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February 13, 2012

Israel blames Iran after attacks on Embassy staff

Leave a Comment / Lead Story, News, Worldwide /

Israel accused arch-enemies Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind twin bomb attacks that targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia on Monday, wounding four people.

Tehran denied involvement in the attacks, which amplified tensions between two countries already at loggerheads over Iran’s nuclear program, and accused Israel of carrying out the attacks itself. Hezbollah made no comment.

In the Indian capital New Delhi, a bomb wrecked a car taking an Israeli embassy official to pick up her children from school, police said. The woman needed surgery to remove shrapnel but her life was not in danger.

Her driver and two passers-by suffered lesser injuries.

Israeli officials said an attempt to bomb an embassy car in the Georgian capital Tbilisi failed, and the device was defused.

Israel had put its foreign missions on high alert ahead of the fourth anniversary this past Sunday of the assassination in Syria of the military mastermind of Hezbollah, Imad Moughniyeh – an attack widely assumed to be the work of Israeli agents.

Israel is believed to be locked in a wider covert war with Iran, whose nuclear program has been beset by apparent sabotage, including the unclaimed killings of several Iranian nuclear scientists, most recently in January.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed both Iran and Hezbollah, accusing them of responsibility for a string of recent attempted attacks on Israeli interests in countries as far apart as Thailand and Azerbaijan.

“Iran and its proxy Hezbollah are behind each of these attacks,” said Netanyahu, who dismisses Iran denials that it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. “We will continue to take strong and systematic, yet patient, action against the international terrorism that originates in Iran.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast rejected Netanyahu’s accusation, saying it was Israel that had carried out the attacks as part of its psychological warfare against Iran.

“It seems that these suspicious incidents are designed by the Zionist regime and carried out with the aim of harming Iran’s reputation,” the official news agency IRNA quoted Mehmanparast as saying.

Israeli officials have long made veiled threats to retaliate against Lebanon for any Hezbollah attack on their interests abroad, arguing that as the Islamist group sits in government in Beirut, its actions reflect national policy.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters in Washington that the United States had no information yet on who was responsible, adding: “These incidents underscore our ongoing concerns of the targeting of Israeli interests overseas.”

MOTORCYCLE ATTACK

The New Delhi blast took place some 500 meters (yards) from the official residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

B.K. Gupta, the New Delhi police commissioner, said a witness had seen a motorcyclist stick a device to the back of the car, which had diplomatic registration plates.

“The eyewitness … says it (was) some kind of magnetic device. As soon as the motorcycle moved away a good distance from the car, the car blew up and it caught fire,” said Gupta.

The Iranian scientist killed in Tehran last month died in a similar such attack by a motorcyclist who attached a device to his car. No one has claimed responsibility for that, although Iran was quick to accuse agents of Israel and its U.S. ally.

Israel named the injured woman as Talya Yehoshua Koren, who worked at the embassy and was married to the defense attache.

“She was able to drag herself from the car and is now at the American hospital, where two Israeli doctors are treating her,” an Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Thailand said last month its police had arrested a Lebanese man linked to Hezbollah, and that he later led them to a warehouse stocked with bomb-making materials. Also last month, authorities in Azerbaijan arrested two people suspected of plotting to attack Israel’s ambassador and a local rabbi.

In a speech on January 24, Israel’s military chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, accused Hezbollah of trying to carry out proxy attacks while avoiding direct confrontation.

“During this period of time, when our enemies in the north avoid carrying out attacks, fearing a harsh response, we are witnesses to the ongoing attempts by Hezbollah and other hostile entities to execute vicious terror attacks at locations far away from the state of Israel,” Gantz said.

“I suggest that no one test our resolve.”

Israel and Hezbollah fought an inconclusive and costly war across the Lebanese border in 2006.

Additional reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee, Annie Banerji and Arup Roy Choudhury in New Delhi, Zahra Hosseinian in Tehran, Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Editing by Crispian Balmer, Mark Heinrich, Alastair Macdonald and Kevin Liffey

Israel blames Iran after attacks on Embassy staff Read More »

February 13, 2012

Leave a Comment / Israel, Must Reads /

Obama’s Dangerous Game With Iran

In an in-depth article for the Daily Beast, Daniel Klaidman, Eli Lake and Dan Ephron look at the evolution and choreography of the current administration’s policy on Iran.

Israeli officials now insist that Obama has undergone what they regard as a positive evolution in his views on Iran. “The rhetoric from the United States today is different from what it was a year ago,” says an Israeli in Netanyahu’s inner circle. “Today, when you listen to Obama … you get the feeling the Americans are ready to attack if worse comes to worst.” Another official privy to discussions on Iran at the highest levels in Israel says, “It becomes clearer and clearer that America is on the course of a growing conflict, growing friction, growing risk of a big conflict with Iran.”

Warning Iran Against Hitting ‘Soft’ American Targets

Iran must understand any assault on any American target will be viewed as an act of war, and draw an appropriate response, writes Alan Dershowitz in the Wall Street Journal.

Under international law, an attack on an embassy is an attack both on the embassy’s country and on the country in which the embassy is located. And under the charter of the United Nations, an attack against a nation’s citizens on its territory is an act of armed aggression that justifies retaliatory military action.

Palestinian unity deal faces big hurdle

Mahmoud Abbas must pull off a delicate balancing act in order to preserve the latest Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, write Karin Laub and Mohammed Daraghmeh of the Associated Press.

The Palestinian leader has to satisfy international demands that the interim government — to consist of politically independent technocrats — not be a front for Hamas, shunned by the West as a terror group. If it is seen as too close to Hamas, the Palestinians would likely lose hundreds of millions of dollars in Western aid. At the same time, he risks sabotage from Hamas leaders in Gaza if he tries to strip them of too much of their power.

Sunni-Shiite conflict: fact or fuss?

Writing in Today’s Zaman, Ramazan Gözen explores the roots of a sectarian divide within Islam, and the extent of its role in current international affairs.

There are undoubtedly certain problems and a rivalry between Turkey and Iran, but aren’t Turkey and Iran rivals with other countries, too? Does that lead us to think that the Turkey-France discord we are seeing today or the US-Iran dispute can be explained in terms of sectarian problems? Of course not.

February 13, 2012 Read More »

The Last Taboo: The Lord Shall Preserve Thee From All Evil

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News /

My boyfriend and I were in a car accident this weekend.  We both are fine.  Nothing more than a few bruises on us.  The cars were not so lucky, though of course we know it could have been much worse.  But when the storm had passed, the incident afforded me an unexpected peak into an aspect of my boyfriend that that I was rather mystified to see.  He invoked God.  Out loud. 

The car crash was jarring.  It definitely shook us pretty good and for a long five seconds, it was incredibly scary.  There’s a lot you can tell about a person by the way they handle life’s unexpected adversity.  Of course, it’s easy to be in love when times are good, but we’re also looking for someone who will be with us when dealing with the inevitable fear and sadness that life might mete out at any moment.  It came as no surprise to me that my boyfriend was fairly calm and overly concerned about me from the second of impact till well, he hasn’t stopped being concerned.  The moment the car stopped moving when I had barely processed what happened, let alone stopped hearing the screech of tires and metal frames crushing in on themselves, he turned to me and steadily asked me if I was all right.

The next hour or so was an awful blur of police officers and phone calls and tow trucks and shaky hands and wobbly legs and grabbing hold of the person I was lucky to be with.  But luck was what I attributed it all to.  I am not an atheist but at the same time I don’t really think much about God in my daily life.  When good things happen I don’t thank him(/her/it) and when bad things happen I try not to blame him.

So I was almost shocked after a year of dating to hear God invoked for the first time.  In the middle of the night, I finally crawled into bed still shaking from the impact, him holding me tight, giving me tiny little kisses on the forehead the way boys do when they want to take care of you but can’t offer anything else up.  When my boyfriend mentioned that if the other car had hit us a few seconds later and not hit the wheel well on his car but actually the driver’s side, he could have been seriously hurt, I thanked my lucky stars.  But he thanked God.  It was short and only a sentence long but it was something akin to prayer in which he thanked God for keeping us safe and out of danger and watching out for us.

Now let me back up here and say that in today’s day and age, especially in the educated liberal part which let’s face it is pretty much the only part I know, there’s not much talk of God anywhere.  It’s just not something that comes up in conversation much.  We certainly will talk about religion or going to temple or church or interfaith marriages or whether or kids will go to Hebrew school.  But outright talk of God is rather rare.  Perhaps it has become so much associated with fundamentalist Evangelicals that we’re scared to invoke God for fear of being associated with a nutjob who wants to bring stoning of adulterers into Congress?  Perhaps we scared of sounding anti-intellectual?  So although my boyfriend and I have talked extensively about religion, we haven’t much talked about God.  It came up once early on and I sheepishly confirmed to him that as much as I would like to be completely convinced by Christopher Hitchens, in the abstract I’m still a believer.  He told me he also believed in ‘something’ and comforted us both with a reminder that Einstein too believed in God.  And we left it at that.  It seemed there was nothing more to say on the subject.

But then there I was, in the middle of the night listening to my boyfriend uttering words out loud to thank God for keeping us safe.  And it caught me off guard.  Humbling and touching yes, but it made me realize that God is a very different thing for both of us.  For me, God wasn’t keeping us safe.  God was probably irritated with us for not being more careful and it was simply luck that kept us safe.  Because otherwise, if something worse had happened, then we’re stuck believing that God didn’t keep us safe on purpose and that doesn’t conform to my notion of God at all.  And yet, there are plenty of times when I’m defeated that I tell myself, it’s all meant to be and everything happens for a reason.  But to be honest, I am nervous to voice this at times.  It seems that one of the last social taboos left around is belief in an active God.  I imagine I would be mocked in certain left-leaning intellectual circles if I voice this opinion.  We seem to have succumbed to a tacit understanding, that though some of us are unable to give up a belief in God, we have all agreed never to speak of it so that no one has to fess up to this crude belief.  This way no one can mock us for refusing reason and rationality which of course are the same ammunitions we use to degrade the other side in the fight against religious extremism. 

But I guess what shocks me most, is not that he let this utterance escape in a time of stress but rather that I didn’t know this about him.  Although, I can’t say I know how most of my friends feel on the subject.  I know all of my friend’s religions and I can probably tell you how religious they are i.e. how often they go to church or if their children will be raised with religion.  But I can’t tell you at all, if they really believe in God and I have no idea which of them might utter a thank you similar to my boyfriend in the quiet of their bedroom at night and which ones never utter a silent prayer at all.

So much has become so public these days.  If I went to check up on an old friend from camp, in a few seconds I can find out if she’s in a relationship, what her politics are, what her “likes” are, and what she looks like.  But I don’t really know if my own sister believes the same way I do about God.  Why do we all feel compelled to keep this from each other?  Is the real face of religious liberty a culture of secret religiosity.

It took a frightful scare for my boyfriend to open up about his God.  I wanted to talk more about my God but in the dark of night, it all seemed insignificant.  It didn’t matter to me if it was luck or God that kept me safe.  I was just glad to be there, in a cozy home, listening to the still-quick heartbeat of my lover.  And when he finished his pithy prayer, I thought to myself amen. 

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.  Psalm 121


Tamara Shayne Kagel is a writer living in Santa Monica, CA. To find out more about her, visit” title=”@tamaraskagel.” target=”_blank”>@tamaraskagel. © Copyright 2011.

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No endorsement by Calif. Dems in Berman-Sherman race

Leave a Comment / California, Is Featured?, Mobile Sections, News /

The California Democratic party isn’t taking sides in the race between Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman, the two incumbent Democrats facing off in the 30th Congressional District.

I wasn’t at the state party convention in San Diego this weekend, but according to KQED’s John Myers, the two congressmen “came out swinging” in their addresses to the party’s endorsement caucus.

“Sherman accused Berman of being bought by big corporations,” Myers wrote, “Berman called Sherman ‘slightly pathetic.’”

And both campaigns are calling the non-endorsement a victory.

In a press release sent out on Saturday evening, within hours of the vote, Berman called the outcome “just and appropriate.” The Sherman campaign sent out no formal press release, but in an email, campaign manager Parke Skelton reported what the Berman campaign’s email left out—the exact tally of the votes.

According to Skelton, 55 percent of the delegates who cast ballots voted for Sherman while 39 percent voted for Berman. According to Myers, a preliminary count was 69 votes for Sherman and 52 for Berman. Either way, the result kept Sherman below the 60 percent threshold that he would have needed to secure the party’s nomination.

“This race will now be decided on the merits of our candidacies,” Berman said in the statement, “and I’m confident that my record of effectiveness will earn the support of the voters of the 30th Congressional District.”

Skelton pointed to the result as evidence of Sherman’s base of support.

“We’re very happy with our strong showing which demonstrates, once again, that Brad has the overwhelming support of grassroots Democrats in the Valley,” he wrote.

No endorsement by Calif. Dems in Berman-Sherman race Read More »

Meet the folks who are preparing for the apocalypse

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” title=”Doomsday Preppers” target=”_blank”>Doomsday Preppers.” I’m definitely not prepared—for the end of the world or for some of the apocalyptic scenarios I expect to encounter in this show. ” title=”reports” target=”_blank”>reports:

The show looks at more than a dozen Americans who have turned building bullet-proof shelters, stocking up on several years’ worth of canned goods and mapping evacuation routes into a kind of pricey game of one-upmanship. Whoever wins may be the last man (or woman) standing – literally.

But in another sense, the preppers don’t think of what they do as a weekend pastime. They see an end coming – be it because of a depletion of all the world’s oil or a shifting of the planet’s axis or a meltdown of the stock market. As a result, they simply follow the old scouting motto: Be prepared.

“These are not just a handful of people living in the mountains. They’re everywhere,” says Michael Cascio, National Geographic Channel’s executive vice president of programming.