Dear Family & Friends,

Don’t forget to view our Website: WinstonIsraelInsight.com. You’ll discover many, many articles by Emanuel A. Winston which will assist your ongoing “Hasbara” efforts (now called “Public Diplomacy”). As the issues grow more complicated, disturbing & compelling for you to counter-act, you are not alone in this fight. Our Website & my GW Diaries have rich material for you to mine for ideas & provocative questions with answers. Use it!

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1Wall Street Journal Names Barack Obama As Most Unprepared Man of Century.

3.After Second Duma Fire, MK Demands Investigation

4.Power Of Jewish Indignation By Caroline B. Glick 8/20/15

5.Danon’s golden opportunity by Mati Tuchfeld

7.Barak’s breach of confidence by Dan Margalit

10.A New Low? UN Report Suggests Israel Caused Gaza’s Rising Infant Death Rate, Doesn’t Mention Hamas

11.TALE OF THE TWO-TIMING TERRORIST by Daniel Greenfield

12.Mohammed Was a Pig by Daniel Greenfield

13.Palestinians Flock to Islamic State by Khaled Abu Toameh

14.Israel said to import $1 billion in oil from Iraqi Kurds

This article discusses some of the outstanding mistakes Obama has made and the manipulation of the media and some big money that helped him to be elected to the White House. There are a lot of secrets about him and his background.
1.Wall Street Journal Names Barack Obama As The Most Unprepared Man of the Century.

This is not a ‘hate piece’, but it IS a brutally frank article from the Wall Street Journal.

Please read and share. It looks longer than it is. It’s a quick read.

Wall Street Journal 22 April 2015 at 18:56

A “deadly” article regarding Obama, at the Wall Street Journal, which today is the most widely circulated newspaper in America.

Article from the Wall Street Journal – by Alan Caruba:

“I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros, maybe? or Frank Marshall Davis??) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.”

[Gail Sez: “Note! Emanuel A. Winston wrote THE MANSOURIAN CANDIDATE Sept.7, 2008 listing various sponsors and mentors who seem to have been behind Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to public prominence and who may have influenced his political orientation.

Among those mentioned are the anti-American author Khalid al-Mansour, the principle adviser of Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal; the notorious Columbia University Professor Edward Said, once a member of the PLO; and Syrian-born Tony Rezko, a Chicago politician who became executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation to spread Islam.

To these one must add Bill Ayers, founder and theoretician of the Weatherman Underground terrorist organization (1969-1976), now a professor. Then there is the racist and revolutionary ideology/theology of Obama’s most publicized mentor the Rev. “God-damn-America” Jeremiah Wright. Obama attended Wright’s church for twenty years. This is the same Wright who unabashedly expressed his admiration for the Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan, a purveyor of Islam.

And so, as Winston rightly concludes, America is poised to elect a man to the presidency whose known mentors and sponsors put a lie to just about everything Obama has said on the campaign trail…..(from Paul Eidelberg, quoting EA Winston)

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father” was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope” followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a “communist with a small ‘c’ was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois House to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He out maneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool” in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy.. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984’s Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, 6 full years into his presidency, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to “wish away” some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign “world tour” were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions. Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party’s hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an “obstreperous” Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against “jumping to conclusions” about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted “Allahu Akbar.” The absurdity of that was lost on no one.

He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber “an isolated extremist” only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden..

Even his wife has mentioned they visited the country of his birth, Kenya. You did note she did not accompany him on the trip to Saudi Arabia on which he actually bowed to the king. Being a Muslim required him to do so and that same faith prevented him from taking her with him . “

We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States.

We the people are coming!

Only 86% will send this on. Should be a 100%.

Please send it on if only to one person.

A large fire raging near Kfar Sold, caused by missiles fired from the Syrian side of the Israeli-Syrian border and hitting open areas in the Golan Heights in northern Israel on August 20, 2015. (Photo by Basel Awidat/Flash90)

Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel’s Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel.

Israel’s attack in Syria overnight Thursday was the largest of its kind since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. No fewer than 14 targets were struck by Israeli Air Force jets, attacks in which Syrian Army soldiers – their real number as yet unknown – were killed. The Syrian regime acknowledged the death of only one soldier, but the number is probably higher.

The air raids came in response to rocket attacks on northern Israel on Thursday afternoon, apparently launched at the behest of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps by a local contractor in the Syrian Golan Heights.

In this case, according to Military Intelligence, the contractor — Islamic Jihad –was Palestinian. That is to say: The Iranians, closely watching the anti-Israeli activity on the Syrian side of the border, occasionally change their “laborers.” One time they may be men from the organization of Samir Kuntar, a Druze terrorist released from an Israeli prison in 2008 after serving 29 years, and another time they may be Islamic Jihad men, who mainly operate in the refugee camps around Damascus but were apparently transported to the Golan Heights in this case to irritate Israel from across the border.

Israel is facing a danger of violence spiraling out of control. On Friday morning, the IDF targeted and killed at least five men it said were members of the cell that fired the rockets on Thursday. Syrian media claimed they were civilians.

These incidents do not necessarily mean a war is on the horizon but they do show how fragile and dangerous reality on the northern border has become. Such instability is beneficial for one regional player — Iran.

For Bashar Assad, Syria’s president by title but a puppet of Tehran and Hezbollah in every other aspect, this is not good news.

Assad must accept the fact that the Iranians can do as they will on his turf. He is no longer the boss and his control of what’s not in the hands of Islamic State is dependent on Iran’s goodwill.

This is not only Assad’s problem but also Israel’s. What Iran is effectively trying to achieve is to draw Israel into a ground incursion deep inside Syrian territory.

All the various Islamist groups currently fighting one another will rush to point their guns at Israel if the IDF were to actually invade Syria. Thus one can assume that attacks such as the rocket fire Israelis witnessed on Thursday will not subside any time soon. It may come to an end only if or when Assad feels his grasp on the Golan Heights is so weakened that he might lose control there.

Israel was one of the key players in halting the Syrian opposition’s offensive in the Golan Heights last spring. When fighters from the al-Nusra Front were closing in on Hader, a Druze town considered Assad’s last stronghold in the Syrian Golan Heights, the outcry by the Druze in Israel prompted Israel to intervene on behalf of the Druze community and the assault on Hader ended.

In short: Israel helped preserve the Golan Heights status quo which now enables Iran to act against Israel’s national interests. But how many more rocket salvoes will that status quo survive?

3.After Second Duma Fire, MK Demands Investigation

By Ido Ben-Porat

‘There is info on Arab clan conflict – find the motive in previous arson quickly,’ writes MK Hazan after another home of same family burned. First Publish: 8/24/2015, 1:55 PM

Duma arson (file) Flash 90

MK Oren Hazan (Likud) on Monday called for a thorough investigation following the fire last night, which burned a house in the Arab village of Duma belonging to the brother of a resident whose house was the target of lethal arson attack last month.

Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces who investigated the home in Samaria, which belonged to a member of the Dawabshe family, said it was caused by an electrical malfunction. However, unconfirmed reports indicate an ongoing internal dispute in the town may have played a role.

“There is information on a conflict of hamulot (Arab clans – ed.), the Shabak (Israel Security Agency) with Palestinian security sources must investigate the motive of the previous arson and provide answers quickly,” wrote Hazan on his Twitter account.

Hazan’s comments come amid speculation that last month’s lethal arson, in which a father and his infant son were murdered and which was quickly blamed on “Jewish terrorists,” may in fact have been the outcome of a local dispute, suspicions strengthened by several odd details regarding the case.

Hamas lost no time on Monday claiming that Jewish “settlers” had attacked Duma in a second arson attack. An Israeli security source responded, telling Arutz Sheva that the terror group is actively attempting to use the incident as a cynical tactic to provoke further attacks against Israelis in the area.

The lethal arson last month was followed by a slew of Arab terror attacks, including attempts to burn down Joseph’s Tomb, an apparent arson southeast of Jerusalem Sunday that released asbestos-laden ash on wide swathes of the city, a near-lethal firebomb attack in Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina, and numerous other attacks of varying degrees.

4.Power Of Jewish Indignation By Caroline B. Glick 8/20/15

BDS to Jpost: Matisyahu justified ‘Israeli crimes’

With Palestinian flags in background, Matisyahu vows:…

When Jews stand up to anti-Semites, the anti-Semites back down.

Perhaps we should thank Spain’s Rotodom Sunsplash reggae festival organizers. They just provided us with a textbook case both of the nature of today’s anti-Semitism and of how to defeat it.
Last weekend, the festival organizers canceled their invitation to Matisyahu, the American-Jewish reggae artist, because he refused to bow to the organizers’ demand that he publicly support “Palestine.”
Matisyahu was the only known Jew in the festival line-up and the only performer asked to produce such a statement.
Rather than take this lying down, on Monday Matisyahu recounted the episode on his Facebook page, writing, “It was appalling and offensive that as the one publicly Jewish-American artist scheduled for the festival they were trying to coerce me into political statements.”
Matisyahu’s disinvitation prompted a worldwide Jewish outcry. The Foreign Ministry registered a complaint with the Spanish government.

Every major American Jewish organization and several European Jewish organizations condemned the blatant discrimination against Matisyahu.
On Tuesday, Spain’s main newspaper, “El Pais” (The Country), condemned the festival’s anti-Semitism. The Spanish government followed hours later.
On Wednesday, the festival organizers issued a groveling apology to Matisyahu and officially reinstated his invitation to perform.
The organizers claim they were intimidated into discriminating against Matisyahu by a local anti-Israel BDS group. BDS País Valencià resorted to “pressures, threats and coercion” and warned the organizers that its members would “seriously disrupt the normal functioning of the festival.”
There are two main lessons here.
First, the BDS movement does not seek to end the so-called occupation of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. It does not seek peace.
By demanding that an American Jew denounce Israel as a condition for performing, the BDS movement made clear that the only Jews it is willing to countenance are anti-Semitic Jews. The only Jews BDS activists will accept in the public square are those who join them in denouncing Israel and denouncing Jews who support Israel.
In other words, the goal of BDS is deny Jews civil rights. All participants in the movement – whether non-Jews or Jews – are anti-Semites, because they all seek to boot from public life Jews who disagree with them.
The second lesson of the Matisyahu affair is that it is possible to defeat these haters. The festival organizers discriminated against Matisyahu because they feared the Jew-hating mob more than they valued his artistry. They are now groveling at his feet because the pushback they received from world Jewry for their behavior knocked them to their knees.
When Jews stand up to anti-Semites, the anti-Semites back down.
In the West today, the hardest part about standing up to anti-Semites is that most anti-Semites and the most powerful anti-Semitic movements are on the Left, where most Western Jews have traditionally situated themselves.
Although the US is far less anti-Semitic than Europe, ironically, it is in the US where Jews have the hardest time defending themselves. The relative mildness of anti-Semitism in the US makes anti-Semitic Jews feel comfortable joining anti-Semitic non-Jews in weakening Israel and the Jewish community.
Their involvement in anti-Semitic organizations, in turn, together with the relative weakness of the threat in comparison to Europe, inhibits mainstream Jewish groups from discrediting hostile Jews and hostile groups.
J Street has played a major role in recent years in subverting attempts to achieve Jewish unity on issues related both to Israel and to fighting anti-Semitism on college campuses.
Case in point is the communal division over President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.
This week, 340 rabbis signed a letter to Congress calling on lawmakers to support Obama’s nuclear deal with the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism. The letter received significant publicity in the US and contributed to a sense that the Jewish community stands with Obama against Israel in relation to the nuclear pact.
But whereas the organizers claimed that the signatories represented all streams of American Judaism, according to an analysis undertaken by the Zionist Organization of America, 187 of the signatories are members of J Street’s “Rabbinic Cabinet.”
The ZOA revealed as well that Ameinu, the Jewish group that organized the letter, is a J Street front group. Its National President Kenneth Bob also serves as J Street’s treasurer. Its Vice President and Executive Committee Chairwoman Judith Gelman is also a J Street official.
J Street is so radical that its student group J Street U just elected a Muslim to serve as its national president. President Amna Farooqi announced that J Street U is not a pro-Israel group. In her words, “We are not here to talk about the pro-Israel conversation on campus. We are here to talk about the occupation.” She declared that J Street U will dedicated itself to “yearlong anti-occupation work.”
Part of the reason the community has avoided taking J Street on is because of its deep ties to the Obama White House. For six years the White House has used J Street as a strategic weapon of influence. J Street’s assigned role is to prevent the Jewish community from opposing the administration’s rank hostility toward Israel and block Jewish criticism of the administration’s willingness to countenance and legitimize anti-Semitic allegations. These include Secretary of State John Kerry’s libelous accusations that Israel is about to become an apartheid state and that Israelis are uninterested in peace as well as Obama’s recent insinuations that there is something basically treacherous about American Jewish support for Israel.
It is a sign of J Street’s power that although the 340 activists who signed the J Street-inspired, pro-Iran rabbis’ letter to Congress make up just 6 percent of the rabbis in America, and although American Jews oppose the deal 2 to 1, neither the Reform and Conservative movements nor the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations has agreed to openly oppose the deal.
Then again, for a group with a direct line to the White House and apparently unlimited amounts of money, convincing a community that voted for Obama 3 to 1 twice to side with the White House against Israel should have been a piece of cake. And yet, the fact is that despite all of its advantages, while the Conservative and Reform movements haven’t come out in opposition to the deal, they also haven’t come out in support of it.
On Wednesday, the Reform movement issued a statement announcing it would refuse to take a stand on the issue. Although purportedly neutral, the statement criticized the administration’s employment of anti-Semitism in its attacks against opponents of the deal, stating, “We are concerned… with the possibility that some will use the debate as fuel for anti-Semitic views.”
With even the Reform movement denying its support, it is hard to imagine the administration will be able to secure the support of any major Jewish groups outside of J Street and the NJDC – the official Jewish wing of the Democratic Party.
In part, J Street’s failure is a testament to the overwhelming support for Israel among American Jews. In part, it owes to communal anger at Obama’s anti-Semitic bating of his Jewish opponents.
But a large share of the credit for blocking Obama’s attempts to split the community goes to Israel’s skillful diplomacy, which has challenged and empowered normally diffident Jewish leaders to stand up to the White House and withstand its pressure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to confront Obama directly and explain over and over why Obama’s deal endangers Israel makes it difficult for American Jewish leaders to support it. They cannot take Obama’s word for it when Netanyahu shows them how the deal guarantees Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, be well placed to achieve its goal of regional hegemony and develop the means to attack the US with nuclear warheads.
There is a lesson here about the role of Israeli diplomats in fighting anti-Semitism in the West & cultivating Jewish unity in defense of Jewish rights, even as leftist Jews seek to undermine that unity.
The lesson is that there is no point in trying to reach compromises with anti-Semites, or with those pushing agendas that endanger Israel and threaten the civil rights of Jewish communities in the West. Israel gains the most by demanding the most and patiently, clearly and convincingly justifying its demands.
Israel empowers Western Jews – including leftist American Jews – to stand with it, and to stand for their rights by unapologetically defending it and its rights.
This basic truth demonstrates why Israelis should be heartened rather than concerned about Netanyahu’s ambassadorial appointments.
His designated ambassador to Italy, Fiamma Nirenstein, has devoted her life to defending Israel and Jewish rights and fighting anti-Semitism in Europe. Netanyahu’s decision to appoint her to Rome is a clear sign that he is putting an end to the pathetic mollycoddling of anti-Israel forces in the hopes of appeasing them that has characterized Israel’s diplomacy for decades.
The concerns of some Italian Jews that Nirenstein’s appointment will raise allegations of dual loyalties against the community are proof not that Netanyahu made a mistake in appointing the famous Italian-Jewish journalist and former member of the Italian parliament to represent Israel, but that he was right to appoint her.
Only a fighter like Nirenstein who knows Italian culture inside and out can ensure that such allegations are discredited and that anti-Semites feel the same heat that the organizers of the reggae festival in Spain felt this week.
Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Danny Danon as ambassador to the UN springs from the same willingness to confront rather than appease anti-Semites. Danon’s unapologetic defense of Israel’s rights to Judea and Samaria has been attacked by the Left as proof that he will be unable to get along at the UN.
But Israel of course cannot get along at the UN. The only way for it to successfully defend itself in a body dedicated to delegitimizing it is by fighting for its rights every single day. That is why someone who makes no apologies and doesn’t worry about being loved is exactly the person Israel needs at the UN.
Matisyahu’s ejection and reinstatement at a reggae festival is a small story in the vast scope of events today. But it tells us that we can fight effectively for our rights against the anti-Semites on the Left. We can defend our rights and defeat our enemies on the Left if we stick to our guns and empower our fellow Jews – including leftist Jews – to do the same.
www.carolineglick.com

A week after learning that he had been selected to serve as Israel’s next U.N. ambassador, it seems Science, Technology and Space Minister Danny Danon is ready to take on his new role. After all, having survived the Israeli Left’s pummeling over his nomination, how hard can tackling the U.N. General Assembly be?

The criticism by Zionist Union heads Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni and Meretz leader Zehava Galon is understandable. Their idea of Israel’s diplomatic path, and any achievement it may yield in the international theater, includes first and foremost Israeli concessions in favor of a robust peace process. Danon has a different agenda.

After 60 years, it should be clear to all that the U.N. is hostile to Israel, regardless whether the government is led by the Right or the Left. One must remember that the various envoys in the U.N. did not exactly rush to embrace Professor Gabriela Shalev when she became ambassador in 2008, despite her stated support for the two-state solution, so apparently it makes no difference whether the Israeli ambassador is a member of Likud or of Meretz.

Israel’s troubles in the U.N. did not begin in 1967 and they will most likely not end in 2015. There is no need to even go as far back as 1975, when U.N. Resolution 3379 — adopted at a time when a leftist government ruled Israel — declared Zionism “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” and then-U.N. Ambassador Chaim Herzog took the document on which it was printed and tore it to pieces right before the other envoys’ eyes.

Just look at the last leg of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government in early 2009. Olmert was willing to negotiate peace on every possible front — Syria, Lebanon, and Judea and Samaria — and the U.N. still slapped Israel with the Goldstone report over Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, a report that would later prove to be one of the most putrid fruits ever grown by the U.N., and not just on the Israeli level.

An incumbent minister, and a rather popular one at that, who decides to resign his Knesset seat, pack his bags, and travel across the ocean, effectively curtailing his own ability to be an active participant in local discourse, all so he can one day return to the Likud and the government, does so with one successful model in mind — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Other Israeli ambassadors have made a successful round trip, of course — Abba Eban became the foreign minister and Chaim Herzog eventually became Israel’s sixth president — but none noted Netanyahu’s meteoric rise from a somewhat anonymous diplomat to candidate for the premiership shortly after his U.N. stint came to its end.

One could say the U.N. ambassadorship made Netanyahu’s career, something Danon surely hopes will happen in his case. The key, however, is not making the concessions his critics demand. On the contrary, Danon must demonstrate unwavering determination, as politically it may prove to be his only saving grace.

Most Israelis are not fans of the U.N., so they are unlikely to shed any tears if Israel stands its ground against its ill-wishers in one of the most hypocritical, morally corrupt organizations formed by the international community following World War II.

“This is a house of lies,” Netanyahu bluntly leveled at the General Assembly in 2011, quoting a warning given to him by the Lubavitcher rebbe 26 years ago, when Netanyahu assumed the ambassadorship. The heads of state attending that annual assembly remains seated in their chairs, admonished, while back home, Israelis applauded their TV sets.

Absurdly, the only success an ambitious politician assigned to the U.N. can hope for is failure. The more they hate Danon at the U.N., the more Israelis at home will love him. Only those willing to swim against the current as fast and as hard as they can will have the opportunity to stage a political comeback. Those who get swept up in the diplomatic vortex will most likely need to pursue a career change once their term ends.

Reality is lopsided in Israel as well, where the fate of Islamic Jihad member Mohammad Allan, who has staged a hunger strike to protest his administrative dentition, has practically made the Left and the Right switch ethical sides: The Left, which opposes force-feeding hunger strikers, has effectively endorsed a move that would bring about Allan’s demise, while the Right, which supports force-feeding, is fighting to save Allan’s life.

Anti-force feeding medical ethics, as presented by the Israeli Medical Association, are incompatible with reality. True, every patient has the right to refuse treatment, but a detainee or a prisoner is not the average patient — he is a ward of the state. The IMA may not recognize the difference, but reality does.

By definition, a detainee is an individual deprived of his freedoms, including freedom of movement, freedom of choice, and freedom of speech. He must abide by the rules of the detention facility in which he is held, and he is not free to converse with anyone he wishes. Why is removing these rights from a detainee different from removing the right to refuse medical treatment, even in the form of force-feeding? Only the IMA knows.

The natural gas labyrinth

Finance Minister and Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon’s decision to allow Kulanu MKs a free vote on the proposed framework regulating the natural gas industry instead of imposing faction discipline is problematic, and Netanyahu has no real leverage he can use to make Kahlon revise his decision.

Regardless of the issue, a situation in which a faction affords its MKs a free vote after the government had already declared its position on a certain matter undermines the coalition. Government decisions mean very little if it cannot control the Knesset.

Antitrust Authority Commissioner David Gilo refused to sign off on the proposed framework and even resigned in protest, although he has yet to leave office; Economy and Trade Minister Aryeh Deri, who was supposed to sign a special directive circumventing the antitrust commissioner, got cold feet and asked the matter be decided by the government and the Knesset; and after it seemed a Knesset majority had been secured when Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman suggested he would support going above the commissioner’s head, Kahlon has created a situation in which Netanyahu has to court anonymous Kulanu MKs to ensure their support for the framework.

The endless saga of the natural gas deal is becoming more complex, and the only leverage Netanyahu has on any MK who opposes it is appointing them Israeli ambassador to the offshore Leviathan gas rig.

6.Not Striking Iran in Time ‘Greatest Failure Ever’

Dr. Uzi Arad, who was National Security Advisor when the strike was mulled, is livid over revelations on why it was aborted. By Gil Ronen Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com 8/23/15

F-16 fighter jet Flash 90

The former National Security Advisor, Dr. Uzi Arad, said Sunday that the recordings in which former prime minister Ehud Barak spoke about the aborted plans for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program appeared to expose a scandalous failure.

It is unacceptable, he said, for the prime minister and senior ministers to support an attack, and for the attack not to be carried out. “The question is, why didn’t they apply their full weight on this matter,” he said, according to Army Radio. “This question is important today because if Iran is in a position to have options to break out to a nuclear [weapon]… then this is the state’s greatest failure ever.”

MK Tzahi Hanegbi (Likud), Chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Sunday the tapes should never have been made public.

“Where the hell was the Military Censor? I asked myself, how is this possible, and in all of the inquiries I’ve made since then, I have yet to receive a real answer on this matter,” he told Army Radio.

“I am going to summon the Military Censor’s people to talk with us at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee,” he promised. “We have been following the Censor’s actions for years.”

Barak said in the recordings – which were made public by a pair of biographers – that in 2010, the person who prevented a strike on Iran was then-Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who said that the military preparations were “not ripe,” and that in 2011-2, it was Ministers Yuval Steinitz and Moshe Yaalon who opposed it.

The strike was supported, he said, by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, and Barak himself, who was defense minister at the time.

Steinitz and Yaalon are considered to be the ministers closest to Netanyahu. It is therefore somewhat unlikely that they would oppose a strike if Netanyahu had put full pressure on them to support it.

Liberman told the military radio station that when top secret matters like this are discussed in the open, Israel projects an image that lacks credibility and seriousness. “That is one of the reasons why Iran is embraced by the international community and why we have been pushed into a corner,” he said. “It raises questions, with other nations, to what degree Israelis can keep a secret, and to what degree you can share information with them.”

7.Barak’s breach of confidence  BY Dan Margalit

Wise men have coined the chauvinistic Hebrew adage “everyone knows why the bride is getting married.” By the same token, everyone knows why politicians whisper into journalists’ ears, and in both instances, it would be uncouth to say the answer explicitly.

Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak should have known that when he allowed his biographers Danny Dor and Ilan Kfir, who added new chapters to their 15-year-old biography of Barak, to record their conversations. By allowing this little convenience, Barak in essence shot himself in the foot. The biographers handed the tapes over to Channel 2 reporter Roni Daniel — the same reporter who, together with colleague Amnon Abramovich, first broke the falsified Harpaz document.

Barak did not reveal any security secrets in the tape broadcast on Channel 2 this weekend. In addition, all the material been reported in the past. But when these things are heard being said by Barak himself — confirming former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi’s claim that he opposed an Israeli strike on Iran, and more importantly asserting that then-Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon and then-Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz supported the plan to strike Iran but then retracted their support — it creates quite a bit of embarrassment. Even though everyone knows these things, as they have all been leaked before, when they are explicitly uttered by the defense minister at the time it feels like a breach of confidence.

Did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak truly plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities? I always believed, and still do (though new questions have arisen in my mind since Friday), that Netanyahu’s and Barak’s intention was to create nothing more than a credible military threat. The impression of the threat alone was enough to achieve far-reaching diplomatic successes — the world (fearing an Iranian bomb) imposed economic sanctions on the ayatollahs, partially to prevent Israel from striking. In my opinion, that was the best course of action, but Barak denied that this was the strategy. According to him, it was not a façade – Israel really planned to strike.

If they really, truly meant to strike, they could have imposed their will on the cabinet. The opponents of an Iran strike — one IDF chief of staff (Ashkenazi) who said that it was impossible, and his successor, Benny Gantz, who said that it was indeed possible but that it would be a bad idea — were joined by then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan, whose opinion was relevant to the debate, and then-Shin Bet security agency chief Yuval Diskin, whose organization had nothing to do with the debate.

If we look back at history, in 1981, when then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin (who was also serving as the defense minister at the time) decided to strike the nuclear reactor in Iraq he managed to overcome all opposition to the move, including by then-Mossad chief Yitzhak Hofi, then-Military Intelligence chief Yehoshua Saguy and then-Israeli Atomic Energy Commission Director General Uzi Eilam. He overcame the opposition of former defense ministers and managed to recruit a decisive majority in favor of the strike.

Now we are left with the question of whether Netanyahu and Barak were actually determined to strike Iran or just using the military threat to effect an economic siege on Iran, without which the ayatollahs would have never agreed to negotiate curbing their nuclear program.

BY Yifa Yaakov, Lazar Berman & Ilan Ben Zion November 1, 2013

Kidnapped Turkish Airlines pilots Murat Akpinar, R. & Murat Agca, L (photo credit: YouTube)

Yifa Yaakov is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.

Lazar Berman is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.

Ilan Ben Zion is a news editor at Times of Israel. He holds a Masters degree in Diplomacy.

A report by Lebanon’s MTV Thursday cited Turkey as being behind the Wednesday attack in Latakia, Syria, which targeted “missiles and related equipment” meant for Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. The Lebanese report cited Israeli officials who allegedly claimed the attack came in response to the June 2012 interception of a Turkish jet, which Syrian forces shot down. The pilots were subsequently killed. The report could not be independently confirmed.

On Thursday, an Obama administration official had said it was Israeli warplanes that attacked the airbase in Latakia. Israel has remained tight-lipped over the alleged strike.
An American security official told AP that the attack occurred in the Syrian port city of Latakia and that the target was Russian-made SA-125 missiles.

The Israeli government and military establishment have declined to comment on the reports, although one Israeli official told Reuters he thought Israel had carried out the strike, but wasn’t certain. Israel has repeatedly warned that any attempt to transfer to Hezbollah chemical or other game-changing weapons would constitute a “red line” and precipitate military action.

Earlier Thursday, on the heels of reports that the airbase had contained advanced, Russian-made, anti-aircraft missiles, al-Arabiya reported that Israel had attacked not one, but two targets in the civil war-torn country.

Al-Arabiya’s report said two targets had been hit in Syria on Wednesday night — not just the Latakia air defense base, but a target in Damascus as well. Both targets were said to have contained shipments of Russian SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles meant for Hezbollah, which were reportedly completely destroyed.

A map of the Latakia airbase posted online shows three batteries of the Russian-made surface-to-air anti-aircraft missile at the base, outside Snobar Jableh in the country’s coastal Latakia region.

Earlier Thursday, al-Arabiya quoted opposition forces as saying the base held S-125 missiles.

The S-125 is especially effective against maneuverable low- to medium-altitude targets, including aircraft. The Egyptians used such missiles with some success during the War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and batteries used by Iraq may have knocked down coalition aircraft in the First Gulf War.

The system has undergone improvements since then, but countermeasures have also progressed significantly.

A massive explosion was reported at the base late Wednesday night, with some reports that it was targeted by missiles fired from the sea. The Syrian news outlet Dam Press, considered loyal to the regime of Bashar Assad, reported that the site was damaged but that there had been no injuries.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Lebanese government news agency reported six Israeli aircraft flying through Lebanese airspace along the coast north of Beirut.

The coastal strip of Syria, encompassing the cities of Tartous, Latakia and Baniyas, is part of a predominantly Alawite portion of the country, which remains loyal to the Assad regime in its lengthy campaign against rebels.

Israel has been accused of striking Syrian sites in the past, including in January and May this year. Israel refused to confirm the reports that it targeted weapons transfers, possibly to Hezbollah, which has remained loyal to Assad during the country’s bloody civil war.

Syria is reportedly in the midst of upgrading its missile-defense system to the Russian-made S-300, a move Israel has lobbied against. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

9.The NYT Does Yehuda Etzion By Yisrael Medad Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com 8/23/2015

Yisrael Medad – I am a resident of Shiloh, with my wife and children, and now grandchildren, since 1981, having come on Aliyah in 1970. I have served in a volunteer capacity as a Yesha Council spokesperson, twice a member of Amana’s secretariat, Benjamin Regional Council plenum member and mayor of Shiloh. I was a parliamentary aide for Geula Cohen and two other MKs, an advisor to a Minister, vice-chairman and executive director of Israel’s Media Watch and currently, am Information and Content Resource coordinator for the Begin Heritage Center.

While I have full empathy for Yehuda Etzion’s thinking regarding the suspected Jewish violence termed ‘price tag’, I would have wished that in his New York Times interview he could have suggested, vis a vis the Duma incident, that suspicion doesn’t mean guilt.

By that as it may, on another issue, he is quoted saying: “Yehuda changed his last name in 1968 to Etzion in homage to the first block of settlements built after Israel captured the West Bank”

JW wrote to me that: “Apparently, these experienced reporters are unaware that this “first block of settlements” was the recreation of the Mandate-era Etzion Bloc communities destroyed in the vicious fighting of 1947-48.”

And I replied: “?Well, actually, ‘settlements’ is post-67 semantics whereas ‘colonies’ is pre-48 semantics. The only real difficulty is in describing the 1948-1967 period as ‘ethnic cleansing of Jews’.”

After all, that was what happened. Jews residing in Jerusalem’s Old City, Atarot, Neveh Yaakov, Gush Etzion, Bet HaAravah, thousands, were expelled and became homeless refugees. And the Jordanian rule there was one that was an illegal occupation, with no quotation marks.

· Israel Resource Review 6 Elul 5775 | Friday, 8/21/15

10.A New Low? UN Report Suggests Israel Caused Gaza’s Rising Infant Death Rate, Doesn’t Mention Hamas

By Claudia Rosett – 6 Elul 5775 (August 21, 2015)

File this one under “UN Sleaze,” or perhaps under “UNRWA’s Use of Dead Infants to Defend and Abet Terrorists.”

Though even that may be putting it too mildly.

In the run-up to next month’s annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the latest Israel-trashing report from the propaganda mills of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been released. This one’s a doozy, summed up by an UNRWA press release dated August 8 with the headline: “INFANT MORTALITY RATE RISES IN GAZA FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FIFTY YEARS.”

This is the finding of an UNRWA-conducted study. In the opening sentence, the press release points a finger at — where else? — Israel, saying “the Agency’s Health Director says the blockade may be contributing to the trend.”

The UNRWA press release says that UNRWA carries out a survey of infant mortality rates across the region every five years. The most recent results, for 2013, were released last week. For decades, according to UNRWA’s surveys, the infant mortality rates in Gaza had been declining, but that has now reversed.

Since the last survey in 2008, the number of babies dying before the age of one has risen to 22.4 per 1,000 live births in 2013 from 20.2 in 2008. The UNRWA survey found an even worse trend for neonatal mortality — the number of babies dying before the age of four weeks. This rate, by UNRWA’s estimate, has risen to 20.3 per 1,000 live births from 12. According to the director of the UNRWA health program, Dr. Akihiro Seita, such a rise is “unprecedented.”

So, why might this be happening? The UNRWA press release quotes Dr. Seita musing:

It is hard to know the exact cause.

However, that does not stop Dr. Seita from speculating: “We are very concerned about the impact of the long-term blockade on health facilities, supplies of medicine and bringing equipment into Gaza.”

The same message, complete with that same quote, is repeated in a press release put out on August 15 by the UN headquarters in New York.

What’s wrong with this picture? Was there, perhaps, some over-arching development, unmentioned by UNRWA, that shaped events in Gaza during the interval in question, 2008-2013?

Here’s a one-word answer, which does not appear anywhere in either the UN press releases or in the underlying UNRWA report: “Hamas.” Or, to put it in the all-caps style of the UNRWA press release, where it should have figured in the headline, but did not: “HAMAS.”

Yes, the Palestinian terrorist organization which since 2007 has ruled Gaza.

Assume that UNRWA’s infant mortality statistics for Gaza are remotely reliable: for decades — while UNRWA deplored Israel’s presence in Gaza — infant mortality rates in the enclave were declining. Then, in 2005, Israel withdrew.

In Gaza’s elections in 2006, Hamas won a legislative majority. In June 2007 in a bloody coup, Hamas evicted the rival Fatah forces of the Palestinian Authority. Since then, Gaza has been under the boot of Hamas.

Shortly after Hamas took complete control in Gaza, UNRWA conducted its 2008 survey.

At that stage, compared to surveys done some years earlier, the long-term trend was a significant decline in infant mortality. According to UNRWA’s numbers, infant mortality in the Gaza Strip had declined from 127 deaths per live births in 1960 to 82 in 1967, then to 33 in 1995, and to 20.2 in 2008. But after five years of Hamas control, UNRWA found that infant mortality rates were rising for the first time in a half-century.

Again, UNRWA made no mention at all of Hamas.

Surely, if UNRWA is genuinely concerned about infant mortality in Gaza, then honesty is needed in considering the real causes of these infant deaths, and in mentioning that the uptick has occurred under Hamas. But UNRWA appears less interested in the lives of these babies than in stitching together a report that is willfully oblivious to the derelictions and depravities of Hamas, and is instead larded with insinuations that can be used to damage Israel.

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/reading-between-the-lines-of-latest-unrwa-propaganda-more-babies-dying-in-gaza-under-hamas/

11.TALE OF THE TWO-TIMING TERRORIST by Daniel Greenfield a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. August 21, 2015

It’s time for Israel to kick two-timing terrorist supporters out of its house.

When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Israel’s parliament, he was heckled by Muslim politicians. Netanyahu told the conservative Canadian leader that the presence of a vocal opposition was the difference between Israel and Syria.

The leader of the Muslim hecklers pointed at parliamentarian Talab Abu-Arar and howled, “There is no water or electricity in his village. Perhaps in Syria they have such things.”

As it turned out, Talab Abu-Arar not only had water, electricity, air conditioners, high speed internet and a satellite television dish, the Muslim Brotherhood politician also had two wives.

Abu Arar had gotten “almost ten children” out of his first wife, but the middle-aged Imam added a second twenty-year old wife. Unfortunately the devout Muslim leader was apparently unable to get permission from his first wife which made the arrangement illegal under the infidel law of the Zionist entity.

Not only does the Israeli apartheid state interfere with cultural practices like beating wives and honor killing them, but it humiliates a Muslim man by telling him to ask his wife to let him get another wife.

While Islamic law does not require that a Muslim man get permission from his wife to expand his harem, Israel does. Talab Abu-Arar, who waged a persistent campaign against Israel, apparently could not overcome this sudden alliance between his wife and the Zionist devil. Much as Abu-Arar denounced Israel’s opposition to polygamy as “anti-democratic” in the Knesset, there was no way around it.

He couldn’t fight both Israel and his wife.

And so Wife #2, recognized by Islamic law, but illegal under Israeli law, lives in a separate house. Officially the second wife, who added more children to the clan, is only a mistress. But unofficially, Abu Arar, the head of a mosque in his village, appeared to have begun scouting for Wife #3 or Mistress #2.

Depending on how you keep count in the Arara drama of “As the Oasis Turns”.

Talab Abu-Arar’s official email address for Israel’s Knesset, its parliament, appeared on the list of addresses leaked from “dating” website Ashley Madison for men who want to cheat on their wives.

In his case, it was literally “wives”.

Like Anthony Weiner, another philandering politician with Muslim Brotherhood links, Talab Abu-Arar blamed “hackers” who had “signed up my email in order to damage my good name”. It’s unclear why a hacker would have wanted to covertly set up an account that no one outside the site’s management would know about or how these hackers would have managed to confirm his email.

Or how revealing that a man with an official mistress was seeking seventy-one more, even before martyrdom, could possibly damage his good name.

There are of course more damning things about Talab Abu-Arar than an alleged frantic attempt to hit the four-wife limit before he hits fifty.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Israel is divided into different sections. While Hamas is the best known of these, the Brotherhood also operates as the “Islamic Movement in ‘48 Palestine”. Typical of the Muslim Brotherhood’s two-faced strategy, the “Movement” is split between the “extremist” northern branch and the “moderate” southern branch.

Both want to destroy Israel, but only the southern “moderates” do it by running for public office.

Ibrahim Sarsour, the head of the southern Islamic movement, sat in the Knesset and promised to build a “Bridge between Israeli Jews and the Arab and Muslim world.” The details of the architecture of that wonderful bridge however involved destroying Israeland establishing a caliphate in Jerusalem.

Like Abu Arar, Sarsour was a two-timer. While he was setting up dates with liberal Jewish leaders and promising them a bridge to the 7^th century, he was also dating Hamas leaders. A Muslim Brotherhood politician who participates in political activities in an infidel country is always a two-timer. His ultimate allegiance is to the Islamic State, the thousand-year Reich of the Caliphate to be built on the ashes and bones of the people of the land his movement is colonizing.

The “moderate” and the “extreme” branches of the Islamic Movement share the same destructive goals as Hamas. When they aren’t looking for new wives on Ashley Madison, they’re trying to destroy Israel.

The roots of the Islamic Movement in Israel go back to Hitler’s Mufti [Amin Al-Husseini] who was named the first director of the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Mufti wasn’t around due to his Nazi connections, but the Brotherhood had also been allied with the Nazis. During Israel’s War of Independence, its forces invaded Israel with some 10,000 fighters in an attempt to exterminate the Jews.

A battalion of Brotherhood butchers went after the village of Kfar Darom where 400 men, women and children were defended by forty-five Israeli militia members. The Brotherhood’s Jihadists attacked and were beaten back. They launched an artillery barrage against the small village, but like many of the rockets fired by their Hamas descendants, the shelling fell short and instead killed the terrorists.

The Muslim Brotherhood had tanks, and the Jewish defenders were short on ammo and food, but the village held out for two months. Among the Muslim Brotherhood attackers was an Egyptian who would eventually become the face of the imaginary “Palestinian” people. His name was Yasser Arafat.

The myth of the moderate and the extremist terrorist is like the myth of the faithful cheating husband.

Arafat, Al Qaeda, Hamas and the branches of the Islamic Movement are all the same thing. It’s all the Muslim Brotherhood and behind the fronts, facades and false faces, the agenda is mass murder.

The “moderate” southern Islamic movement is the one whose kindergartens teach children to chant, “O Allah, slaughter them. O Allah, make widows of Jewish women… make orphans of their children.”

When Abu Arar isn’t searching for his 72 virgins, he is out giving interviews to Hamas publications or declaring that Jews have no right to pray at the site of their own temple, which is now under Muslim occupation, because “Any non-Muslim person has no right to pray at the holy Aqsa Mosque.”

“It should be closed all the time to Jews,” Abu Arar said.

This is true Apartheid.

Talab Abu-Arar, like the rest of the Islamic Movement politicians in the Knesset, is “cheating” on Israel, but like his double marriage, it’s an obvious adultery. No one expects a man who openly flaunts two wives to be faithful and no one should expect Muslim Brotherhood members to be loyal to whichever country they happen to be living and plotting in.

When the adultery is this obvious, it’s time for a divorce. In political terms that means booting Abu Arar and his confederates out of Israel’s parliament to give them more time to look for Wife #3 or #4.

The spectacle of terrorist supporters who openly advocate for Israel’s destruction sitting in its parliament is obscene all the more so because Israelis on the far right have been banned from running for public office for far less than the Jihadists of the Joint List. A political movement allied with the enemies of a country in order to destroy it is an enemy organization and should be treated that way.

As the Ashley Madison user names are leaked, unfaithful men will be getting kicked out of homes. It’s time for Israel to kick the two-timing terrorist supporters out of its house. ABOUT DANIEL GREENFIELD, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF August 24, 2015

Illustrative photo of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, August 17, 2014 (AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)

According to the report, Israel purchased 19 million barrels of Kurdish oil, worth roughly $1 billion, between May and August of this year. The massive amount meets two-thirds of the Jewish state’s oil needs and may be a way for Jerusalem to covertly support the Kurds’ fight against the Islamic State, the report said.

“That is the equivalent of about 77 per cent of the average Israeli demand, which runs at roughly 240,000 barrels per day. More than a third of all of the northern Iraqi exports, which are shipped from Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, went to Israel over the period,” continued the report. Industry sources said Israel may have stored or exported some of the oil.

The Kurdistan Regional Government denied selling the oil “directly or indirectly” to Israel, but said that its main concern was funding the battle against IS and preserving the functioning of government.

“We do not care where the oil goes once we have delivered it to the traders,” a senior Kurdish government adviser in Erbil told the Financial Times. “Our priority is getting the cash to fund our Peshmerga forces against Daesh [the Arabic term for IS] and to pay civil servants’ salaries.”

The report stressed that Israel aside, the Kurds in Iraq have exported oil to Italy, France and Greece, deepening a dispute between the Kurds and the Iraqi leadership over oil exports.

“Traders and industry analysts have suggested that Israel may be acquiring the Kurdish oil at a discounted price, though officials in the Kurdistan Regional Government deny this. Others have suggested it may be a way for Israel to funnel financial support to the Kurds,” the report speculated.

A report in February 2015 said an Iraqi Kurdish tanker, United Kalvrvta, had docked in Ashkelon with 1 million barrels of crude oil on board.

In the 1960s, Israel sent Mossad advisers to help Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani, and to manage the Kurds’ battles against the Iraqi army.

Former foreign minister says ex-defense minister’s statements on plans to strike nuclear facilities strengthen Tehran

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF August 23, 2015, 9:22 am 26

Defense minister Ehud Barak (holding pen) looks at foreign minister Avigdor Liberman (to his right) at a 2010 cabinet meeting. (Amit Shabi/POOL/FLASH90)

Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday accused erstwhile defense minister Ehud Barak of exposing state secrets, after the latter detailed on tape three occasions between 2010 and 2012 when Israel was ostensibly poised to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Liberman told Army Radio that he was “more than surprised” at Barak, and said statements such as those given by the former minister would ultimately strengthen Iran.

“I think that when moves and discussions that should have been closely guarded state secrets are discussed by the press, it relays that you are a talker, that you aren’t serious, that you’re unreliable,” he said.

“That is why, among other reasons, Iran is being coddled by the international community, and we have been backed into a corner… These things should only have been discussed in closed forums.”

Asked whether he believed Barak was guilty of revealing state secrets, Liberman responded that he had “no doubt” that was the case.

Channel 2, which broadcast the bombshell recordings of Barak on Friday night, said Saturday that “anger” at the former defense minister was widespread in the Israeli leadership, and that numerous senior political and security officials were also privately intimating that Barak’s version of events was not entirely accurate. The Prime Minister’s Office did not issue an official response to the broadcast.

In the tapes, whose broadcast Barak was said to have tried to prevent, he claims that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to attack Iran in 2010, but that then-IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi indicated that there was no viable plan for such an operation; that they were thwarted in 2011 by the opposition of fellow ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Yuval Steinitz; and that a planned 2012 strike was aborted because it happened to coincide with a joint Israel-US military exercise and Israel did not want to drag the US into the fray.

In the aftermath of the broadcast of the tapes, Channel 2 said Saturday, various key Israeli figures indicated that Ashkenazi did not rule out an operation as decisively as Barak suggested, and that a great deal of preparatory work had been done. Furthermore, the TV report Saturday said, Ashkenazi was by no means the only senior Israeli figure who was not decisively supportive of a strike at that time. Others included then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who later made public his opposition, and top ministers including Dan Meridor and Eli Yishai.

Even if approval had been forthcoming for a strike, the TV report said, it was by no means certain that Israel would have actually gone ahead with it. The discussions described by Barak may have been “more a case of ‘hold us back’” than a genuine determination by Netanyahu and Barak to carry out an attack.

Channel 2 also suggested that Barak may be playing party politics with his comments. Ashkenazi is said to be considering entering politics, and Barak, who has now retired from politics, may be out to thwart him. The two became bitter rivals over the years, and Barak’s relationship with current defense minister Ya’alon has also been tempestuous.

The material in the tapes comes from conversations related to a new biography of Barak being written by Danny Dor and Ilan Kfir. The former defense minister, who was also previously prime minister and chief of staff, attempted to prevent the broadcasting of the recordings, but Israel’s military censors allowed Channel 2 to play them.

The airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were ostensibly planned to take place because Netanyahu and Barak anticipated that Iran would enter a “zone of immunity,” in which its facilities were so well-protected or developed as to render an attack on them either a short-term solution or even futile. Netanyahu maintains to this day, however, that Israel will act alone if necessary to prevent Iran attaining nuclear weapons, and has been a leading critic of the P5+1 deal with Iran that curbs but does not dismantle its nuclear program.

Barak was said Friday to have expressed outrage that the recordings had been released.

Steinitz said it was grave that such material was broadcast and had no comment on the specifics, while Ya’alon said he had no comment on what he called biased and skewed material.