Israel Senses Bluffing in Iran’s Threats of Retaliation

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Israeli intelligence estimates, backed by academic studies, have cast doubt on the widespread assumption that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would set off a catastrophic set of events like a regional conflagration, widespread acts of terrorism and sky-high oil prices. The estimates, which have been largely adopted by the country’s most senior officials, conclude that the threat of Iranian retaliation is partly bluff.
Conversations with top Israeli security officials suggested: since Israel has been demanding the new sanctions, including an oil embargo and seizure of Iran’s Central Bank assets, it will give the sanctions some months to work; the sanctions are viewed here as probably insufficient; a military attack remains a very real option; and post-attack situations are considered less perilous than one in which Iran has nuclear weapons.

(Ethan Bronner - New York Times)

Israeli Paratroopers Prepare for Airborne Strikes

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The Israeli military on Jan. 17 conducted its first full-scale parachute exercise in 15 years for at least 1,000 paratroopers in its airborne brigade as part of military preparations for “any possible scenario.”
“Every Western military which respects itself needs to know how to parachute large forces, bring them together and then launch an attack,” said airborne brigade commander Col. Amir Baram of the nighttime drop.
The most probable targets for airborne forces would be Hizbullah’s fortified missile depots in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Hizbullah possesses more than 42,000 missiles and rockets.
Hundreds of these are capable of hitting anywhere inside Israel, including all major cities and towns as well as strategic targets such as air bases.
The paratroop exercise dovetails into the special operations offensive concept the military is honing to hit Israel’s enemies on their own turf.
In December, the Israeli military formed a new formation known as the Deep Corps which combines all special forces units under one command for operations in hostile territory.

(UPI)

Survivor: “It Was Racism Carried to the Extreme”

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Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, 84, was the main speaker at Tuesday’s Holocaust Memorial Day hosted by London Mayor Boris Johnson. She was sent to Auschwitz after her work forging documents for prisoners of war was discovered. A talented cellist who became a professional musician in Britain after the war, she escaped the gas chambers because the camp’s orchestra needed a cellist. She was then in Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated on April 15, 1945. She said Auschwitz “has become a symbol of the abject depravity to which humans can sink. No one of us was meant to survive that – some of us did but it was pure luck.”
Mrs. Lasker-Wallfisch noted: “We must be careful about what makes this different from all other genocides. This was just simply premeditated mass murder of the innocent, who were brought from all over for this. It was racism carried to the extreme.”

(Jewish Chronicle-UK)

Memoirs of a Former Sister of the Muslim Brotherhood

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As the Muslim Brotherhood strives to project the image of a moderate and democratic political organization, The Memoirs of a Former Sister: My Story with the Muslim Brotherhood, by former member Intissar Abdel Moneim, has appeared. In it she describes how women are socialized to accept male dominance within the organization – and the household. “One of the areas where the Brothers have exploited the idea of blind obedience and submission is polygamy,” she writes. “When the [first] wife complains, a session is held for her where other sisters would remind her of the importance of obedience, patience and submission to God’s will and to [the husband]‘s will.” The writings of Hassan al-Banna, the group’s late founder, sought to limit women to “catering to their husbands’ desires and to reproduction,” she writes.
This outlook justifies why no woman is admitted into the group’s highest bodies – the Shura Council and the Guidance Bureau. By the same critical token, the author bashes the Brotherhood’s internal dynamics, arguing that it is based on nepotism rather than merit. (Noha El-Hennawy - Egypt Independent-Al-Masry Al-Youm)

Film Shows Palestinians, Jews Saving Lives

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A 25-minute film about cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics for the Orthodox Jerusalem organization United Hatzalah has been broadcast four times this month by the global Arab TV network Al Jazeera in English.
“Saving lives is a religious act for me,” says Fadi, one of 100 Arabs currently volunteering for UH. “People need to live.”

( Judy Siegel-Itzkovich - Jerusalem Post)

See also View the Video – Witness: Jerusalem SOS (YouTube-Al Jazeera)
To provide first aid, Jewish and Arab volunteer paramedics cross the city’s boundaries that most other residents do not.

Israel’s Technion Contributes to U.S. Soldiers’ Rehabilitation

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Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology professor emeritus Shlomo Maital, speaking in Toronto last week, highlighted the work of Technion electrical engineering graduate Amit Goffer, who was involved in an accident that left him unable to walk and confined to a wheelchair. Instead of being resigned to his fate, “He asked, ‘How can you take people who cannot move their legs and put them on their feet and enable them to walk?’,” Maital said.
Goffer designed a prototype he called an exoskeleton, a mechanical device that a person wears on his legs. “When a person leans forward, the computer senses that and moves the leg, and then the other leg.” The technology is called ReWalk, and it enables people with lower-limb disabilities to stand, walk, and even climb stairs. “The device is being used now in veterans hospitals in the U.S. to help soldiers who’ve been wounded and crippled by war to walk. And you can imagine what that feels like for a 21-year-old ex-Marine who is in a wheelchair, to be able to stand up and walk,” he said.

(Sheri Shefa -Canadian Jewish News)

Israeli Scientists: Tracking Microclimates Could Help Feed the World

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Scientists in Israel have developed a way of using satellite images to help farmers detect small-scale changes in climate and improve their harvests. The new system divides fields into smaller microclimates that guide farmers on the best way to work each individual plot. It tells them when it is best to plant seeds, when to spray pesticides and even which crop is most suitable for each square-kilometer field, said Uri Dayan, a climatologist from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The method was published in theBulletin of the American Meteorological Society in September. Itamar Lensky, who heads the remote sensing laboratory at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said their system uses real-time thermal images made available from NASA and then analyzes the surface temperature of each plot at a fine scale.

(Rinat Harash and Ari Rabinovitch - Reuters)

The Hizbullah Threat Would Be Intolerable for Any Nation

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  • UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made news during his recent visit to Beirut. “I am deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hizbullah and the lack of progress in disarmament,” he said. “All these arms outside of the authorized state authority, it’s not acceptable.”
  • The weapons in question are tens of thousands of ballistic missiles supplied to Hizbullah by Iran via Syria, that are not under the authority of the Lebanese government. They are deployed all over Lebanon and aimed at Israel. Their range is sufficient to cover all of Israel and rain destruction on Israel’s civilian population. They are terror weapons in the hands of a terrorist organization.
  • For Israel, as for any other nation faced by a similar terrorist threat, the Hizbullah missile threat from Lebanon is intolerable. It is a ticking time bomb and, in addition, a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.
  • It also represents a threat to the physical existence of Lebanon and the people of Lebanon. The Hizbullah missiles have been deliberately emplaced in the midst of Lebanon’s civilian population centers, in the vicinity of schools, mosques and hospitals. They will be launched against Israel whenever Nasrallah so decides, or the order is given in Tehran. They are a protective shield for Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
  • The Hizbullah missiles will have to be removed. When the time comes for Israel to neutralize this missile threat, the result will be wholesale destruction all over Lebanon. Of course, it is preferable that the removal of the Hizbullah missiles be accomplished by diplomatic action rather than by military measures.
  • For too long there has been a conspiracy of silence about the deployment of these missiles in Lebanon. The issue should be taken up at the UN Security Council, and the necessary diplomatic action should be taken by the U.S. and the countries of Europe and Asia.The writer is a former Israeli defense and foreign minister.

(Moshe Arens - Ha’aretz)

Both the PA and Israel Are Cracking Down on Hamas

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The Palestinian Authority has expressed outrage over the arrest of Hamas officials in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces – even though the PA itself has also been arresting Hamas supporters.
The truth is that the Israeli clampdown on Hamas is designed to help Abbas. Abbas knows that without the Israeli security crackdown on Hamas, his regime would not be able to remain in power for one day.
In the past two months, Palestinian security forces have arrested more than 70 Palestinians on suspicion of membership in Hamas.

(Khaled Abu Toameh - Stonegate Institute)

Will Israel Attack Iran?

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Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak laid out three categories of questions related to a decision on whether to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran. He characterized them as “Israel’s ability to act,” “international legitimacy” and “necessity,” all of which require affirmative responses before a decision is made to attack. 1. Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack? 2. Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack? 3. Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?

(Ronen Bergman - New York Times)