WarSclerotic

Israeli cells could save US from nuclear health disaster

Pluristem’s off-the-shelf placenta-based cell therapies are being tested by a top US agency – just in case

By David Shamah October 27, 2014, 6:57 pm

via Israeli cells could save US from nuclear health disaster | The Times of Israel.

Pluristem workers process placenta for the company’s cell-based therapy products (Photo credit: Courtesy)

In the event of a nuclear catastrophe in the US, Israeli technology will stand ready to save millions of lives. Haifa-based Pluristem Therapeutics has been working for the past eight months with the US National Institutes of Health on developing a treatment for acute radiation syndrome (ARS) – the mass destruction of tissues and cells caused by exposure to high levels of radiation, like from a bomb or a nuclear accident.

In tests conducted in Israel and the US, animals, most of them mice, were subjected to total-body irradiation, then injected with human cytokines. They showed significantly increased survival rates when treated with Pluristem’s PLX-RAD cells. The treatment actually reversed the effects of radiation disease to a great extent, a development once thought impossible.

The reversal just one of the near-miraculous things that Pluristem’s technology is capable of, said Zami Aberman, chairman and CEO. It’s based on harvesting cells from human placenta.  On a special tour of “the cleanest room in Israel” — a highly secure area where bioreactors “cook up” therapeutic cell products using human placental cells harvested from donated placentas – Aberman described the benefits of using what until just a few years ago had been considered “dead waste” by scientists.

“I come from an engineering background, not a medical background, so maybe that’s why I was less hesitant to go ahead with placenta-based cell development,” said Aberman. “Everyone said it couldn’t be done, but they were wrong, obviously.”

While there are many companies today harvesting human cells, like stem cells, to develop therapeutic products, Pluristem was the first and still one of the only companies doing that by harvesting from placenta. “Usually, you need a genetic match, or at least tissue compatibility, in order to use cells for therapeutic purposes,” Aberman said. “As we know from organ transplants, the body often rejects outside material. But placenta is the only place in nature where an outside organism – a fetus – is able to co-exist with the body without triggering a reaction,” like the release of antibodies. Placenta is the point of connection between mother and fetus, and thus, logically, would be the material that was most “tolerant.”

That was the theory in 2006, when the company was first established, and the theory had been confirmed many times over. Over the past several years, animal placenta, especially from horses, has been used by alternative physicians to treat sports injuries. Placenta, according to researchers, enhances cell repair and speeds up the healing process significantly. Using human placenta because it is more compatible with the human genome, Pluristem processes and enhances the cells, using proprietary methods inside a bioreactor created by the company. The result, said Aberman, is “a drug delivery platform that releases a cocktail of therapeutic proteins in response to a host of local and systemic inflammatory and ischemic diseases.”

Perhaps the most important aspect of Pluristem’s technology is what could be called its “business side.” Instead of manufacturing cells for specific purposes, the company creates “generic” cells, an “off-the-shelf” product that can later be processed for whatever is needed. The cells, stored in deep freeze (minus 200 degrees Celsius), have a shelf life of at least two years. Aberman believes they could last even longer. Pluristem creates what Aberman calls a 3D micro-environment that matches the “challenging and cultures conditions” of a specific health issue – such as conditions for an injury, arteriosclerosis, or massive cell injury due to radiation sickness – and the placenta-based cells adjust themselves to the conditions, and significantly enhance the repair process, he said.

How does it work? According to Pluristem researchers, the placenta contains mesenchymal-like adherent stromal cells, which have been found by researchers to have significant therapeutic potential. The cells promote tissue repair, possibly by secreting biologically active substances, including cytokines, that modulate immune response, along with factors that enhance the growth of blood vessels. These cells stimulate the body’s own mechanisms to heal damaged tissues. Because placental cells themselves are immunoprivileged, meaning that they do not elicit an immunological response from the body, as other cells do, they can be used freely for any purpose without requiring tissue matching.

Pluristem “harvests” the placenta from a hospital in northern Israel, where it is donated by women undergoing caesarean section births. The births are planned in advance, allowing the company to set up the equipment needed to ensure that the placenta is still living and not contaminated by the environment. It is then rushed to Pluristem’s facility, where it is processed into PLX (PLacental eXpanded) cells, for use in a variety of applications.

The company has conducted dozens of tests showing the efficacy of its solution – including several on animals that showed a significant improvement in cases of radiation sickness. According to one of the studies, mice showed a four-fold increase in their survival rate, accompanied by a corresponding weight regain, and a large increase in blood cell count when treated with Pluristem PLX cells. Other tests have shown how injuries to limbs repair themselves much faster, even among individuals with severe injuries, arteriosclerosis, and other serious conditions.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been conducting its own study on how Pluristem’s technology could be useful to humans in the event of mass nuclear destruction. According to Aberman, the agency has been very positive about the results, to the extent that along with Pluristem, it has already developed a plan for the creation, delivery, and deployment of millions of doses of PLX-based radiation treatments.

Radiation sickness induces a wide variety of health effects which occur within several days to months after exposure to high doses of ionizing radiation from a nuclear event, such as a nuclear power plant accident. Especially affected is bone marrow. Its deterioration leads to severe anemia, hemorrhages and failure of the immune system. PLX cells can handle bone marrow issues as well, said Prof. Raphael Gorodetsky, lead investigator of the study and head of the Biotechnology and Radiobiology Laboratory at the Sharett Institute of Oncology at Hadassah, Hebrew University Medical Center, where several of the Pluristem tests have taken place.

“Following preclinical studies using Pluristem’s placental derived cells, we found that these placenta cells have the ability to potentially increase the survival rate of animals following exposure to lethal doses of total body irradiation,” he said. “The higher survival rate of the PLX treated animals, compared to the control group, is accompanied with better hematological profile, as reflected by the increase of all the cell lines of the hematopoietic system and in the blood hemoglobin levels. These findings substantially strengthen the hypothesis that Pluristem’s placenta-derived cells could potentially be used to reduce complications associated with life threatening ARS.”

Why stop at radiation disease? Aberman said the company does not intend to. Pluristem’s development plan for the PLX-RAD cells considers numerous potential clinical indications such as enhancement of engraftment of transplanted hematopoietic stem cells for the treatment of bone marrow deficiency, which can result from immune system disorders, genetic diseases, and treatment of leukemia and other blood cancers, as well as treatment of bone marrow deficiency in patients who have undergone chemotherapy.

“We’ve just completed a two-year development cycle for our PLX-RAD cells and have also developed new manufacturing equipment, methods and know-how. We believe that our state-of-the-art technology platform can be used to create additional cell products from the placenta, tailored to potentially deliver targeted treatments for a variety of new indications,” said Aberman. “Our technology platform, robust manufacturing capabilities and broad IP portfolio open the door for potential institutional and commercial partners, and we’re pleased with the level of interest we have received in our technology platform. Pluristem is in a unique position to be a leader in the cell therapy industry.”

Obama, Not Bibi, Created U.S.-Israel Crisis « Commentary Magazine.

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 10.28.2014 – 7:10 PM

Obama Admin Finally Identifies Its Real Middle East Enemy: Israel.

The Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg has written a piece detailing the deteriorating relationship between Israel and the Obama administration. The chief purpose of Goldberg’s piece is to humiliate Benjamin Netanyahu. None of this is especially shocking, considering the antagonism the administration has shown towards the Jewish State from the start. It’s the sort of antipathy Goldberg identified as Jewish paranoia back in 2008.

Goldberg begins his piece with the following:

The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. ‘The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,’ this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

Most people have focused on the name-calling, and Goldberg keeps a list of pejoratives used by U.S. officials to describe Netanyahu, including “aspergery.” On that front, it’s worth noting that the person being repeatedly being called “chickenshit” by an anonymous officials volunteered for the Israeli Defense Force, saw combat, and was the leader of an elite special-forces unit deployed on numerous missions, including the freeing of hijacked Sabena Flight in 1972, where he was shot. Granted, this might not be as courageous as hopping the Amtrak from Delaware to DC each day or rallying the troops at a fundraiser in Greenwich, but God knows we can’t all be heroes.

Is Netanyahu a political coward? Perhaps. But not for any of the reasons offered by the administration. Is he arrogant? I’m sure he is. Is being anti-Netanyahu tantamount to being anti-Israel? Well, no. Though it’s certainly fair to point out that the administration’s public demeaning of an ally’s elected leader—almost certainly with the blessing of higher ups—is nearly unheard of.

But you know what is unmistakably anti-Israel? Gloating over how the United States has strong-armed Israel into living with a nuclear Iran, which seems like significant news to me:

This official agreed that Netanyahu is a ‘chickenshit’ on matters related to the comatose peace process, but added that he’s also a ‘coward’ on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat. The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. ‘It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.’

At the United Nations a few years, Obama reportedly offered to do whatever it took to prevent Iran from producing atomic weapons in exchange for Israeli assurances that it would not attack Iran’s nuclear sites before the presidential election in 2012. (And to think, Obama officials have the audacity to whine about Netanyahu’s “near-pathological desire for career-preservation.”) One side kept its promise. Obama has repeatedly vowed, since his first run for president, to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Maybe that promise that never should have been made. Now, though, the administration claims it’s too late. Now it claims American pressure helped dissuade Israel from defending itself. And now, there is nothing Israel can do about it.

Knowing this, why anyone would expect Israel to trust John Kerry or Barack Obama to forge a peace deal with a Fatah-Hamas unity government is a mystery.

Israel isn’t completely innocent in this mess, of course. Cabinet member Moshe Ya’alon, for instance, was quoted referring to Kerry as “obsessive and messianic” earlier this year. But Ya’alon has since apologized a number of times. But earlier this month Ya’alon was in Washington—the defense minister of our closest ally in the Middle East—and his requests to meet with senior members of the Obama administration were declined. The administration waited until the visit ended before leaking the snub to humiliate the Israeli defense minister. It’s the sort of thing that’s been going on since 2008.

So what happens next? Well, considering his access, when Goldberg “imagines” what’s coming, I imagine someone in the know told him what to imagine. So, if Abbas asks for recognition of Palestine in the United Nations, as he’s expected to do again, the United States will likely block the initiative in the Security Council. But, as Goldberg notes, the Obama administration may also participate in a “stridently anti-settlement resolution” that would isolate Israel from the international community and pressure it to create a judenfrei West Bank and an indefensible Jerusalem.

Now, that would be anti-Israel, too.

Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: ‘The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.’ For an Israeli public traumatized by Hamas violence and anti-Semitism, and by fear that the chaos and brutality of the Arab world will one day sweep over them, this formula has its charms. But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.

Not really. It’s unlikely we’re going to elect another president driven by a similarly hostile inclination towards Israel. Maybe the American public will turn on Israel at some point, but that point isn’t here yet. Even if it were, one imagines that any Israel government, Left or Right, would have to take its chances alone rather than participate in setting up another mini terror state on its border.

It must be very frustrating to believe that a nation acts in its own best interests rather than the interests of an American political party. Despite Bibi’s assurances that he wouldn’t mess with the president’s 2012 campaign, it is he, out of all the leaders in the all the world, who frustrates Obama most. Not Russian autocrats who invade sovereign nations. Not genocidal Arab dictators. Netanyahu. I forget which sycophantic liberal pundit pointed out on Twitter that this makes sense since we’re prone to be frustrated more by our friends than our enemies. For that to be true, one would have to accept the dubious notion that the president ever considered Israel a “friend” in any special sense.

Is there any other friend treated similarly? Trust me, you’re never going to hear a senior State Department official refer to Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a chickenshit theocrat. In fact, when the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, both friends of ours in the Middle East, were justifiably called out by Joe Biden for their roles in helping to strengthen the Islamic State, the vice president was quickly dispatched to ask for forgiveness from both the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Turkish President Erdogan. Apologize to the leader of Turkey. Call the leader of Israel a coward. That about encapsulates American foreign policy the past few years.

Report: US, Iran entered state of ‘detente’, facing common Islamic State ene… – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Wall Street Journal says Washington has reassured Tehran that strikes on IS fighters in Syria will not be used to oust Assad.

Yitzhak Benhorin

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday quoted senior US and Arab officials as saying that the Obama administration and Iran “have moved into an effective state of détente over the past year”, as they hold direct nuclear talks and face a common threat from the Islamic State.

The report comes a day after The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, long considered close to the Obama administration, claimed that a US official had called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a coward” on tackling Iran’s nuclear program, despite his frequent rhetoric on the issue.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the officials say that “recent months have ushered in a change as the two countries have grown into alignment on a spectrum of causes”, at the forefront of which are “peaceful political transitions” in Iraq and Afghanistan, tackling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

US officials also told the paper that the US has clarified to Iran that ongoing strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria will not also target forces belonging to Syrian President Bashar Assad, a long-standing Iranian ally who is currently battling opposition fighters – including Islamic State – inside his country.

Furthermore, the report claims, the White House has “markedly softened its confrontational stance” toward Iranian allies Hamas, which fought Israel in a 50-day conflict over the summer, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese group armed by Iran and long-considered a major threat to Israel’s northern border.

The newspaper also quotes senior US officials as saying that top American diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, negotiated with Hamas via Turkish and Qatari intermediaries during ceasefire negotiations in July, in an effort to end Hamas rocket strikes on Israel from Gaza.

In addition, the report cites American and Lebanese officials who claim that US intelligence agencies have “repeatedly tipped off Lebanese law-enforcement bodies close to Hezbollah about threats posed to Beirut’s government by Sunni extremist groups, including al-Qaeda and its Syria-based ally the al-Nusra Front.

Political correctness and Islam.

With no end in sight to Islamist violence, perhaps the time has finally come to muster up the courage and take a long, hard look at why it is afflicting dozens of countries around the world.

Mourners pay tribute to the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks. (photo credit:ANNA HIATT)

For much of the past 13 years, ever since al-Qaida attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the West has found itself confronting an increasingly dangerous foe in the form of jihadist terror.

From New York to London to Madrid, Islamic extremists have carried out brazen attacks, targeting airplanes, public transportation and, of course, innocent civilians.

They have left a trail of tragedy and bloodshed and it would appear that the struggle to defeat them is far from over.

But despite the passage of so much time, and the gallons of ink that have been spilled in reporting on their actions and analyzing their motives, there is one critical question that has been largely ignored by the mainstream press.

It is a sensitive issue, the kind that makes people shift uncomfortably in their seats and anxiously clear their throats, but it is one that must, nonetheless, finally be addressed.

Simply put: If Islam is a religion of peace, then why are so many of its followers in so many countries killing so many people with such brutality? And, no less important, why are Western leaders so insistent on telling us after each attack that Muslim terrorists are distorting Islam? Each month, literally hundreds of people, if not more, are being killed by Muslims in the name of Islam in a multiplicity of conflicts around the world.

From the streets of Baghdad to the markets of Mogadishu, and from Benghazi to Bangladesh, the frequency and ferocity of such attacks is staggering.

Consider the following: On October 23, a man armed with an axe attacked four New York city police officers, wounding two of them, before he was shot dead. The perpetrator was a Muslim radical.

The previous day, on October 22, a gunman shot and killed a Canadian soldier guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa and then proceeded to shoot up Canada’s parliament before being killed. In this case, too, the perpetrator was a Muslim extremist.

Meanwhile, in the city of Maguindanao in the southern Philippines that same day, two soldiers were shot and killed at a hospital. The attack was carried out by four Muslim militants.

And then, of course, there was the terror attack in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian driver intentionally rammed his vehicle into a group of innocent Israelis at a light-rail station, killing three-month old Chaya Zissel Braun and 22-year old Karen Yemima Mosquera.

And the list goes on and on and on, with terror striking in Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Mali and elsewhere. Muslims targeting other Muslims. Muslims targeting Christians. And Muslims targeting Jews.

Also on October 22, an Islamist suicide attacker crashed his bomb-laden car into a security checkpoint east of Benghazi, Libya, killing one person and injuring four.

On October 21, four Christians were killed, two churches were destroyed and 50 homes razed to the ground by a Muslim terrorist organization in the Nigerian village of Pelachiroma.

I think you get the point.

Despite this startling and ongoing record of violence and terror committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, condemnations of it by Islamic scholars are notably few and far between.

If my faith were being used in such a manner, to target and kill innocent people around the world on a daily basis, I would expect my spiritual leaders to shout from every rooftop and condemn the wrongdoers.

Why aren’t Muslims everywhere doing the same? After all, much of the violence is being carried out by extremist Islamic organizations, groups of jihadists whose inhumanity has captured the attention of the world.

In Syria and Iraq, Islamic State (IS) has set a new standard in barbarity, crucifying individuals, beheading others and selling young girls as sex slaves.

In Nigeria, the Boko Haram Islamist terrorist organization has carried out suicide attacks, bus bombings, forced conversions and kidnappings of children to further its aims.

Other Islamic groups, such as al-Shabab in Somalia, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in Gaza, and the al-Mourabitoun in Mali, all employ violence and terror as well.

If their actions run counter to the spirit and law of Islam, then imams, sheikhs and ayatollahs the world over should be denouncing them at every opportunity and distancing themselves and their faith from those who kill the innocent.

But that is clearly not happening.

Moreover, each attack is followed by the same assurances from Western leaders, who go out of their way to stress that the terrorists are misrepresenting Islam and perverting its teachings.

I would love to believe that, I really would. How comforting it would be to know that the extremists are just a misguided band of butchers rooted in criminality rather than theology.

And to be sure, there are plenty of Muslims who do not engage in violence, do not support it and simply wish to live their lives and raise their children in peace.

But as the daily Islamist-inspired violence continues, wreaking havoc on various parts of the globe, isn’t it time for a frank and open discussion about the issue rather than just sloganeering? The media has shown itself to be fearless when it wants to be, taking down sacred cows and challenging accepted norms. But when it comes to exploring jihadist terror – one of the preeminent issues of our times! – the debate regarding its roots suddenly falls silent.

Obviously, we live in societies that are dominated by political correctness, which often sacrifices free speech and free inquiry for the sake of not “offending” anyone.

But the price of such an approach is that it frequently prevents people from coming to grips with the clear and unvarnished truth, inhibiting efforts to truly understand the challenges and problems that societies face.

With no end in sight to Islamist violence, perhaps the time has finally come to muster up the necessary courage and take a long, hard look at why it is afflicting dozens of countries around the world.

The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here – The Atlantic.

( Goldberg’s main point seems to be that once the midterm elections are over, Obama will be free to put into effect his anti-Israel bias at the UN. One can only hope that the administration’s belief that it’s “too late” for Israel to unilaterally deal with the Iranian threat is mistaken. – JW )

The Obama administration’s anger is “red-hot” over Israel’s settlement policies, and the Netanyahu government openly expresses contempt for Obama’s understanding of the Middle East. Profound changes in the relationship may be coming.

Jeffrey Goldberg Oct 28 2014, 2:52 PM ET

Not friends at all (Reuters )

The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis.

The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it’s ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.

The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached.

For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.

Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.)  But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.”

I thought I appreciated the implication of this description, but it turns out I didn’t have a full understanding. From time to time, current and former administration officials have described Netanyahu as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say, a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his political constituency. (President Obama, in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage.)

“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”

I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the Israel file regularly. This official agreed that Netanyahu is a “chickenshit” on matters related to the comatose peace process, but added that he’s also a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat. The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime.

But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.

Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor.

The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. You might think that this new understanding of Netanyahu as a hyper-cautious leader would make the administration somewhat grateful. Sober-minded Middle East leaders are not so easy to come by these days, after all. But on a number of other issues, Netanyahu does not seem sufficiently sober-minded.

Another manifestation of his chicken-shittedness, in the view of Obama administration officials, is his near-pathological desire for career-preservation. Netanyahu’s government has in recent days gone out of its way to a) let the world know that it will quicken the pace of apartment-building in disputed areas of East Jerusalem; and b) let everyone know of its contempt for the Obama administration and its understanding of the Middle East.

Settlement expansion, and the insertion of right-wing Jewish settlers into Arab areas of East Jerusalem, are clear signals by Netanyahu to his political base, in advance of possible elections next year, that he is still with them, despite his rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution. The public criticism of Obama policies is simultaneously heartfelt, and also designed to mobilize the base.

Just yesterday, Netanyahu criticized those who condemn Israeli expansion plans in East Jerusalem as “disconnected from reality.” This statement was clearly directed at the State Department, whose spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, had earlier said that, “if Israel wants to live in a peaceful society, they need to take steps that will reduce tensions. Moving forward with this sort of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace.”

It is the Netanyahu government that appears to be disconnected from reality. Jerusalem is on the verge of exploding into a third Palestinian uprising. It is true that Jews have a moral right to live anywhere they want in Jerusalem, their holiest city. It is also true that a mature government understands that not all rights have to be exercised simultaneously. Palestinians believe, not without reason, that the goal of planting Jewish residents in all-Arab neighborhoods is not integration, but domination—to make it as difficult as possible for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem to ever emerge.

Unlike the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, I don’t have any hope for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state (it could be dangerous, at this chaotic moment in Middle East history, when the Arab-state system is in partial collapse, to create an Arab state on the West Bank that could easily succumb to extremism), but I would also like to see Israel foster conditions on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem that would allow for the eventual birth of such a state. This is what the Obama administration wants (and also what Europe wants, and also, by the way, what many Israelis and American Jews want), and this issue sits at the core of the disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem.

Israel and the U.S., like all close allies, have disagreed from time to time on important issues. But I don’t remember such a period of sustained and mutual contempt.

Much of the anger felt by Obama administration officials is rooted in the Netanyahu government’s periodic explosions of anti-American condescension. The Israeli defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, in particular, has publicly castigated the Obama administration as naive, or worse, on matters related to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Last week, senior officials including Kerry (who was labeled as “obsessive” and “messianic” by Ya’alon) and Susan Rice, the national security advisor, refused to meet with Ya’alon on his trip to Washington, and it’s hard to blame them. (Kerry, the U.S. official most often targeted for criticism by right-wing Israeli politicians, is the only remaining figure of importance in the Obama administration who still believes that Netanyahu is capable of making bold compromises, which might explain why he’s been targeted.)

One of the more notable aspects of the current tension between Israel and the U.S. is the unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior. “The Israelis do not show sufficient appreciation for America’s role in backing Israel, economically, militarily and politically,” Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, told me. (UPDATE: Foxman just e-mailed me this statement: “The quote is accurate, but the context is wrong. I was referring to what troubles this administration about Israel, not what troubles leaders in the American Jewish community.”)

What does all this unhappiness mean for the near future? For one thing, it means that Netanyahu—who has preemptively “written off” the Obama administration—will almost certainly have a harder time than usual making his case against a potentially weak Iran nuclear deal, once he realizes that writing off the administration was an unwise thing to do.

This also means that the post-November White House will be much less interested in defending Israel from hostile resolutions at the United Nations, where Israel is regularly scapegoated. The Obama administration may be looking to make Israel pay direct costs for its settlement policies.

Next year, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will quite possibly seek full UN recognition for Palestine. I imagine that the U.S. will still try to block such a move in the Security Council, but it might do so by helping to craft a stridently anti-settlement resolution in its place. Such a resolution would isolate Israel from the international community.

It would also be unsurprising, post-November, to see the Obama administration take a step Netanyahu is loath to see it take: a public, full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would be based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.

Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” For an Israeli public traumatized by Hamas violence and anti-Semitism, and by fear that the chaos and brutality of the Arab world will one day sweep over them, this formula has its charms.

But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.

An Iran deal in which both sides can claim victory | The Times of Israel.

( It seems clear to me that the administration’s vicious attack on Netanyahu is their attempt to de-legitimize his opposition to this planed “sell out.” – JW )

Recent comments by the US nuclear negotiator suggest an agreement could be close at hand

 By Ron Kampeas October 29, 2014, 6:41 am

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman; Britain’s Director General, Political, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Offic Simon Gass; Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov; German representative in the Iran nuclear talks Hans-Dieter Lucas; French Foreign Ministry Political Director Nicolas DeRiviere; and Chinese Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Wang Min, attend a E3+3 meeting on Iran’s nuclear program at the United Nations in New York on September 19, 2014. (photo credit: AFP/TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Is the Obama administration preparing the ground for an Iran nuclear deal — one in which both sides can claim victory?

Wendy Sherman, the top US negotiator, in an unusually detailed and optimistic speech on October 23, for the first time suggested that the pieces of a deal were in place and all that was needed was Iranian willingness to wrap it up by the November 24 deadline.

“I can tell you that all the components of a plan that should be acceptable to both sides are on the table,” Sherman, an undersecretary of state, said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies symposium here on the talks. “We have made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable. We have cleared up misunderstandings and held exhaustive discussions on every element of a possible text.”

The United States and other major powers have said that a deal would have to include a tough inspections regime, disabling a plutonium reactor at the Arak nuclear facility and a sharp reduction in Iran’s enrichment capability. Sherman named the capability condition as the sticking point of “this painstaking and difficult negotiation.”

Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corp., a think tank that has advised the Pentagon, said that Sherman was referring to a “red line” laid down over the summer by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini, when he said Iran would not dismantle any of its more than 19,000 centrifuges. Of those centrifuges, more than 9,000 are believed to be operational.

The United States reportedly wants that reduced to 4,500 centrifuges, which it believes will keep Iran from reaching weapons breakout ability.

“I’m not sure Iran is going to stick with that maximalist position,” said Nader, who said that in the wake of Sherman’s speech, he would not rule out a deal by November 24.

Mark Dubowitz, the director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank who has helped shape congressional sanctions on Iran and been a skeptic of the talks, said there could be creative workarounds in which both sides could claim victory on the centrifuges issue.

For instance, Dubowitz said, the pipes connecting the majority of the centrifuges could be removed and placed under supervision or destroyed. Under this plan, the Iranians could claim that all 19,000 centrifuges remained in place, while the major powers would be able to say that only a limited number are operational.

“I think President Obama clearly wants a deal, and has instructed the negotiators to get a deal, and has floated a number of creative proposals to accommodate the supreme leader’s red lines,” Dubowitz said.

Notably, Israel and its US advocates appear to have gently backed away from a previous insistence that Iran not be allowed any enrichment capacity.

Yuval Steinitz, the intelligence minister who has been Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s point man in making Israel’s case abroad on Iran, no longer explicitly calls for an end to enrichment in his advocating for a deal that would keep Iran from breakout capacity.

In an October 19 Op-Ed in The New York Times, Steinitz instead insisted that any deal should provide “clarity” on “the quantity and quality of Iran’s remaining operational centrifuges” and “the final destiny of its remaining centrifuges and their infrastructure.”

Notably, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in its latest talking points memo on Iran also backed away from explicit calls for an end to enrichment.

“Will Iran dismantle its centrifuge infrastructure so that it has no uranium path to a nuclear weapon?” AIPAC asked in outlining the conditions for an acceptable Iran deal — language that could conceivably allow for an enrichment capability, as long as it falls short of a “path to a nuclear weapon.”

Israel’s hard line on enrichment made sense, Dubowitz said.

“It’s actually helpful for the administration for the Israelis to talk about enrichment,” he said. “It helps to make the case that the enrichment has to be very, very small.”

A Foreign Ministry official in Germany, one of the six powers in talks with Iran, told JTA that a deal would “probably allow Iran more centrifuges, more enrichment than Israel would like.”

However, Tobias Tunkel, the deputy head of the division of the German Foreign Ministry that deals with Israel, said that the major powers “will make sure it is watertight that allows no breakout.”

Sherman in her speech said that if the talks fail, “responsibility will be seen by all to rest with Iran.”

Trita Parsi, the director of the National Iranian American Council, a group that has strongly backed the talks, said that positioning Iran to take the blame should the talks fail was a key message for Sherman, but added that the reverse held as well: Should Congress, spurred by pro-Israel groups, scuttle a deal, it would be blamed.

“If there is a deal and the entire world is ready for it,” he said, “it’s going to be very costly for the Congress to push against it.”

Netanyahu ‘will continue to stand for Israeli interests’ | The Times of Israel.

( If Netanyahu is “chickenshit,” what does that make Obama? – JW )

Premier’s office rejects bitter US criticism in The Atlantic, where one official called him ‘chickenshit,’ amid reports of a ‘full-blown crisis’

By Times of Israel staff October 29, 2014, 4:37 am Updated: October 29, 2014, 6:20 am 24

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on October 22, 2014. (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/POOL/Flash90)

The Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday rebuffed a report in The Atlantic of withering US criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where one senior US official was quoted as calling the Israeli leader “a chickenshit.”

Sources in the office told Israel Radio Netanyahu “will continue to stand for Israeli interests, and no pressure will change this.”

On Tuesday night Economy Minister Naftali Bennett responded strongly to the harsh statements by unnamed officials, calling them an affront to Jews throughout the world and urging Washington to renounce them.

A piece in The Atlantic on Tuesday said US anger at the Netanyahu government was “red hot” and that the relationship between Jerusalem and Washington was now in a “full-blown crisis,” with one senior US official calling the Israeli leader “a chickenshit” over his perceived reluctance to risk political clout for diplomatic headway with the Palestinians and moderate Arab states.

Bennett wrote on his Facebook page: “If what was written [in The Atlantic] is true, then it appears the current administration plans to throw Israel under the bus.”

“Not the leader of Syria who has massacred 150,000 of his citizens, nor the leader of Saudi Arabia who stones women and homosexuals, nor the leader of Iran who murdered demonstrators for freedom were called ‘chickenshit,’” Bennett opined.

“The prime minister is not a private person but the leader of the Jewish state and the whole Jewish world. Such severe insults towards the prime minister of Israel are hurtful to millions of Israeli citizens and Jews all over the world,” he wrote.

“Israel is the only democratic nation in the Middle East and has been fighting for its existence for 66 years. Israel is the forward bastion of the free world in the face of the Islamic terrorism of Islamic State, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran,” he added. “Instead of attacking Israel and forcing it to accept suicidal terms, it should be strengthened. I call on the US administration to renounce these coarse comments and to reject them outright.”

According to the report in The Atlantic, US officials increasingly see the Israeli leader as acting out of a “near-pathological desire for career-preservation” and not much more.

Writer Jeffrey Goldberg observed that the relationship between Obama, Netanyahu and their respective cabinets was “the worst it’s ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections.”

Diplomatic rhetoric has heated up in recent days as the US used strong terms to condemn Netanyahu’s Monday approval for a thousand new homes in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Israel’s continued building across the Green Line was “incompatible with their stated desire to live in a peaceful society.”

But Netanyahu rebuffed the criticism from American, European and Palestinian leaders.

“We have built in Jerusalem, we are building in Jerusalem and we will continue to build in Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said. “I have heard a claim that our construction in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem makes peace more distant. It is the criticism which is making peace more distant.”