Netanyahu: We're at the height of a war

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a special statement to the nation Thursday night in preparation for the tightening of the lockdown restrictions tomorrow afternoon. After expressing appreciation for the dedication of health personnel and citizens who lend a hand to others in need, he said:

"These lcokdown measures are not easy, but saving lives comes first. This is a national emergency. We are at the height of an ongoing war - the Corona War. The entire world is in the throes of the pandemic. The plague is also expected, unfortunately, to take an additional heavy toll in human lives. I am sorry but this is the truth," Netanyahu said.

"There is one simple rule - when you open up the economy, the morbidity goes up. Unfortunately, with the removal of the restrictions, there is a gradual slackening in adherence to health regulations. Those who led this have been populist politicians," he attacked.

"There is a limit to every trick, this is about human life. The health care system is groaning under the pressure. The number of patients is rising and so is the number of deaths. This is a terrible price for their families and for all of us," Netanyahu stated.

Netanyahu added: "Unfortunately, those who led to this situation were populist politicians from the 'anything goes' choir. I heard Yair Lapid this evening during a national emergency mocking the struggle and endangering the lives of Israeli citizens."

"There have been real dilemmas because some of the experts have told us that it is possible to live without a lockdown and have thousands of new cases per day, but we have reached 7000 per day, the number of people dying has risen, and as far as care is concerned, the health care system is not up to it," the prime minister explained. The holiday season is the least damaging to the economy because there are less work days.

He added that after two weeks there will be a slight lowering of restrictions and if things go well, there will be a return to the color coded system of lockdown after that.

"We must show mutual responsibility. We can do it. The State of Israel has gone through many terrible times, this too, will pass and we will come out of it strengthened."

Relating to the demonstrations, he said that they do not harm him politically because people are so upset at the anarchy and violation of corona restrictions, but that they cannot continue because they spread the virus and caused many people to flout the rules. He asserted that democracy does not mean one can hurt other people.

Earlier, Defense Minister Benny Gantz stated: "We are in one of the most difficult crises we have ever known. We are fighting for the lives of the citizens of Israel. I refuse to be drawn into populism, but instead to focus on saving lives and saving society."

"The decision to open the economy was too early, the decision to transfer the responsibility for cutting off the chain of infection to the IDF came too late," the defense minister added.

"This is not a struggle between protesters and worshipers, this is not a virus that only affects the haredim or secular. This is a war for our lives, the incitement brought by certain interested parties between parts of the people must not prevail.

Iran’s Zarif tries to form Russia-China alliance against US

Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif is trying to entice Russia to become closer to Iran through bilateral relations, Iranian media said on Thursday. He arrived in Moscow to discuss relations with Russia. The goal here is to pave the way for Iran to get around the US embargo and sanctions. Iran seeks to harness Russia and also China to confront “US lawlessness,” Tasnim News says in Iran.

Zarif praised the “important role of Russia and China in supporting the UN Security Council and countering US illegal actions in the Security Council.” Zarif said: "The Russian government and its representation in the UN have had the best position alongside China during the difficult recent months." He argues that they have “played a leading role in the face of US lawlessness.” He is referring to the US pushing snapback sanctions this month after having asserted that Iran had violated the 2015 Iran Deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran says that since the US left the deal in 2018 it has no leverage. The US says it will stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles. Iran has thus gone to Moscow to see about getting more support. Iran is also seeking a more close relationship with china.  

 

"Well, we have serious problems in the region," Zarif said, referring to other issues to be discussed during his visit to Russia. Tasnim noted that the Syrian conflict “requires special coordination between Iran and Russia, and we also need to coordinate with Turkey in the framework of the Astana process.” Iran is seeking a closer relationship with Turkey also and Turkey appears to want to partition Syria and remove the US from eastern Syria. Iran is wary of Turkey conquering too much of Syria.  

Iran is also laser-focused on Afghanistan. It wants the US out but doesn’t want anti-Shi’ite extremists to take over. Zarif also stressed: "Although our bilateral relations are very good, we always need to review the latest developments in bilateral relations with our Russian friends."

Zarif is a kind of celebrity in the West, despite his regime’s brutal record. He laughed when asked about rumors that France had asked him to help form a government in Lebanon and talk to Russia about Lebanon. “Such a thing is not true. Of course, we may talk about Lebanon with our Russian friends, but this is not a priority and is not on our agenda. I don't think I have talked to the French since my trip to Lebanon,” he said. He was in Lebanon in August in the wake of the Beirut explosion. 

Zarif’s main goal is to try to coordinate with Russia more closely. This is a relationship of common interests because they both want to weaken the US in the Middle East. However they do not see the region entirely in the same way. They don’t agree on Israel, for instance. However, Iran’s goal today is just to get around US sanctions and get through the arms embargo so it can get more weapons. In the past Russia played a role with Iran in terms of air defense sales and also technical assistance. 

Israel enters full 16-day lockdown on Friday

The government approved at dawn on Thursday, Sept. 24, a full national lockdown to rein in the soaring coronavirus contagion starting Friday, Sept. 25 up to Oct.11. culminating two days of bitter debate in the special cabinet. Closure is to be universally applied, excepting only for people employed in essential services. The extreme measure, advocated by PM Binyamin Netanyahu when the number of new cases a day climbed past 7,000 and serious cases to 657, was finally endorsed by Defense Minister Benny Gantz who acknowledged there was no option. Overnight, there were another 10 deaths raising the total to 1,375.

The ministers of his Kahol Lavan party had stood out against the decision over the restrictions imposed on anti-government protests along with gatherings of all kinds. Finance Minister Yisrael Katz voted against the decision, which brings private business sector to a halt for more than two weeks, as a price too high to pay for the country’s economic wellbeing.

In the end, prayer services and demonstrations alike are be restricted alike to 20 participants outdoors. Both chief rabbis ordered the closure of synagogues even on Yom Kippur the holiest day of the Jewish year, as well as the subsequent Succoth festival, for the sake of saving lives. Anti-government protesters will be confined like the rest of the population to within 1km of their homes, thereby breaking up the unruly, mass outbreaks taking place weekly outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem.

The international airport will be closed to outgoing flights. Food stores and pharmacies will stay open, while all other retail trade is shuttered like the schools. Public transport will be limited.

The Knesset will be asked on Thursday to approve the full lockdown, which will substantially reinforce the partial closure that began last Friday. After 16 days, the state of covid-19 infection will be assessed to determine if the lockdown is to be extended or lightened in careful stages.

Rouhani declares victory over the US

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday declared "victory" over the United States after the UN Security Council rejected the Trump administration's bid to reimpose UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

"The Iranian nation has achieved great political, legal and diplomatic success at the United Nations," Rouhani told a televised weekly meeting of his cabinet, as quoted by AFP.

"The reason for this victory lies solely in the support and resistance of the people," he added.

"America's greatness has collapsed (just like) the global hegemony they thought they had," claimed the Iranian President.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced an executive order and new sanctions against Iran aimed at enforcing United Nations sanctions.

The sanctions put in place a new arms embargo on Iran to replace a UN ban set to expire in October. Administration officials say it is an indefinite ban on weapons sales and allows for sanctions on any international companies or individuals that seek to violate the embargo.

Last month, Washington started the process of restoring all pre-2015 UN sanctions against Iran. The move to activate the “snapback” came after the UN Security Council rejected the US resolution to extend the arms embargo on Iran, which is due to expire in October.

However, the president of the UN Security Council rejected the US demand, saying there was no general agreement among council members.

Rouhani said on Tuesday that the next US leader must accept Tehran's demands.

"We are not a bargaining chip in US elections and domestic policy," Rouhani said in a virtual address to the UN General Assembly.

"Any US administration after the upcoming elections will have no choice but to surrender to the resilience of the Iranian nation," he stated.

The Palestinian Arabs have been lying for years. Can they still get away with it?

The Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels unfortunately proved to the world that it is possible to lie in several contradictory directions at once. For example, you can claim that Jews are both innately capitalist and innately communist, two conflicting vilifications that facilitated the Holocaust. Of course, some Jews were capitalists and some were communists, but this was also true of almost everyone else.

One would like to believe that educated and decent citizens of the world would reject the authenticity of lies that contradict one another. But do they? The claims made by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the many media sites they support and spawn, mostly with the help of the European Union (which should know better), put these decent citizens to the test.

Officials in the Palestinian Authority and members of the BDS movement frequently accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. At the same time, in Arabic, they boast of the power of the Palestinian womb to overcome Israel in the long term. The second statement irrefutably contradicts the first.

In reality, neither is correct. True, the Palestinian Arabs have a high population growth rate that exposes the lie of the claim of ethnic cleansing, but their fertility—as is true elsewhere in the Arab world—is rapidly falling, especially in Judea and Samaria.

Depopulation (rather than ethnic cleansing) is taking place in the Balkans, including Muslim Bosnia and Kosovo, thanks in part to the European Union’s policy of encouraging the young to emigrate to Germany and the Scandinavian countries. There, they are eagerly absorbed by the local labor markets, leaving much of the Balkans and eastern Europe geriatric disaster areas.

The Palestinians’ pattern of lying in opposite directions is illustrated by the invocation of the most ubiquitous term used to describe Israel’s relationship to its historic homeland: “occupation.” The mere mention of the Gaza Strip will almost immediately prompt a reference to Israel’s “occupation,” despite the incontrovertible fact that Israel relinquished control of the Strip’s Palestinian population in Gaza and withdrew from it, down to the last Jewish man, woman and child, in 2005.

Yet even as Israel is mysteriously continuing its virtual “occupation” of Gaza, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their respective military wings hold an annual celebration at this time of year to commemorate the liberation of Gaza from Israel, which they classify as a first step toward the complete “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea”—that is, the destruction of Israel.

Gaza is thus simultaneously occupied and liberated. A remarkable feat.

As they vilify Israel for its supposed treatment of Muslims regarding the Temple Mount, they stress that hundreds of thousands of Muslim worshippers have come to protect the site in past years—a fact documented by Palestinian-supported media sites. But if Israel is so intolerant and harsh toward Muslim worship, how are these hundreds of thousands managing to assemble in the area?

And as they vilify Israel for religious intolerance, the P.A., Hamas and most of the other factions cannot stand the sight of religious Jews visiting the Temple Mount or praying and sharing the space with Muslim worshippers. At the graves of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the Palestinian Arabs often describe visits by Jews to the site as “pollution” (tadnis) by “herds of settlers.” Simultaneously, the P.A. and Hamas take pride in the innate tolerance of Islam, Islamic society and the many and varied Islamic entities of the past.

Israel is accused of laying siege to Gaza to destroy its economic and demographic foundations. At the same time, Hamas threatens Israel with rockets if it does not extend more power lines to the Strip to meet its growing energy demands. If Israel is attempting to impoverish Gaza, how is it that there is so much demand for energy?

The P.A. came into being in 1994 as a result of a negotiation process between the PLO and Israel (the “Oslo process”). So how can it deny the right of Arab states to negotiate with the same State of Israel?
And if Hamas has liberated Gaza from the Israeli yoke, why does it want to increase its dependence on a state (to control coronavirus, to get hospital treatment for family members of Hamas officials, and so on) whose destruction it seeks to the point of threatening terrorism if it refuses such dependence?

The Palestinian Arabs have long gotten away with spreading contradictory lies among a public that should know better: liberals and progressives. But they are not the only people listening, and there are signs in other quarters that patience is starting to wear thin.

The peace agreements Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House last week have mostly to do with the typical factors that dictate the strategic behavior of states—a common threat (Iran), a common powerful ally (the United States), the promise of economic and technological benefits from making peace—but one cannot underestimate the importance of the Arab states’ growing distaste for a Palestinian Arab movement that has lied for far too long.

The P.A. came into being in 1994 as a result of a negotiation process between the PLO and Israel (the “Oslo process”). So how can it deny the right of Arab states to negotiate with the same State of Israel?

Hamas wants the Arab states to be in a state of perpetual war with Israel, while at the same time it periodically negotiates with Israel to fill its coffers and bring benefits to placate a growing and hostile Gaza population.

The Palestinians should learn from the master of this technique. Goebbels’ evil, triumphant as it seemed in the 1930s and early 1940s, was nevertheless short-lived. Somehow, truth prevails in the end.

Is Saudi Arabia About To Go Nuclear With China's Help?

The recent normalization deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have fundamentally shifted the region's alliances. Both Gulf countries maintain close ties with Saudi Arabia, and speculation abounds as to whether or not the Saudis will be the next country to formalize ties with the Jewish state.

While Israel may be on the verge of cementing a close alliance with major Sunni Arab states in the face of a common enemy with Iran, at the same time, concern is also growing about a possible nuclear race in the region with China's help.

A recent report in The Guardian indicates that Chinese geologists say Saudi Arabia may have enough uranium ore reserves for the domestic production of nuclear fuel. 

At the same time, a Wall Street Journal report said that Western officials have grown concerned about nuclear cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia in the construction of a facility for extracting uranium yellowcake from uranium ore. 

This facility is being built with the assistance of two Chinese companies. Similarly, The New York Times reported that Western intelligence agencies are "scrutinizing" the Saudi's work with China to develop nuclear expertise as a cover towards the development of a nuclear weapon.

Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS that the Saudi-Chinese relationship has existed for many years already. In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia reached out to China because it wanted to obtain Chinese missile technology.

"They acquired from China some of the longest-range ballistic missiles in the Middle East," he said. "So we have been there."

But Saudi nuclear capability, even if for peaceful purposes, could still place the Saudis at the threshold of nuclear military capability, which has Israel greatly concerned.

Gold said "one of the challenges for diplomacy is to try and make some of the moderation in Saudi behavior more permanent, and I don't think we've done that. As much as Saudi interests have changed, it is a reversible change. We have to make sure that it has a higher degree of permanence."

While Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has demonstrated an interest in moderation by creating distance from the extremist Wahhabi ideology of many of Saudi Arabia's top clerics, it remains unclear whether or not his influence will hold.

According to Gold, Israel and Saudi Arabia "need to take the mutual threat we both face and create a basis for a quasi-alliance, but I'm not sure we are there yet. Relationships with countries you don't have diplomatic relations with are usually held very tightly in the hands of whoever is the leader. The question is how you make it permanent."