WarSclerotic

Iran Targeting U.S. Satellites with Lasers? Commentary Magazine, Michael Rubin, May 9, 2014

If Iran has been targeting American satellites with lasers, perhaps that’s a sign that Iranian sincerity isn’t what the White House believes. Perhaps it is time for the White House to recognize that sometimes a “reset” simply doesn’t work.

For all the Iranian government and its fellow travelers whine about sanctions, the Iranian regime seems to have no problem funneling money off to ever more creative military projects. Take this latest tidbit which appears in the Washington Examiner:

Iran, meanwhile, “undertakes more purposeful interference” with U.S. satellites using lasers and jammers. “Although these actions have not resulted in irreparable damage to U.S. assets, this practice increases the possibility that the United States will misinterpret unintended harm caused by such interference.”

The Examiner piece derives from a longer Council on Foreign Relations report well-worth reading. Indeed, from what I have heard, it has garnered significant attention in policy circles. That report elaborates:

Since Iran already views space as a legitimate arena in which to contest U.S. military power, Tehran could use similar tactics against U.S. satellites during a major crisis, especially if it believes war is imminent—an assessment that could have self-fulfilling consequences. Should this significantly limit U.S. situational unawareness of the unfolding crisis, there would most certainly be a military response against the source of that Iranian interference. Additionally, like North Korea, Iran could attempt a direct-ascent ASAT test or co-orbital ASAT test, in which it detonates a conventional explosive near a targeted satellite. Iran’s capacity to do this will likely improve if it follows through on its June 2013 announcement of plans to build a space monitoring center designed to track satellites above Iranian territory.

President Obama’s initiative toward Iran seems predicated on the belief that Iran somehow changed after the election of President Hassan Rouhani, never mind that presidents in Iran don’t hold power comparable to that in the United States. If Iran has been targeting American satellites with lasers, perhaps that’s a sign that Iranian sincerity isn’t what the White House believes. Perhaps it is time for the White House to recognize that sometimes a “reset” simply doesn’t work. Then again, so long as Obama heard sincerity in Rouhani’s voice in their September 2013 phone chat, what difference does hard evidence of continued malfeasance make?

Hagel to Travel to Israel, Discuss Iran and Syria – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

U.S. Defense Secretary will fly to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel for talks on Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war.

Moshe Ya’alon and Chuck Hagel

Flash 90

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will fly to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel next week for talks that are expected to focus on Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war, officials said Friday, according to AFP.

“This trip will be the secretary’s third to the Middle East in just over a year, and it will advance America’s regional strategy in that region,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby was quoted as having told a news conference.

The tour was part of “our effort to work in a coordinated manner with allies and partners across the region to address common security challenges,” Kirby added.

U.S. officials have struggled to reassure Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, over an interim nuclear deal with Iran that the Saudis worry will embolden Tehran. The Gulf governments have also been dissatisfied with Washington’s cautious approach to arming rebel forces in Syria.

In Saudi Arabia, Hagel was due to meet with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) defense ministers, a session he proposed during his visit to the region in December, Kirby said.

The meeting will offer a chance for Hagel “to underscore U.S. security commitments in the Middle East and to reinforce the United States’ unstinting policy of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and further destabilizing the region,” Kirby said, according to AFP.

From Saudi Arabia, Hagel will travel to Jordan, where he will meet his counterpart there to discuss the raging civil war in neighboring Syria.

“This visit will highlight the U.S. commitment to the defense of Jordan, where more than 1,000 US personnel are on the ground working closely with Jordanian defense authorities,” Kirby was quoted as having said.

Hagel will wrap up his regional tour in Israel, where he is due to meet President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

In Israel, Hagel planned to discuss efforts to bolster Israel’s rocket and missile defenses, Kirby said.

Hagel’s visit will take place a week after President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, visited Israel.

Rice assured Israel at high-level bilateral talks on Thursday that Washington remained determined to stop Iran developing nuclear arms.

Hamas TV Show Encourages Children to Kill Jews, Washington Free Beacon, May 9, 2014

Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV ran a children’s show in which the host instructs children to shoot Jewish people, according to video published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Hamas’s official television station broadcast a children’s show earlier this month that advocates for the murder of Jews, according to a Middle East monitoring group.

Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV ran a children’s show in which the host instructs children to shoot Jewish people, according to video published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“I will shoot the Jews!” one child tells the host.

“All of them?” responds the host.

“Yes,” the child responds.

A person in a bumblebee costume also encourages children to kill and punch Jewish people.

Israel is only obstacle to nuclear free Mideast: Iran, Tehran Times, May 9, 2014

(Some will likely accept the “honorable” ambassador’s statement. Will President Obama and the rest of the P5 +1 group? — DM)

TEHRAN –  The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations said on Wednesday that the Israeli regime is the only obstacle to the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

Obama Revives the Right-Wing Conspiracy | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.

May 9, 2014 11:30 am

When a man or woman is mugged on the street or afflicted by disease, the right response is never to pretend everything is fine and nothing has happened.

But if you’re a really cool guy like the president of the United States or one of his top advisors or the Secretary of State who wants to become president of the U.S., then it is perfectly okay to act cool and go into pretend-and-deny mode. It also helps if the media clean up after you.

If Jimmy Carter were as cool as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, he would have pretended that Iranian militants had not attacked a U.S. embassy to kidnap its staff.

If President Carter had the same audacity of hype as Obama, then he would have claimed that 66 American citizens were on an extended sleepover date with the ayatollah. And if the world press corps had bought the story, Carter might have won a second term as president.

But in 2014, the facts are different. In the case of Barack Obama and the 9-11-12 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, Obama and his aides had a lot more warning of the impending attack than Jimmy Carter did with the Iranian attack on the US embassy in Teheran in 1979.

Obama and then-secretary of state Clinton ignored warnings of attack by terror group, trusting their own claims the terrorists had been vanquished. When the attack exploded, Obama-Clinton were paralyzed by inaction. Finally, they denied that there even had been a terror attack. It was all a spontaneous protest over a video, Obama, Clinton, and Susan Rice said.

They even worked hard to put the video producer behind bars, as if he really produced the terror that killed for Americans in Benghazi.

This is not a fictional “conspiracy” concocted by Obama-haters or Hillary-haters. This is clearly what happened. The Obama Administration was incompetent and insensitive in the face of a terror threat in Benghazi about which it had been warned.

Obama, Clinton, and now some Democrats in Congress like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are again trotting out the “conspiracy” and “witch hunt” charge to keep investigators at bay.

So far Obama’s strategy has worked, because there are differences between 2012-2014 and 1979-80. In 1979, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite revisited the Iran embassy takeover every night, ending each news show by counting the days Americans were held captive.

CNN’s Candy Crowley is no Walter Cronkite. Not even close. At the 2012 presidential debate, Ms. Crowley dropped the pretense of being an objective moderator and joined Barack Obama’s lie that he and his administration had identified the attack as terror from the beginning.

It was such a nice contribution by Ms. Crowley, that Mr. Obama, asked the referee to repeat herself and trip up his opponent, Mitt Romney, one more time.

“Can you say that a little louder, Candy,” chirped Mr. Obama, wearing a big smile.

Obama was re-elected, and Secretary of State Clinton was able to duck tough questions for many months because of illness. When she finally appeared before Congress, she went from pretend-and-deny-mode into outraged-at-the-question mode.

“What difference at this point does it all make?” declared Ms. Clinton in exasperation when Republican senators had the temerity even to question her and the Obama administration about their Libya policy or lack of policy. After all, Obama and Clinton promised to investigate it all themselves, but actually they buried important information along with the four dead U.S. officials in Benghazi.

Actually Obama-Clinton stalled for time, denying requests for documents or timelines. They relied on Democrats in the Senate and the House to block access to documents or the naming of a special prosecutor, as Congress demanded from President Ronald Reagan over his handling of the Iran-Contra affair. Democrats have not acted like Republicans who helped uncover part of the Watergate cover-up and force Richard Nixon from office.  But now, various congressional and NGO efforts to get some documents have borne some fruit, forcing release of some e-mails that seem to be part of a big cover-up.

One damning document is an email from Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy National Security Advisor emphasizing that “protest” led to attack on the Americans in Libya. Ben Rhodes is the brother of David Rhodes, the president of CBS News, which has been accused of downplaying or ignoring news that might hurt Obama.

A top CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Atkisson, recently quit after she said CBS refused to back her investigations that seemed to embarrass Obama. Ms Atkisson’s tenacity resembles the tenacity from the old days when CBS was not afraid to challenge US presidents, whether it was Nixon or Carter.

CBS News President Rhodes did not do much to keep Ms. Atkisson at CBS. It is clear that when it comes to journalistic values, he is also no Walter Cronkite.

Other major TV networks — NBC, ABC, CNN — largely avoided the story. They have not aired significant footage or stories showing how White House spokesman James Carney has repeatedly lied and dissembled on this subject.

Only Fox News has really pursued the story, angering Obama, Carney, and other administration officials by demanding some kind of explanation for events in Libya.

“Dude, this was two years ago,” observed Tommy Vietor, former spokesman for the National Security Council.

The very use of the term “dude” and the whole tone of Vietor’s response symbolizes a lack of seriousness and incompetence in facing terror.

“I don’t really remember,” said Vietor, sounding much  like Nixon Administration counsel, John Dean, whose pat response at the Watergate hearings was “I do not recall.”

Nobody died in Watergate, but John Dean and other Nixon officials went to jail because they were clearly not cool dudes.

One thing is clear: the Obama Administration is full of cool dudes and dudettes.

When you’re cool, dude, you can flat-out lie, dude, about what you just did or said. You can turn on a dime, and distort what just happened and lie about why it happened. Press Secretary James Carney insisted there was no terror at Benghazi until, a week later in an on-board briefing, he switched and said of course everyone knew there was terror at Benghazi.

But if you are not a cool dude but only an un-cool dud, like Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, or even Mitt Romney, then you’re in trouble.

Just ask Candy Crowley.

Dr. Michael Widlanski is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, published by Threshold/Simon and Schuster. He was Strategic Affairs Advisor in Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, teaches at Bar Ilan University and recently was visiting professor at University of California, Irvine. This article was originally published by The American Thinker.

Israel Hayom | Heaven help humanity.

Ruthie Blum

On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama received an “Ambassador for Humanity” award from movie director Steven Spielberg, the founder of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation.

“Standing up to anti-Semitism is not simply about protecting one community or one religious group,” Obama said in his acceptance speech at the gala, which was held in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Holocaust museum that Spielberg established after making the film “Schindler’s List.”

The president also urged Americans to “speak out against the rhetoric that threatens the existence of the Jewish homeland,” and assured that he would “sustain America’s unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Due to Obama’s appalling treatment of Israel in particular and his disastrous foreign policy in general — both of which have empowered human-rights abusers across the globe — these words ring as hollow as the distinction bestowed upon him by Spielberg.

As a result, conservative pundits have been justifiably taking him to task for his hypocrisy. Obama, after all, is the president on whose watch the Iranian regime is racing towards a nuclear bomb; the Syrian dictator is massacring his people in the tens of thousands with every means available, including chemical weapons; the Turkish prime minister has come out of the Islamist closet to side with forces hostile to the United States and Israel; the Russian president has invaded Ukraine; and the Palestinian Authority is burying the hatchet with Hamas, instead of negotiating its false claims to and ostensible desire for statehood.

These are the most blatant, but by no means the only, results of Obama’s agenda of reaching out to America’s enemies and admitted pride in “leading from behind.” Indeed, they are the fruits of his hard labor, not the blunders of a novice.

Still, there is one key outcome he did not anticipate when handed the Oval Office on a silver platter: that his many years of education at the hands of mentors like radical community organizer Saul Alinsky and Black Liberation theologist Pastor Jeremiah Wright have had the opposite of his intended effect. They did not culminate in the socialist multicultural world-without-borders of his fantasies.

On the contrary, in the world as it actually exists, a weakling in the White House provided a green light for an escalation in sectarian, feudal, religious and — yes — even border wars. Rather than winning brownie points for kowtowing to despots large and small, Obama has earned their utter disdain.

His response has been to attack anyone who dares point this out. It is thus that he considers the Republican Party a greater threat than the Republican Guards.

And then, of course, there’s Israel.

Leaving aside the debate about whether statements emanating from his administration constitute anti-Semitism, there is no question that Obama has as dim a view of Israel as he does of the U.S., and has been doing everything in his power to undermine the fabric of both. As the man at the helm of the latter, he has been doing such a stellar job that it could take decades to repair the damage.

Where the former is concerned, however, he has not fared so well. If anything, his behavior towards Israel has increased Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity at home.

This is because what Obama does is actually worse than expressing the kind of outright hatred for the Jewish state that Iranian mullahs and their terrorist proxies boast. He is among the ever-widening circle of leftists, among them the J Street crowd, who profess their undying love for Israel, while placing it on a par with the world’s most pernicious elements.

The danger of this trend, which I have called “anti-Israel is the new pro-Israel,” lies in its disingenuousness. Where such a fashion reigns, any moral parity made between Israel and the PA constitutes giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. The Obama administration excels at this underhanded game of proving its good intentions by treating “both sides” — one a democracy striving for peace, and the other a corrupt, lawless entity dreaming of jihad — as equals.

This is precisely what enables Obama to continue to enjoy the political support and financial backing of American Jews for whom Israel is a voting issue. Indeed, Obama’s “pro-Israel” speech to Hollywood A-listers at Spielberg’s gala coincided with a massive fundraising campaign among rich Jews ahead of the midterm elections in November.

As a newly crowned “Ambassador for Humanity” — an apt title for someone who makes no distinction between one species of humanity and another — Obama will undoubtedly bring back some big bucks for his party comrades running for Congress.

Heaven help humanity if they win.

An Open Letter to John Kerry, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 8, 2014

[T]he only thing you ever do is make things worse. Any man with a scrap of decency looking back on a lifetime of diplomatic wreckage would have retired. Instead you finagled your way into becoming Secretary of State so you could fail on a grander scale.

Dear John,

Every few years a messiah arrives in Jerusalem, shakes hands, makes demands and promises to make peace in our time. Then when the whole thing blows up in his face, he throws up his hands and flies back blaming the ungrateful Jews for not embracing his vision.

So many false messiahs have come before you, squinting against the bright sunshine, pounding the table at meetings, downing martinis and fantasizing about the Nobel Peace Prize that they were sure was waiting for them at the end.

And they left with nothing except sunburn and simmering rage.

Did you really think you would be any different? Were you so delusional that you imagined you could succeed where career diplomats with a lifetime of experience in the region had failed?

It’s not as if you had a good track record negotiating anything. Do you remember meeting Madame Binh in Paris? What about carrying Daniel Ortega’s peace offer after assuring everyone that he wasn’t a Communist? Right before he flew to Moscow. And let’s not gloss over your visit to Assad. Was that peace in the air or was it just the nerve gas?

I know you don’t have time to remember all your diplomatic triumphs. Or like Hillary, any of them.

You went to Paris to aid the Viet Cong. You went to Nicaragua to aid the FSLN terrorists. You went to Israel to aid the PLO. The USSR fell, but your old nostalgia for Communist guerrillas and killers hasn’t deserted you. It’s why you failed. And it’s why you’ll fail over and over again.

No matter what the PLO did, you blamed Israel. Just as no matter what the Viet Cong or the Sandinistas did, you blamed America.

The PLO can call for Israel’s destruction, champion terrorism and ally with Hamas, but your minions will still provide anonymous quotes saying that the PLO can’t be expected to negotiate while Israel possibly considers building houses in Jerusalem.

What’s a little thing like genocide compared to a house?

Israel is expected to free terrorists who murder elderly Holocaust survivors, but the delicate sensibilities of PLO terrorists are outraged whenever a Jewish family that they haven’t managed to murder yet moves into a home in Jerusalem.

Good negotiators can put their sympathies aside to achieve their goals. But no matter how many press releases you put out touting your special relationship with Israel, a relationship almost as special as the one your fellow Massachusetts senator had with a girl in a ‘67 Oldsmobile whose drowned corpse turned up the next day, you spoil it by threatening another intifada or calling Israel an Apartheid state.

You lack the basic criteria of a diplomat. You’re a bad liar.

You show up to provide moral support to the murderers and go home as their useful idiot. That was the pitiful function you served in Paris, in Nicaragua and in Israel. The only thing you ever did with your unsolicited interventions was make things worse. Your anti-war activism helped polarize a nation. Your Ortega intervention emboldened a terrorist group. And your peace initiative led to a unity agreement with Hamas.

After almost half a century, the only thing you ever do is make things worse. Any man with a scrap of decency looking back on a lifetime of diplomatic wreckage would have retired. Instead you finagled your way into becoming Secretary of State so you could fail on a grander scale.

The secret to your success as a lifelong failure is refusing to accept responsibility. You just throw someone else’s medals over the fence and blame someone else for your latest fiasco.

American mediators out of touch with reality, Ynet News, May 9, 2014

Op-ed: [T]he chief mediator, John Kerry, is almost completely out of touch with the international reality. This is the way he conducted himself with Syria, with Egypt, with Libya, with Ukraine, with Saudi Arabia, with Iran – he has no problem that the Islamic Republic will continue enriching uranium as part of a permanent agreement as well – and in a variety of other cases.

Kerry is the one who spread the claim that the status quo here cannot continue – although it is the most stable status-quo in the Middle East – and when he saw that his assessment was not fulfilling itself, he went to world leaders and incited against Israel.

The majority of the Israeli public has lost its faith in the Americans who brokered the peace negotiations with the Palestinians. From the very beginning it was an unrealistic, and therefore dangerous, initiative: We are not in the 1980s or 1990s, with strong Arab regimes, but in the midst of a storm in the Middle East as part of which national regimes are fighting for their lives, and another Arab country could have turned within a short period of time into a front base for al-Qaeda.

Aren’t those Americans looking around? Are they stuck inside a time capsule? The “two state for two people” idea could have been suitable before the jihadist Arab collapse around us, but now the situation is different.

The mediators’ personality was one of the great contributors to the collapse of the faith in them in Israel. One of them gave an anonymous interview to Yedioth Ahronoth and revealed his deep animosity towards the Jewish state: His remarks left the impression that his intention was to push for the establishment of another Arab state at all costs, despite the Salafi outbreak, despite the outrageous agreement with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and despite Mahmoud Abbas’ negative automatism.

After all, the Palestinian Authority chairman has always said “no,” and in fact returned to the “three nays” of the Khartoum Resolution: No negotiations with Israel, no recognition and no peace. This is in fact a multi-stage plan: Taking over territory, and continuing the war from there against what is left from Israel under improved conditions.

And nonetheless, the American mediator blames Israel, which is defending itself alone against a Middle East which is more hostile than ever.

Even the chief mediator, John Kerry, is almost completely out of touch with the international reality. This is the way he conducted himself with Syria, with Egypt, with Libya, with Ukraine, with Saudi Arabia, with Iran – he has no problem that the Islamic Republic will continue enriching uranium as part of a permanent agreement as well – and in a variety of other cases.

Kerry is the one who spread the claim that the status quo here cannot continue – although it is the most stable status-quo in the Middle East – and when he saw that his assessment was not fulfilling itself, he went to world leaders and incited against Israel.

The United States is left without a single Arab regime it is close to today, and it is therefore taking its anger out on Israel.

There is a public in Israel which expects the Americans to stand unconditionally by Israel – the only democracy in the Middle East, based on the same values of freedom and justice – and not try to impose moves which will lead to its destruction. And if this is what happens in practice, and Israel’s leaders are afraid to say it openly – the public volunteers to do.

Netanyahu tells Rice: Iran must not be allowed to enrich uranium. They remained poles apart..

( Obama v Netanyahu on the question of Iran…  Who will the American people believe? – JW )

Susan Rice with Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem

The deep divide between the Obama administration and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the Iranian nuclear issue resurfaced during this week’s two-day (May 7-8) Jerusalem talks held by the visiting US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who was joined by Wendy Sherman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and head of the US delegation to the nuclear talks.

Rice reiterated President Barack Obama’s contention that Iran and the P5+1 countries must reach a deal by the year’s end, before internal political conditions in Iran alter the landscape. The US urges Israel to recognize that Iran is already irreversibly a nuclear threshold state, and so it should be permitted to maintain a civilian nuclear program. This includes uranium enrichment and the construction of new nuclear reactors, with the proviso that Tehran commits not to turn its capabilities to military uses.

The Obama administration is prepared to pledge that every intelligence-gathering method at its disposal will be used to monitor Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that the threshold is not crossed. It promises Israel, as Rice repeated in her Wednesday conversation with Netanyahu, that Obama will not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

But debkafile’s sources in Jerusalem report that Netanyahu rejected the American position, arguing that Israel cannot leave its security in the hands of intelligence agencies whose forecasts and evaluations of the past years have often proved inaccurate.

Directly after Netanyahu and Rice met on Wednesday, a senior Israeli official said Israel continues to insist that Iran should not have the right to enrich uranium. The official, who spoke with unusual frankness, said that the Obama administration’s eagerness to seal the deal has more do with US domestic political concerns than Tehran.

“We would be happy to see July 20 pass without a deal,” the official said, referencing the target date set for a comprehensive agreement. He added that there was worry in Israel that Obama might be tempted to accommodate Iran now, in order to head off potential gains by Republicans in the November mid-term elections.

The Israeli official was emphatic about his bottom line: “Are we going to agree to [let Iran go ahead with] enrichment? No!”

On Thursday, May 8, Netanyahu echoed this outlook, saying: “Iran must not have centrifuges or enriched uranium.” Rice proposed a limit on the number of centrifuges Iran is permitted to operate, as well as a cap on the amount of uranium it can enrich.

Our sources say Netanyahu flatly rejected Rice’s argument that the quantity and sophistication of the centrifuges are not of he highest importance, compared with the real question of how many centrifuges Iran will be allowed to operate under close international scrutiny.

“The best defense against a nuclear Iran is to keep a nuclear weapon out of its hands. Tehran needs centrifuges and enriched uranium for the single purpose of building a nuclear weapon. Tehran must be deprived of this capability,” Netanyahu said Thursday.

According to debkafile’s sources in Washington, ahead of the Rice visit to Israel, administration officials conferred with several former Israeli security figures who are regularly consulted by Netanyahu on the nuclear issue. They were asked for an opinion on whether the prime minister would buy a compromise that permitted Iran to keep several thousand centrifuges and enrich a specified amount of uranium up to a low five percent grade.

Those advisers came back to Netanyahu with the impression that Obama was fixated on a fast deal regardless of Israel’s opposition. They also warned him that his rejection of the US compromise proposal would bring down on Israel’s head a propaganda campaign in both the local and international media that would impugn his credibility on the Iranian nuclear issue.

Jerusalem regards the Newsweek charge of Israeli spies crossing the red line in America as the opening shot of this campaign.

Officials in Jerusalem are also rubbishing a report on the subject that the Yediot Aharonot Hebrew tabloid is running Friday, May 9. It quotes Uzi Ilam, a long-retired former head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee, as arguing that Netanyahu is using the pressing Iran nuclear issue for political gain, when in fact, he says, Iran won’t be able to make a nuclear bomb for 10 years.
Knowledgeable officials say his information is years out of date. Almost all leading US, European and Israeli nuclear experts agree that Iran has reached the point of being able to manufacture a nuclear bomb in two or three or months.

UNHRC President replaces Falk with pro-Palestinian Indonesian diplomat, Jerusalem Post, Tovah Lazarpff, May 8, 2014

Makarim Wibisono to serve as special investigator into Israeli actions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem after candidates put forward by a UNHRC consultative group disregarded in wake of Arab League protest.

Israel is the only country to which a rapporteur is permanently assigned.

Makarim Wibisono of Indonesia Photo: REUTERS

At the request of the United Nation’s Arab Group in Geneva, a pro-Palestinian Indonesian diplomat, Makarim Wibisono, was appointed Thursday to a six-year term as a special investigator into Israeli actions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem for the Human Rights Council.

UNHRC President Ndong Ella made a sole decision to give the post to Wibisono after disregarding the three vetted candidates put forward by a UNHRC consultative group made up of five member states.

The group’s leading candidate had been American legal expert Christina Cerna of Georgetown University, because she was a neutral candidate who had not taken a public stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab League wrote a letter of protest about her and asked that a different candidate be appointed.

In March, Ella initially recommended the second candidate on the list, British legal expert Christine Chinkin, who helped author the controversial 2009 Goldstone report on Israeli military activity in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

But the issue of the mandate holder for the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories was put on hold. Member states of the UNHRC had concerns with regard to the entire list of 19 mandate holders that were due to be appointed.

On Thursday, however, when the issue of the 19 mandate holders returned to the UNHRC, Ella set aside all three vetted candidates in favor of Wibisono. According to UN procedures, the UNHRC president has the power to do this.

Wibisono had been one of the ten candidates who initially applied for the position, which for the last six-years had been held by US legal expert Richard Falk.

At Thursday’s UNHRC debate a representative of Kuwait asked Ella to explain the procedure by which the vetted candidates were set aside. “How was the name arrived at?” the Kuwaiti representative asked.

Ella responded, “You are from the Arab group, and you must know how the procedure occurred, since I carried out this procedure with your group and I did so at the request of certain members of your group.”

Ella continued, “I respected procedures by interviewing the candidates. I clarified that there were two that were not interviewed. I interviewed them. I chose the candidate who not only corresponded to the [UN] criteria but also the person who met the expectations of the concerned parties in the system.”

Ella said the issue had been gridlocked and that there were irreconcilable positions, which were erased by the Wibisono appointment.

In March, UN Executive Director Hillel Neuer had predicted that Wibisono would be appointed.

He charged that Wibisono was problematic because in the past he had “accused Israel of ‘unconscionable use of force against the Palestinians,’ ‘untenable acts of aggression,’ and of having a ‘policy of retribution against the entire Palestinian nation.’”

Neuer said that “Wibisono has referred to the ‘stark and brutal nature of the policies pursued by the occupying power,’ accused Israel of being ‘the aggressor and the perpetrator of wanton violence,’ and repeatedly minimized Israeli suffering, speaking of ‘the handful of Israelis who have died,’ and of Israel’s battle with rocket and other terrorist attacks as a ‘flimsy pretext.’”

The UNHRC has 37 rapporteurs, of which 15 are for specific countries. But Israel is the only country to which a rapporteur is permanently assigned. Its mandate focuses solely on Israeli actions with regard to the Palestinians.