UPDATES
9 am Israel time, Wednesday, March 25 2015
**After receiving the final election results from the head of the Israel Election Commission today, President Rivlin will task Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the next government of Israel.
By the way, the head of the Election Commission is Israel Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubrani, and according to reports yesterday, Joubrani has uncovered numerous cases of fraud in Arab polling stations on election day. So much so that he has completely invalidated all of the votes from some of those stations.
**109 Ukrainian Jews immigrated to Israel yesterday. This comes after a week in Europe in which Sweden reported a 23% rise in the membership of the Swedish neo-Nazi party; a Jewish cemetery in Hungary was torn apart and the bones of those interred scattered about; and a synagogue in London was broken into by a mob yelling “Kill the Jews!”
**The electricity to Gaza (Rafiah and Khan Younis) was cut off yesterday because of unpaid electricity bills.
By Egypt.
And what was the Gazan reaction from a senior Hamas spokesman: “Even the Zionists did not turn off the electricity during the war last summer.”
Do you think Egypt cares what Hamas thinks? Or what the world thinks?
TODAY’S BLOG:
Another day another problem with the Obama White House–and another one that is completely absurd.
This one comes to us via an Adam Entous Wall Street Journal article which is titled:
“Israel Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks With U.S.”
Hmm. Let’s see. Your humble servant’s first reaction when seeing this headline yesterday was “If Israel did, thank G-d we did.” After all, we have been told for months now by the Obama Administration that it has locked Israel out of knowing about the details of the talks–talks that concern the very survival of this country. And everyone knows that President Obama did not even see fit to inform Israel of the Iranian negotiations until September of 2013.
What does the world expect Israel to do in the face of such exclusion? What would you do if your life was on the line?
But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Upon reading the article, we come upon some rather remarkable information.
“The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.”
Say what? U.S. intelligence agencies were spying–and are spying–on Israel?
And about that Israeli “spying”. It turns out that Israel wasn’t spying on the U.S. but the Iranians:
“Americans shouldn’t be surprised, said a person familiar with the Israeli practice, since U.S. intelligence agencies helped the Israelis build a system to listen in on high-level Iranian communications.”
And Israel was getting details of the talks not only from the Iranians but also from the Europeans–especially the French:
“Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they received their information through other means, including close surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.”
Israeli and U.S. officials said?
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Wait a minute here. We have the U.S. spying on Israel; we have Israel spying on Iran; we have the U.S. agreeing that European officials, especially the French, are feeding information about the talks to Israel, and the U.S. is angry with Israel? Angry about what?
The subheadline of the article:
“Ally’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink deal.”
Inside the article:
“The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.”
Just simply amazing. The White House is not angry that Israel “spied”; the White House is infuriated that Israel shared the information about how much Obama and Kerry are conceding to the Iranians with Congress.
The Congress that should have been privy to the information all along.
What the Obama Administration is really upset about is that an Iranian deal, a deal that President Obama hopes will be the enduring legacy of his presidency, is being thwarted by Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel.
So, according to the article, how does the Obama Administration feel now?
“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said. “That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of these people will not only be around for this administration but possibly the next one as well.”
If “anyone” should feel sold out, it is Israel.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.