power delegation that faced the Iranians, said that the talks were “the most detailed we have ever had, by a long way.”

Ashton also said that she is committed to making concessions to Iran as quickly as possible. In her words, “When we have been talking and in our discussions in these last days we know that we have to look for a first step, a confidencebuilding step, and we know we have to be clear about the last steps and to do that in the context of the objective overall.”

The stunning talks even included a one-on-one discussion between the chief US negotiator Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and the Iranians.

The only problem with all these exciting developments is that all the “serious Iranian proposals” would result in the same outcome: a nuclear-armed Iran. There was nothing in the Iranian proposals that could give anyone any reason whatsoever to believe that Iran is serious about stopping its nuclear weapons development program. Indeed, the only thing we learned this week is that like the Allied powers in 1938, the Obama administration and the Europeans have no stomach for a confrontation and are willing to dress up appeasement of a dangerous foe as “peace” and “progress.”

The Iranians have given no indication that they would be willing to suspend all uranium enrichment.

In his press conference after the current round of talks ended, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif insisted that Iran has the right to continue enriching uranium. The Iranian offer appears to involve suspending its 20 percent uranium enrichment activities and sufficing with enriching uranium to 3.5%.

As everyone from US Sen. Mark Kirk to the Washington Post editorial board to US President Barack Obama’s former chief pointman on Iran’s nuclear program Gary Samore have stated over the past several days, given Iran’s current enrichment capabilities, Iran’s offer is meaningless.

Over the past year, Iran has installed a thousand sophisticated centrifuges at its nuclear installation at Natanz. These new centrifuges allow Iran to transform 3.5% enriched uranium to bomb-grade material (enriched to 90%) as quickly as its old centrifuges were capable of transforming 20% enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels. So today, 3.5% enrichment is as comfortable a jumping-off point for the Iranian weapons program as 20% enrichment was a few years ago. Iran’s “serious proposal” is a joke.

As Samore told The New York Times, “Ending production of 20% enriched uranium is not sufficient to prevent breakout, because Iran can produce nuclear weapons using low-enriched uranium and a large number of centrifuge machines.”

In a conference call with the Israel Project Wednesday, Samore explained, “What they’re offering is really no different than what we’ve heard from the previous government, from [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s government for the last couple of years…. They continue to reject any physical limits on their enrichment capacity – meaning the number and type of centrifuge machines, the stockpile of enriched material that they have in country. And as far as I can tell, they have continued to reject closing any of their nuclear facilities… I haven’t heard of any agreement to halt work or to modify the heavy water research reactor that they’re building, and which may be close to operational.”

So the Iranians offered nothing this week that they didn’t offer in the past. And as a senior administration official told the Times, the Iranian program is already so advanced that for there to be time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement, Iran needs to first take steps to halt or even reverse its nuclear program.

And as Samore explained, none of the reports on the conclusion of this week’s round of talks indicated any Iranian willingness to take such actions.

The negotiations in Geneva bear an unsettling resemblance to the negotiations the West held with North Korea as it developed nuclear weapons. There, too, Western negotiators bragged about new, serious and unprecedented North Korean “concessions.”

Pyongyang used the talks to undermine Western resolve to block its nuclear progress.

Just as happened with North Korea, so with Iran, the appeasement-crazed press will bring us endless stories about new, serious negotiations documents that will “ensure the peace.”

The last of the stories will be published the day Iran tests its first atomic bomb.

Since the Iranians are making the same unserious offers they have been making for years, why are the Americans and the Europeans hailing the talks as a new beginning? Why is Ashton talking about confidence-building measures? Why are American commentators and senators talking about various steps the US could take to appease Iran? By midweek, talk was rife in Washington about the prospect of unfreezing some of the $50 billion Iranian funds that have been held in escrow in Western banks. Doing so, we were told, would reward the Iranians for being so “serious,” but it wouldn’t involve directly unraveling the sanctions regime.

All of this is happening because the American and Europeans have changed their game. The only serious development of this week is the revelation of their new game.

The Iranians remain committed to developing nuclear weapons. But the US and Europe have stopped even paying lip service to stopping them. Instead, the US and Europe aim to destroy domestic Western opposition to Iran’s nuclear program. This is the new American/European game plan. This is what stands behind all the nonsensical talk of “serious” Iranian proposals.

Before his reelection, Obama felt constrained to pretend that he was serious about preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He opposed but then grudgingly signed comprehensive sanctions passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress. He told AIPAC that he had Israel’s back.

But now that he’s no longer facing reelection, the jig is up. Obama’s new goal, which is enthusiastically supported by Ashton and her comrades in Brussels, is to use the new negotiations with Iran’s phony baloney “moderate” new president to give himself political cover to open the door to Iran acquiring nuclear bombs. Obama doesn’t want to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. He wants to insulate himself from criticism when it gets the bomb.

Not only do the White House’s lies about Iran’s new “level of seriousness” give Obama the maneuver room to pretend he’s acting responsibly, they trap Israel into inaction. After all, how could Israel possibly bomb Iran’s nuclear installations when Iran is negotiating so seriously, and is “this close” to making a groundbreaking agreement?

We shouldn’t be surprised by this state of affairs. Obama has never acted in good faith with Israel.

Take the latest news on Turkey, for example.

On Thursday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that last year NATO member Turkey gave Iranian intelligence the identities of up to 10 Iranian agents working for the Mossad after they met with their Israeli case officers in Turkey. Turkey’s action was a shocking betrayal of what was supposed to be a goal it shared with Israel and the US – preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Turkey willfully harmed Israeli efforts to achieve this goal by turning in 10 Israeli agents.

Rather than taking action against Turkey, or simply acknowledging that the actions of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan represented a fundamental shift in Turkey’s strategic outlook, Obama shrugged off Turkey’s betrayal. The US didn’t even protest Turkey’s despicable deed. Instead, as Ignatius noted, “Turkish-American relations continued warming last year to the point that Erdogan was among Obama’s key confidants.”

A few months after Turkey colluded with Iran against Israel, Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into apologizing to Erdogan for Israel’s lawful maritime interdiction of the Mavi Marmara as it unlawfully sought to breach Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza coastline.

No doubt, in making this concession Netanyahu believed that he would win Obama’s goodwill. In a similar fashion, in the hope of appeasing Obama, Netanyahu has made concession after concession to the Palestinians – from drastically downgrading Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to releasing Palestinian murderers from prison.

Yet in all of these cases, Obama has pocketed Israel’s concessions and demanded more concessions.

In all these cases, Obama’s allies have used the concessions to present a picture of Israel as both an ungrateful and unhelpful ally, and as a weakling. And in the meantime, Obama has facilitated EU sanctions against Israel. He has leaked top secret Israeli intelligence operations to the media. He has repeatedly threatened to abandon Israel at the UN Security Council. He has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

And now he is involved in negotiations with Iran that will necessarily lead to Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power.

From Netanyahu’s repeated declarations that Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it is unclear whether he realizes what is going on. More than anything else, those statements represent an attempt to negotiate with Obama. Netanyahu is still trying to win Obama over.

If there was ever an argument to be made in favor of Netanyahu’s pleading, their time is long past. In nothing else, the obscene diplomatic theater in Geneva this week made that clear.

Israel is alone. We have no diplomatic option.

No matter what Israel says, no matter what it does, neither the US nor any other Western power is ever going to be convinced to take the only step that would set back Iran’s nuclear program – bombing its nuclear installations. No matter what, neither Obama nor any European leader will ever support an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations.

Israel’s back is to the wall. That is the meaning of the talks in Geneva. If we aren’t prepared to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, we have to stop talking and start acting. And we need to prepare for the diplomatic hell that will break loose thereafter.

Amid apparent changing atmosphere in Iran, opposition leaders scent freedom | JPost | Israel News.

As Iran seems keen to heal old conflicts internally and with the West, the state is reviewing house arrest of opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karoubi; conservatives may fear consequences of freeing men

Will US free frozen Iranian assets?

Tehran stands to gain access to nearly $50 billion if the Obama administration decides to free up $12 billion of frozen Iranian assets in the US, inevitably followed by Europe’s release of another $35 billion. The White House was reported Friday, Oct. 18 to be weighing a proposal to offer Iran access to these funds “in installments” against “steps to cut down on its nuclear program.”
debkafile’s intelligence sources: This plan offers Barack Obama a way to ease sanctions on Iran, while avoiding political and diplomatic fallout in Congress and from Jerusalem that would result from an attempt to get the sanctions legislation repealed or amended.

US lawmakers and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continue to call for harsher measures against Iran, after the Geneva conference last week failed to achieve any breakthrough in the controversy on Iran’s nuclear program.

Although its delegation avoided any pledge to suspend uranium enrichment and offered no plan to dismantle its enrichment facilities, US officials complimented the Iranian position as “more candid and substantive” than in previous diplomatic encounters.

Indeed, according to our sources, the Iranian delegation advised the six world powers on the opposite side of the table to simply accept Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fatwa as an ironclad pledge of the Islamic Republic’s commitment to refrain from developing a nuclear weapon and continue to pursue a peaceful program.
As for a substantial proposal to cut back on their nuclear operations, the Iranian negotiators said firmly: Sanctions relief first; concessions only at the end of the road.
Ahead of the next round of talks on Nov. 7-8, the Obama administration hopes to warm world opinion to the proposition that Iran’s leaders, especially President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his deputy Abbas Araghchi, need more incentives for concessions. They must be able to show their doctrinaire colleagues at home that diplomacy and smiles win more than intransigence.

Even before the Geneva conference, the White House was already putting in place the plan for relieving sanctions by the release of frozen funds – which is why the US delegation included for the first time the Director of the OFAC (the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control), Adam Szubin.
Asked by CNN what Szubin was doing there, senior US negotiator Undersecretary Wendy Sherman said:

“The purpose of having our sanctions team here with us is because … Iran wants to get sanctions relief. But they also have to understand what the range of our sanctions are, what they require, how they work, what it takes to implement sanctions relief, what sanctions we believe need to stay in place.”

Even this gesture failed to elicit from the Iranian delegates any concrete concessions. The obviously fed-up senior Russian delegate, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, summed up his impression of the conference by commenting sourly that it was “…better than Almaty” (where the last round of talks took place in April) but offered “no guarantee of future progress.”

Nevertheless, President Obama is determined to keep up his strategy of appeasing Tehran and showing Congress and the Israeli prime minister that they are wasting their time by trying to stop him easing sanctions on Iran, because he will bypass them with presidential decrees.
Most of all, Obama is set against allowing himself to be persuaded by Netanyahu’s arguments of the terrible danger posed by a nuclear Iran.
Foreign Minister Zarif put his oar into the conflict between Washington and Jerusalem Friday with this comment: “There is a high possibility that the talks will be disturbed by various efforts on the part of Israel,” he said. “This reflects Israel’s frustration and warmongering.”

Russia blasts Saudi for rejecting Security Council seat | The Times of Israel.

Kingdom’s ‘strange’ rationale — faulting UN with inaction in Syria — arouses ‘bewilderment,’ according to Moscow statement

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moscow (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

The Russian Foreign Ministry sharply criticized Saudi Arabia on Friday for its decision to reject a two-year seat on the UN’s most powerful body.

In a statement, the ministry slammed the kingdom’s “strange” rationale that the UN Security Council had failed in its handling of the civil war in Syria, reported AFP.

“We are surprised by Saudi Arabia’s unprecedented decision,” the statement read.

“The kingdom’s arguments arouse bewilderment and the criticism of the UN Security Council in the context of the Syria conflict is particularly strange,” the ministry added.

Saudi Arabia’s rejection of its freshly-acquired seat came just hours after the kingdom was elected as one of the Council’s 10 nonpermanent members on Thursday night. It also followed another gesture of displeasure from the kingdom in which Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal declined to address the General Assembly meeting last month.

In a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, the Foreign Ministry said Friday the Security Council has failed in its duties toward Syria.

The statement also said the UNSC has not been able to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the past six decades and has failed to transform the Middle East into a zone free of weapons of mass destruction — a reference to Israel, which has never confirmed or denied possession of nuclear weapons.

On Syria, the foreign ministry claimed that UN inaction had enabled Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime to perpetrate the killings of its people, including with chemical weapons, without facing any punishment. The Syrian regime denies it has used chemical weapons in the war.

The kingdom, which has backed the Syrian rebels in their struggle to topple Assad, has often criticized the international community for failing to halt Syria’s civil war, now in its third year. According to UN figures, the conflict has so far killed over 100,000 people.

Saudi Arabia is also frustrated that the US backed away from launching punitive strikes against Assad’s forces after Damascus agreed to allow inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal.

The kingdom easily won the Security Council seat in a vote in New York on Thursday, facing no opposition because there were no contested races for the first time in several years. The Council seats are highly coveted because they give countries a strong voice in matters dealing with international peace and security, in places like Syria, Iran and North Korea, as well as the UN’s far-flung peacekeeping operations.

The 15-member council includes five permanent members with veto power — the US, Russia, China, Britain and France — and 10 nonpermanent members elected for two-year terms.

After the vote, Saudi Arabia’s UN Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi said his country’s election was “a reflection of a longstanding policy in support of moderation and in support of resolving disputes by peaceful means.”

But the statement from Riyadh on Friday struck a dramatically different tone.

“Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill its people and burn them with chemical weapons in front of the entire world and without any deterrent or punishment is clear proof and evidence of the UN Security Council’s inability to perform its duties and shoulder its responsibilities,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.

Israel’s calls for a tough stance on Iran are falling on near deaf ears – Weekend Israel News | Haaretz.

In light of the signs of progress in talks between the big powers and Tehran and the president’s extreme wariness toward military engagement, the prime minister’s calls to take a tough stance on Iran are falling on near-deaf ears.

By Amos Harel | Oct. 18, 2013 | 11:47 AM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tragedy is that, even though in many ways he was right − and still is − about the threat inherent in a nuclear Iran, that isn’t helping him in his current attempt to reach out to the international community. His bombastic style is his undoing. The constant tone of self-congratulation ‏(“We are the ones who warned …,” “We are those who identified …”‏), the comparisons of himself to Churchill, the frequent references to the Holocaust, the disregard for Israel’s own military might ‏(even nuclear, according to foreign sources‏), and the refusal to progress in negotiations with the Palestinians, to the chagrin of Europe and the United States − all this makes it difficult for Israel’s assertions on Iran to be heard and acknowledged by the world.

This week, in an article in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Dov Weissglas, who was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bureau chief, spoke of the ineptness surrounding Israel’s recent campaign on the nuclear issue. Weissglas noted the timing of the announcement in late September of the arrest by the Shin Bet security service of an Iranian spy in Israel and media coverage of the mid-air refueling exercise carried out by the Israeli air force over Greece, which were accompanied by veiled threats aimed at Tehran. He quoted his former boss’ constant caveat to his people: Just make sure they don’t make fun of us.

The long profile of Netanyahu in last weekend’s edition of The New York Times describes him as an isolated, semi-enigmatic figure. This seems to be the prevailing sentiment among Israel’s friends in the West, which the Israeli government’s campaign of pressure and hints can do nothing to allay.

This week, there was real confusion. When the air force held a wide-ranging exercise, planned many months ago, it was again interpreted as a threatening message in light of the new round of talks that began in Geneva this week between Iran and the six world powers. When the entire system moves so awkwardly, the Israeli media are liable to rely on an outdated message box by mistake.

Israel’s leadership, not represented in Geneva, can only wait for the result from afar, in the hope that the West doesn’t hurry to give its shirt away in the talks. At this stage of the drama, Israel’s job is clear: to be the town crier, who issues warnings and, just to be sure, waves around the threat of military action − although its level of credibility doesn’t seem to be particularly high at the moment. Should the talks with Iran end in an agreement, it’ll be tough figuring out how much of the prime minister’s anticipated displeasure stems from the details of the agreement and how much from simply the playing-out of a predetermined role.

According to a hefty pile of foreign publications, Netanyahu did consider an independent Israeli strike on Iran in the summer and fall of each of the last three years, 2010-2012. In hindsight, it seems the most dramatic period regarding such a decision was last year. The choice during the summer of 2012 really seemed to be between bombing or the bomb. Netanyahu, to go by his many public statements at the time, seriously thought the option of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities without an American green light was preferable to the alternative: Iran continuing to make progress toward a bomb. He also had a seemingly tempting window of opportunity. Acting in the three months before the American presidential election could have presented the Obama administration with a done deal and made it difficult for the president to confront Israel directly, if he didn’t want to risk losing Jewish votes.

But Netanyahu, as it turns out, decided not to attack. The Israeli media were abuzz with the rumor that then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak had defected from the pro-bombing camp at the last minute, leaving Netanyahu by himself. ‏(Some say Barak never really wanted to attack Iran; he claims to have always supported an attack and has vociferously denied having had any change of heart.) We also know that the leaders of all the branches of the defense establishment were leery of attacking without coordinating with the United States. At the time, one press report stated that an Israeli attack was likely to delay the Iranian nuclear-bomb program by merely two years.

But most importantly, there was the problem of America’s disapproval. As in previous years, an aerial convoy, which took place between August and October of last year, brought us a bevy of senior administration officials, headed by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Their message was clear: Do not act alone, and absolutely do not act before the election.

Israel folded, and now the possibility of its launching an attack seems even less likely than a year ago. Its military threat will come back to the table next spring for what would seem to be its last hurrah − if talks between the six powers and Iran end without an agreement.

If Israel’s military option now seems unlikely to be played out, the analogous American option has all but dissipated as well, as was made amply clear by the White House’s conduct vis-a-vis Syria for its use of chemical weapons, in early September. When Israelis try to understand America’s reluctance to engage in yet another military action, whether in Syria or down the line in Iran, they tend to explain it in terms of Washington’s overall weariness with wars in the Middle East and beyond after long and expensive campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Obama’s resistance goes deeper and seems to be connected to a fear of getting enmeshed in wars in general, much beyond any anxiety over the results of any specific conflict. While the president didn’t hesitate to use force to take out Osama bin Laden or to use drones to assassinate terrorists from Pakistan to Yemen − that seems to be the limit when it comes to the military involvement the administration is willing to undertake.

‘Turkish Betrayal’ Is the Talk of Israel | TIME.com.

Israeli newspapers were dominated Friday morning by a Washington Post report that Turkey betrayed Israeli spies to Iran.  “Turkey Blows Israel’s Cover for Iranian Spying Ring, “ was the headline on columnist David Ignatius’  Thursday piece, quoting “knowledgeable sources” who described how the Turkish government disclosed to Iran the identities of 10 Iranians who had been meeting in Turkey with Israeli intelligence case officers. The Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth noted a “thunderous silence” from the Israeli government in its article, headlined “The Turkish Betrayal” and including numerous quotes from unidentified officials reinforcing the premise of the story.  The Post column followed an Oct. 10 Wall Street Journal profile of Turkey’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, that included a broader charge that he had passed Israeli secrets to Iran.

Turkey’s foreign ministry dismissed the reports as a “smear campaign” intended to further damage Turkey’s fraught relations with Israel, which Ignatius is in a position to appreciate better than most.  He was the moderator at the 2009 World Economic Forum panel featuring Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli President Shimon Peres, when Erdogan pulled off his microphone and stormed off the stage over the 2008-2009 conflict in Gaza. “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill,” Erdogan told Peres.

Beyond tightening tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, the new reports also add to the narrative of the secret war between Israel and Iran that has been emerging in bits and pieces.  In January 2012, intelligence sources acknowledged to TIME that a young man who appeared on Iranian state television in 2011 confessing he had been working for the Mossad, had, in fact, been an asset for the Israeli intelligence agency. The chagrined intelligence officials said 24-year-old Majid Jamali Fashi, who was executed in May 2012 as a “Mossad spy”, had been betrayed to Iran’s security services by a third country, which TIME did not identify.   A subsequent Israeli investigation concluded that Turkey had not overtly identified the Mossad agents, but rather permitted them to be discovered by Iranian state security, either by possibly through their movements between Iran and Turkey, according to an intelligence official.

Three months after Fashi was hanged, the Iranian government paraded another 14 Iranians on primetime television, all describing their roles in the assassinations of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran blames the killings on the Mossad – and correctly so, Western intelligence officials said. The officials acknowledged the loss of more operatives, Iranian nationals paid to provide logistics and other support for the Mossad operation. The officials said the assassinations were intended both to deter Iranian scientists from joining the nuclear effort, and as part of a broader covert campaign aimed at delaying Iran’s program. Before scaling back the level of covert operations later in 2012, Israel’s secret campaign ranged from silent attacks such as the Stuxnet computer virus, to very loud ones, like the massive Nov. 2011 blast at a missile base outside Tehran, which intelligence officials acknowledged to was Israeli sabotage.

Iran attempted again and again to strike back at Israel, in a fast-moving  “shadow war” that involved attempts on the lives of Israeli diplomats and expatriates, from Bangkok to Baku to Nairobi.  But it did not fare well. The Israelis or other governments thwarted every attack until July 2012, when agents of Hizballah – which Iran created and has a history of partnering with in terror attacks – bombed a bus in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas,  killing five Israeli tourists, a Bulgarian bus driver and a Hizballah operative who may not have meant to die.

European exodus? | JPost | Israel News.

Israel should prepare both operationally and conceptually to absorb thousands of European Jews.

Jews are being made to feel increasingly unwelcome in Europe. Israel’s policy-makers must begin preparing for an influx of European Jews who have come to the realization that the “renaissance” of European Jewry after the Holocaust is a false hope. That seems to be the operative conclusion of a major survey of European Jewry conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

The full report, based on a survey of 5,100 Jews living in France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Latvia that began in September 2012 and ended last month, will be presented next month in Vilnius.

But JTA obtained some preliminary results.

A quarter of respondents said they avoided visiting visibly Jewish places and wearing visibly Jewish symbols such as a yarmulke for fear of anti-Semitism. The numbers were higher in Sweden, France and Belgium where 49 percent, 40% and 36%, respectively, said they did.

In Hungary, 91% of respondents said anti-Semitism has increased in the past five years. That figure was 88% in France, 87% in Belgium and 80% in Sweden. In Germany, Italy and Britain, some 60% identified a growth in anti- Semitism, compared to 39% in Latvia.

Nor are Jews’ impressions simple paranoia. According to a 2011 study the Bielefeld University undertook on behalf of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, more than 40% of citizens 16 years and older in seven EU countries agree with the statement that Israel is carrying out “a war of extermination” against Palestinians. And since visibly identifiable Jews are connected with Israel, an astounding number of Europeans feel a tremendous amount of opprobrium for anything connected to Israel.

In addition, Europeans have launched an attack on Jewish – and Muslim – ritual practices such as circumcision and ritual slaughter. A poll for the German Focus magazine taken after a Cologne court ruled that circumcision was prohibited because it constituted “physical harm against newborn babies” found that 56% of those surveyed thought the judgment was right, compared with 35% who were against the ruling and 10% undecided. And a poll commissioned by Britain’s Jewish Chronicle and published in March found that 38% of the British population favored a ban on “male circumcision for religious reasons,” while 35% were against a ban and 27% were undecided.

Unsurprisingly, according to the EU survey, in three of the nine states surveyed – Belgium, France and Hungary – between 40% and 50% of respondents said they had considered emigrating because they did not feel safe there.

Many European Jews, obviously, intend to stay put.

Some may plan to relocate inside Europe to cities with larger Jewish populations where they feel safer.

Another very real and viable option, however, is relocation to Israel. Unfortunately, according to a Jewish People Policy Institute assessment for 2011-2012, there seems to be no Israeli political determination to set up appropriate structures to ease the professional and educational integration of new immigrants from non-Russian-speaking European countries.

The JPPI’s Dov Maimon has recommended a few steps to facilitate European Jewry’s aliya, which include: encouraging organizations like the mostly North American-focused Nefesh B’Nefesh and the French AMI (Alya & Meilleure Intégration) to expand their activities; streamlining the process of recognizing foreign degrees, professional licenses and the opening of small or medium businesses; making military enlistment regulations more flexible.

And as writer Hillel Halkin recently pointed out in an essay that appeared on the Internet site Mosaic, attracting European Jewry depends, ironically, on Israel becoming a more European country – “more soundly and efficiently run, more economically affordable, more environmentally caring, more peaceful, more livable.”

Our political leaders might want to refrain from making public declarations calling on Europe’s Jews to abandon ship. In 2004, president Jacques Chirac attacked prime minister Ariel Sharon for calling France the home of “the wildest anti-Semitism” and for French Jewry to emigrate “as early as possible.”

Nevertheless, Israel should prepare both operationally and conceptually to absorb thousands of European Jews.

Their exodus would mark Europe’s failure to learn the lessons of the Holocaust, but it would also be a tremendous boon to the Jewish state.

Is Netanyahu Bluffing on Iran? « Commentary Magazine.

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary10.17.2013 – 6:15 PM

There’s little doubt that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s continued attempts to persuade the world that the Iranian charm offensive is a fraud are falling flat. With the U.S. privately accentuating the positive about the reconvened nuclear P5+1 talks with Iran this week, the administration is ignoring the PM’s talk about Iranian President Hassan Rouhani being a “sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

Moreover, even in Israel, where Netanyahu’s view of Rouhani is widely shared by figures across the political spectrum, the threats he made this week during a speech to the Knesset about the country acting on its own to knock out the Iranian nuclear program were seen by many as an empty bluff. The belief that, no matter what Netanyahu says now, Israel will have little choice but to accept a Western accommodation with Iran, is by no means confined to the prime minister’s critics.

That’s the gist of a Time article in which the magazine’s Jerusalem correspondent Karl Vick discusses what he calls Netanyahu’s “grumbling from the sidelines” while “the West makes progress in Geneva.” But whether or not you believe Israel can or will eventually attack Iran, there’s little question that the international community, led by the Obama administration, is heavily invested in diplomacy with nd may well sacrifice the Jewish state’s security in exchange for an opportunity to relieve themselves of the responsibility to act on the nuclear threat and to get Iranian oil flowing to Western markets again.

As the Times of Israel reported earlier this week, Netanyahu used a speech at a Knesset session devoted to the anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War to make the case for a unilateral, preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Recalling the complacence of Israeli leaders 40 years ago that led to Egypt and Syria being able to achieve a surprise attack, Netanyahu said that there were important lessons to be learned from this history for the Jewish state:

The first lesson is to never underestimate a threat, never underestimate an enemy, never ignore the signs of danger. We can’t assume the enemy will act in ways that are convenient for us. The enemy can surprise us. Israel will not fall asleep on its watch again,” he vowed.

The second lesson, he added, was that “we can’t surrender the option of a preventive strike. It is not necessary in every situation, and it must be weighed carefully and seriously. But there are situations in which paying heed to the international price of such a step is outweighed by the price in blood we will pay if we absorb a strategic strike that will demand a response later on, and perhaps too late.”

The Israeli leader is right on both points. But Israel’s problem today is different from that of 1973. Then, Prime Minister Golda Meir feared being blamed for starting a war and thought sitting back and taking the first blows would engender greater support from the United States. Indeed, even after it was clear she and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had blundered and cost the lives of many Israelis, she insisted that her decision had been for the best since it helped ensure the U.S. resupply effort during the course of the war.

Today, Israel’s problem is more complex since an attack on Iran while the U.S. is involved in a diplomatic process with it would be viewed as an even more serious offense to the administration than a preemptive attack in 1973 would have been. Simply put, so long as the Iranians can keep the Americans talking to them, they have nothing to fear from Israel and nothing that Netanyahu said changes that.

More problematic is the clear desire on the part of the administration to buy into what rightly appears to the Israelis as the transparent fraudulence of the Rouhani charm offensive.

Vick discussed the analysis of Gary Samore, President Obama’s former top advisor on weapons of mass destruction, who said that any deal that gave the Iranians the ability to convert their stockpile of nuclear material to a bomb in a matter of months would compromise Israel’s security as well as that of the West. But since that is all the Iranians are offering the West, one has to question the motives of an administration when one of its top negotiators tells the New York Times in an off-the-record interview that, “I have never had such intense, detailed, straightforward, candid conversations with the Iranian delegation before,” when they have done nothing but recycle old proposals that have been previously rejected.

Under the circumstances, no wonder Netanyahu feels the need to rattle Israel’s saber at Iran. Unless he can convince the United States to start acting as it means to keep President Obama’s promises on the issue, it looks as the new diplomatic track will result in a deal that will compromise Israel’s security or buy the Iranians months if not years of extra time to get closer to their nuclear goal.

Netanyahu may not be bluffing about being willing to take the heat that a strike on Iran would generate. Indeed, if the West makes the kind of deal that Iran is offering, he may someday feel he has no choice but to do so. But until the Iranians blow off this attempt to negotiate the way they have every previous attempt, it’s likely that Washington doesn’t believe him.

Israel Hayom | ‘Turkish exposure of Israeli spies directed at Kurdish nationalists’.
Turkish officials deny Washington Post report suggesting that Turkey deliberately exposed an Israeli spy ring operating in Iran • Former Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon urges government to file complaint with NATO and demand Turkey’s removal.

Israel Hayom | Ankara wants Israel on its knees.

Boaz Bismuth