Category: Israel

Official Calls Gas Pipeline From Russia To Israel ‘Very Promising’

JERUSALEM, October 1 (ITAR-TASS) – Project of Russian natural gas supplies to Israel via the territory of Turkey is “very promising” and it was one of the issues discussed by co-chairmen of the Russian-Israeli intergovernmental commission at talks here, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, the co-chairman on the Russian side told reporters Thursday before departure for Moscow.

“That’s a very promising project and we think we must work in that direction,” Zubkov said.

“We have an opportunity to build a Blue Stream-2 pipeline across the Turkish territory.” he said.

To make the project profitable, however, it is important to invite other countries, like Russia, Turkey, Israel, maybe Cyprus and some Middle East States, to take part in it, Zubkov indicated.

“We agreed to begin with bilateral talks and, in fact, negotiations between Gazprom executives and officials from the Israeli Energy and Natural Gas Authorities of the Ministry of Infrastructures began yesterday,” he said. “They were quite successful, I was told, and the work in that field will continue.”

“In the future, we may agree on trilateral talks with Turkey and, maybe, with some other countries, too.”

In the course of the two-day visit, Viktor Zubkov held talks with Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who chairs the intergovernmental commission on the Israeli side.

Besides, he had meetings with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

October 2, 2009
Don’t Israel’s nuclear weapons count?

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Don’t Israel’s nuclear weapons count?

Netanyahu has what he wants to keep up the idea of his plucky, vulnerable little state

Influential Europeans – including many Muslims – recently debated freedom of expression with the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed which led to riots. Held in Berlin, it was a good, at times blazing, debate.

Freedom of expression, we were given to understand, is one of the valves in Europe’s heart that must remain open to keep our continent alive and healthy. In good faith I exercise that freedom in this column. Let us see if readers and interest groups will support my right to write what follows even if they violently disagree with my observations.

From past experience I bet many will find that impossibly hard. They will denounce me as an enemy within, a rule-breaker of unspoken rules, bringing up stuff that must be left buried in the name of peace and justice. I see no reason to comply. This week shows us how such doublethink and doublespeak pulls the world towards Armageddon.

Leaders of the rich nations have turned their fire on Iran, quite rightly. On Friday came news that the Islamic Republic had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant near Qom. Then the junta fired test missiles, to prove that the bearded ones have really big willies. Unlike Iraq under Saddam, there are, in Iran, nuclear developments that could lead to weapons of mass destruction. It is not an immediate but a future danger, say credible intelligence experts and indeed Barack Obama himself.

Suddenly the president has got uncharacteristically belligerent, instructing Iran to open up all its nuclear facilities for inspection if it wants to avoid “a path that is going to lead us to confrontation”. In May, Obama stood in Washington with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who we were told was there to seek assurances that there would be no shift from the conventional US position of total and unconditional support for Israel’s policies right or wrong, known and clandestine.

On Thursday the US, China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany meet in Geneva and, by that time, Iran will be expected to submit to international scrutiny. As a supporter of the now crushed and broken reformers in Iran, I back the ultimatum to the fanatic and bellicose Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what about that camel in the room? The one we all see but can’t point out? What about the only power in the Middle East, also fanatic and aggressive, which has a vast stockpile of weapons enough to obliterate the region? Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now.

I have been in contact with a young Iranian woman who wore a green scarf and lipstick on the streets of Tehran, whose uncle is currently being tortured in prison there for demonstrating against the results of the election. Somehow she escaped from the country and is in Britain briefly before going on to the US to make a new life. Let us call her M.

Nobody could hate Ahmadinejad more than M; she hates the whole regime, the treacherous leaders who betrayed the people. When she speaks she often gets asthmatic. But yet, but yet, she finds her passions rising for her country this week because of fears of military strikes by Israel and the manifestly unfair way that Israel is indulged. “I will go back if they attack my country, even if they put me to jail,” M says. “That is my duty. Israel is the enemy of peace and America gives them money to get more arms. I don’t want Iran to have these terrible weapons, but Israel must also be stopped.”

The big powers are moving tentatively towards global de-nuclearisation, taking small but significant steps to show they do want everyone to pitch in. Obama’s decision to shelve the European defence missile programme shows serious intent, so too Gordon Brown’s announcement that Britain would cut down from four to three its Trident missile-carrying submarines. There was a moment this spring, albeit fleeting, when Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington’s chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus breaking the 40-year-old silence and US complicity in its accumulated, un-inspected arsenal. Her reasonable appeal provoked apoplexy in a nation that assumes special, indeed exceptional, treatment.

In the 1960s, Israel successfully hid its weapons from US inspectors. In 1986, Israeli nuclear technical assistant Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about the concealed stockpiles and has been punished ever since. Hubristic Israel no longer cares to deny that it has hundreds of atom and hydrogen bombs and devastating biological “tools”. Netanyahu has been warning he will destroy the Iranian sites if his country feels the danger is real. Now he has just what he wanted – another crisis in the Middle East, to keep up the idea of plucky, vulnerable, endangered little Israel.

Alarmingly, even the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz is on side. History has made too many Israelis fear all humanity in perpetuity and that fear brings out the worst in that nation. It has predictably rejected the long, sober, unbiased UN report on the last assault on Gaza chaired by Richard Goldstone. He accused Hamas of crimes against Jewish civilians and charged Israel with grave crimes, the breaking of the Geneva convention, punishing and terrorising unarmed civilians.

I have some images of these victims sent to me by a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist. Children turned to ash, blistered mothers weeping, and on and on. There still is no respite for the hungry and dying in Gaza. If Israel can mete out such treatment and not be called to account, just think what the state feels entitled to do to Iran.

The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: “Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection.” The US has leverage because it maintains and funds Israel. If Obama shies away from this, there can be no moral justification to go for Iran or North Korea or any other rogue state. And the leader whose election and dreams gave hope to millions thereby hastens the end of the world.

y.alibhaibrown@independent.co.uk

Source: www.independent.co.uk, 28 September 2009

September 28, 2009
Turkish Chief Rabbi Haliva Met with al-Assad

Turkish Rabbi Yitzchak Haliva reportedly met with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Kav HaChadash reports.

It appears Turkey’s prime minister invited religious leaders from Turkey to join him and al-Assad in Saudi Arabia to mark the end of Ramadan.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan explained he wanted local religious leaders to get to know the Syrian leader. Rabbi Haliva met with Assad together with Erdogan. Assad reportedly told the rav there is Jewish community in Syria, resulting in the rabbi replying that he is aware because his community sends them matzos for Pessach. In addition, he plays a vital role in providing “religious services” like schita and bris milah.

The rabbi reportedly called on the Syrian leader to do everything possible towards advancing peace with Israel to bring an end to the orphans on both sides. The Turkish leader added that he is doing his utmost towards achieving this goal.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)

Source: theyeshivaworld.com, September 24, 2009

Turkey’s Chief Rabbi Meets Assad for Dinner

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

(IsraelNN.com) Turkey’s Chief Rabbi (or Hahambasi) Yitzchak Haleva met with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad at a Ramadan break-fast dinner earlier this month. Rabbi Haleva had what he felt was a heart-to-heart exchange with the dictator.

The meeting, which included leading Christian and Muslim clerics as well, was called by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Also in attendance at the upscale Istanbul hotel were diplomatic representatives from several nations, including Israel.

When Rabbi Haleva was introduced to Assad, the Syrian leader noted that his country also had a Jewish community. Haleva replied that the Turkish Jewish community provides for the Syrian one certain religious needs, such as kosher food and a mohel, as needed. In an exclusive interview with the Matzav HaRuach weekly Torah publication, Rabbi Haleva said that he informed Assad that his community has been sending wine for Shabbat and matzah for Passover to Damascus Jewish community for many years.

Assad, the rabbi said, replied that he was aware of the connection between the Turkish Rabbinate and the Jews of Damascus. He further promised that the relationship would continue.

Rabbi Haleva said that in his brief conversation with Assad, he expressed the hope of the Jewish people in Israel and in the Diaspora for true peace in the Middle East. The rabbi informed Assad that the Jewish people pray for peace during the Rosh HaShanah holiday at this time of year.

“Enough wars, enough mourning, enough destruction and loss,” Rabbi Haleva said, to which Assad expressed full agreement, according to the rabbi.

“I felt that he felt my words were from the heart, and I sensed that they entered his heart,” Rabbi Haleva told Matzav HaRuach. “And my prayer is that this year, whose arrival we just celebrated, will be a year of peace between Israel and Syria.”

According to the Yediot Aharonot news website, Rabbi Haleva described Assad as “nice”. His meeting with Assad was part of his duties as a religious official of Turkey who was invited by his prime minister, he said. “It’s not a political matter, nor did it offend my Zionist principles,” the rabbi was quoted as saying. “I told him we wanted peace and asked him to make peace with Israel.”

Source: www.israelnationalnews.com, Tishrei 10, 5770 / September 28, ’09

September 28, 2009
Is Ahmadinejad a ‘Gift’ for Israel?

By ROBERT MACKEY

Reasonable, concise and measured, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas demonstrated how not to get attention during an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday.

On Friday, just three days after basking in the spotlight of international attention — meeting with President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in New York to talk about reviving the Middle East peace process — Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, gave an address to the United Nations General Assembly devoid of histrionics that was almost completely ignored.

To a certain extent Mr. Abbas was simply unlucky to have been scheduled to speak on the same day that the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program flared up and dominated the news cycle. But even before President Obama accused Iran of building a uranium enrichment facility in secret, the Palestinian leader and the concerns of his people were marginalized when the Mr. Netanyahu chose to focus, in his address to the General Assembly on Thursday, on the threat from Iran and the fact that its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, expressed doubts about the Holocaust last week.

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel showed a Nazi document on plans for the Holocaust at the United Nations.

Despite the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad defied expectations by not mentioning the Holocaust at all during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday — five days after he reportedly called the killing of six million Jews by Nazi Germany “a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim” — Mr. Netanyahu began his address on Thursday in New York with an outraged rebuttal of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s repeated questioning of the historical record.

Near the start of his address, Mr. Netanyahu said:

Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews.

Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler, himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

Mr. Netanyahu went on to call the moral legitimacy of the United Nations into question for letting Mr. Ahmadinejad speak at all, and chastised delegates who sat through the Iranian president’s speech, in which he called Israel “racist” and said its treatment of the Palestinians amounted to “genocide.” As can be seen in this video report from Al Jazeera, Mr. Netanyau also said: “The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

There is no doubt that Mr. Netanyahu is outraged by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s claims about the Holocaust, but his decision to engage so passionately with Iran’s president, while all but ignoring the conflict at home, also helped to change the subject from a conversation that presents difficulties for Israel’s leader — how to make peace with Palestinians without alienating his supporters — to one that allows him to seize the moral high ground.

The arc of the conversation this week in New York — moving from discussions of Middle East peace on Tuesday, to the protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, to Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation of documentary evidence of the Holocaust on Thursday and to the full-blown international argument on Friday about Iran’s nuclear weapons — was undoubtedly more favorable to Israel’s prime minister than if Iran had been removed from the equation and the world had spent four days talking about Israel’s refusal to stop expanding its settlements on the West Bank.

The way the week played out instead recalls an observation made last year by a former head of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, who told an Arab-language satellite channel that Iran’s current president is, paradoxically, very good for Israel.

As a reader of The Lede pointed out, last year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the former intelligence chief, Ephraim Halevy, called Mr. Ahmadinejad a “gift,” since his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric “unites the entire world against Iran.”

In remarks Haaretz said were made in an interview with Al Hurra, an American-financed Arabic channel, Mr. Halevy claimed that Iran’s president served a vital Israeli interest by helping to make the case that Iran’s current government is “impossible to live with.” He added: “We couldn’t carry out a better operation at the Mossad than to put a guy like Ahmadinejad in power in Iran.”

In the same article, Haaretz noted that another former senior Mossad officer, who served under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told Time magazine that Israeli hardliners were wrong to say that Iran posed an “existential threat” to Israel. “Iran’s achievement,” the former intelligence official said, “is creating an image of itself as a scary superpower when it’s really a paper tiger.”

Earlier this week, The Lede noted that some analysts were asking if Iran’s president was trying to change the subject, from questions about the legitimacy of his election to his defiant stands on Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s legitimacy as a state. As the week ends, the conversation has certainly shifted, but perhaps in a way that Mr. Ahmadinejad will be less than happy about.

Finally, we should note that in an interview with Akiva Elder published Haaretz in 2003, Mr. Abbas denied that he had denied the Holocaust in a book based on his doctoral dissertation:

The question about whether he denied the Holocaust in his Ph.D. angers Abbas. “I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were 12 million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgiveable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it.”

Source: thelede.blogs.nytimes.com, September 25, 2009

September 27, 2009
Is Turkey new light ray in darkness of Middle East?

Trend News Middle East Desk Commentator, Ulviyya Sadikhova

Perhaps, after the end of the Israel – Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in January, 2009, Turkey did not seek to solve the acute problems in the Middle East with such zeal, as it has shown in the last two months.

Ankara made its debut in the Middle East by nominating itself as the chief mediator in the resolution of the Syrian-Iraqi dispute, which erupted after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused the Syrian regime of sheltering organizers of two major terrorist attacks on Baghdad, which killed nearly 100 people.

Although Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davudoglu said his country does not mediate in the reconciliation of Damascus and Baghdad, since the very beginning of disagreements Davudoglu has met with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and then with al-Maliki in Baghdad.

At a meeting of the League of Arab States in Cairo the Arab countries acknowledged Turkey’s success in preventing acute Syria-Iraq conflict.

In fact, Ankara needs to pacify the situation in the Middle East, which went out of control as a result of constant internal collisions. One can mention several reasons, but the most prominent are two: the fight against the separatists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the immense progress in relations with Syria.

Regarding the PKK matter, the Iraqi government has never been the best assistant for Turkey. Firstly, views on cooperation with Turkey in the fighting against separatists, who are based in the north, have split up in Iraq. Despite President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd by origin, expressed his full support in the fight against PKK terrorists in Iraq, the issue of an independent Kurdistan is still questionable. Analysts also believe the Shiite parties in Iraq, including al-Maliki’s party, are unlikely to disregard the Kurdish political organizations on the eve of elections in January 2010. Therefore, Turkey will not benefit from the agreement with Iraq to cooperate against the PKK. Taking into account the internal weakness of Iraqi state power due to the struggle among of pro-Iranian Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni parties, new differences with Syria could offer a ground for further division of the country. Realizing this risk and the fear that the PKK will take advantage of the situation to strengthen fighting, Turkey demanded the Iraqi authorities to clarify accusations against Damascus and provide substantial evidence.

Besides, a slight warming has been observed recently between the Iraqi pro-Iranian bloc and Turkey. One of the most influential Iraqi Shiite leaders, Muqtada al-Sadr, visited Turkey in summer.

The cooperation with Syria in the fight against PKK terrorists is another issue. Though the PKK issue was about to cause the Syria -Turkey war ten years ago, now this is one of the pillars of relations between the two countries. Syria, where head of the Kurdistan Workers Party, Abdullah Ocalan, hid more than ten years ago, stated on its readiness to open its borders to the Syrian citizens of Kurdish origin, who are fighting against the Turkish government in mountainous areas, if the latter lay down their arms against Ankara.

It seems Syria could not offer better one, because Turkey virtually received a guarantee and the place, where it will be able to banish the terrorists and extremists, whereas the Kurdistan administration of Iraq and the Kurdish parties in Iraq do not give any guarantee to Ankara in suppressing the PKK.

It is interesting, since 2008, Turkey has focused on improving relations with Syria. Turkey started with the weak point – negotiations with Israel and the returning of the Golan Heights. Although a year later Turkey’s mediation failed, Syria and Israel were able to come together in only one – both were satisfied with Ankara’s role.

In addition, Turkey’s rapprochement with Syria is not accidental. Damascus – Iran’s main ally among the Arab countries – has a direct impact on the internal situation in Lebanon, where a pro-Iranian Party of Hezbollah operates. More likely, Turkey wants to participate in an internal crisis in Lebanon and the Palestinian split, as well as to find alternative routes to Iran through Syria, given the ambitions to assume the role of chief peacemaker in the Middle East.

Cooperation with Turkey is advantageous also for Syria, especially to improve relations with Sunni and pro-Western Arab countries.

Al-Assad’s surprising visit to Riyadh on Wednesday, following the Turkish president’s meeting with King Abdullah II in Jeddah, was the first signal that Damascus resumed dialogue with the Saudis, who will have a direct impact on the political crisis in Lebanon, shaken by grim struggle for power between the pro-Saudi majority of Saad al-Hariri and the pro-Syrian opposition Hezbollah. Analysts predicted that the formation of government in Lebanon will delay until Syria and Saudi Arabia come to an agreement. However, Syria and the Saudi kingdom have very different interests in Lebanon and now Turkey, which is one of the largest Sunni countries, interferes in the dialogue. Ankara wants to show Saudi Arabia that it could persuade Syria to take a more moderate position in Lebanon. Al-Assad’s visit to Riyadh, on the backdrop of the refusal of the Saudi king Abdullah II to visit Damascus, is a great chance for Syria to demonstrate its “humility” in the Middle East policy and select a diplomatic way to solve the Arabian interior problems.

Experts believe that attraction of Syria to the pro-Western Ankara is a hidden attempt to weaken Iran.

Ankara has never had open tensions with Tehran and even enshrined Iran the right to peaceful atom in the issue of nuclear program. However, speaking to the 64th UN General Assembly in New York, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported Russia’s plan and the United States to clear up the Middle East from nuclear weapons. Is Turkey decided to throw down a secret challenge to Iran? Although nuclear program exists in Israel and will soon appear in Saudi Arabia, it is still associated with the enrichment of uranium by Iran. Does Turkey strive for a new mediation in the nuclear program between Tehran and Western countries, what had Davudoglu hinted at during a visit to Iran?

To prove and to demonstrate the effectiveness of its diplomacy in the Middle East – that is what Turkey wants to demonstrate to the West. Still the old interests of the Middle East will define whether Turkey will achieve it easily and what else Ankara has to do.

Source: en.trend.az, 26.09.2009

September 26, 2009
Ahmadinejad slams Israel as world powers turn up heat

Ahmadinejad slams Israel as world powers turn up heat

By JTA Staff · September 24, 2009

Thousands of Iranian-Americans in New York protested the appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 23, 2009. Jewish groups and other organizations organized their own anti-Ahmadinejad rally for the next day.

NEW YORK (JTA) — As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blasted Israel and the United States on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, world powers sought to step up the pressure on the Islamic Republic.

“We expect a serious response from Iran and will decide, in the context of our dual track approach, as a result of the meeting, on our next steps,” said David Milliband, the British foreign secretary, after representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany met Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The countries are scheduled to meet with Iran on Oct. 1.

And Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, emphasized the “dual track” policy of both isolating Iran and negotiations.

“No one should underestimate our intention to follow through on either or both of these tracks,” she said. “It depends on Iran’s response. And some of you have heard me say this numerous times — this process is now firmly up to Iran.”

There was even a signal that Russia, which has been most resistant to additional sanctions on Iran, may be ready to relent.

“Our task is to create such a system of incentives that would allow Iran to resolve its fissile nuclear program, but at the same time prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons. That’s why we, as responsible members of international community and, indeed, two nuclear superpowers, should send great signals in that direction,” said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a photo opportunity with President Obama.

“Russia’s belief is very simple, and I stated it recently — sanctions rarely lead to productive results,” he added. “But in some cases sanctions are inevitable.”

Ahmadinejad spoke of “the elimination of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons,” during his speech to the UN, but otherwise didn’t mention his country’s nuclear program. Instead, he criticized Israel’s “inhuman policies in Palestine” and said the Jewish state had committed “genocide” in a speech that led to walkouts by numerous other countries in the General Assembly.

The international community “is impatiently waiting for the punishment of the aggressors and the murderers of the defenseless people of Gaza,” said Ahmadinejad. He added, in an apparent reference to Jews, “It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery, and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and the U.S., to attain its racist ambitions.”

Delegations from Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand and the United States walked out of the General Assembly chambers in protest, with the United States accusing Ahmadinejad of using “hateful, offensive and anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

The Iranian president also criticized the United States, also not by name, saying that it is “not acceptable that some who are several thousands of kilometers away from the Middle East would send their troops for military intervention and for spreading war, bloodshed, aggression, terror and intimidation in the whole region.”

Meanwhile, Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, in her General Assembly speech, called for the extradition to her country of Iranian officials wanted in the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center. Among the suspects wanted by Interpol is Ahmed Vahidi, who earlier this month was confirmed as Iran’s defense minister.The 1994 bombing, which killed 85 people, was allegedly carried out by Hezbollah agents with Iranian sponsorship and organization, but Argentina has not been able to bring anyone to justice for perpetrating the attack.

President Obama spoke at the start of Wednesday, saying that Iran and North Korea must be “held accoutnable” for their pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The president also called for Israelis and Palestinians to “re-launch negotiations, without preconditions, that address the permanent-status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees and Jerusalem,” he said.

The reference to preconditions appeared to target Palestinian negotiators who insist on a total settlement freeze before renewing talks. Obama’s explicit commitment to comprehensive talks rebuts Israeli efforts to confine talks for now to borders.

Speaking immediately after Obama, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi insinuated that Israel was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy because he allegedly wanted to launch a probe into its clandestine nuclear program.

“Jack Ruby, an Israeli, killed Lee Harvey Oswald,” the Libyan leader was quoted by the translator as saying. “Why did this Israeli kill Harvey? Ruby later died mysteriously. The whole world should know that Kennedy wanted to investigate the actions of the Israeli nuclear reactor in Dimona.”

Ruby, a local nightclub owner who was Jewish, shot Oswald, the only official suspect in the Kennedy slaying, just days after Oswald’s arrest. Despite persistent conspiracy theories, numerous investigative committees have pointed at Oswald as plotting and carrying out the murder by himself.

The firebrand leader added that the Arabs had historically been friends of the Jewish people and blasted Europe for mistreating the Jews.

“You are the ones that brought on them the Holocaust,” he said.”We gave them havens during the Spanish Inquistion. We are not enemies of the Jews. The Jews will one day need the Arabs, and then the Arabs will give them protection.”

September 25, 2009