Zitat:Israel threatens to expel Turkish ambassador

Deputy FM Ayalon tells Channel 2 he did not mean to humiliate Ambassador Celikkol by seating him on sofa lower than his own, but says Israel was right to make it clear to Turks that there would be a 'price tag' for 'trampling upon the dignity of the Jewish state'. Islamic human rights group holds march to protest Barak's planned visit to Ankara

Zitat:IAF rescues four people from truck stranded in Negev flood

Members of the Israel Air Force's air rescue unit airlifted on Monday four men stranded on a truck in the middle of flood caused by the massive rainfall which hit Israel in recent days.

The hour-and-a-half long rescue operation was led by two IAF helicopters, under what rescuers said were extreme weather conditions that seriously hindered their efforts.

Earlier Monday, 55-year-old Sarah Noy Fogel was killed and another person went missing after their car was swept into a flooded river in southern Israel.

[...]

According to the meteorological services company Meteo-Tech, the rain, which was forecast to begin overnight, could amount to between 50 and 100 millimeters.

Rain will fall all day Monday from the Galilee to the Eilat region. The downpour will let up Tuesday and resume on Wednesday, meteorologists say. Snow is expected atop Mt. Hermon.

[...]

In the past two days forecasters have repeatedly warned of possible flash floods in desert river beds and flooding in the main cities. In Eilat, which is expected to see rain equivalent to four years' average fall, special preparations are underway and hiking in the region has been banned.

[...]

Zitat:Deutsch-israelische Kabinettssitzung

Merkel und Netanjahu drohen Iran mit Sanktionen

Nahost-Konflikt, Streit mit Iran, wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit: Deutschland und Israel sind zu Regierungskonsultationen in Berlin zusammengekommen. Bei der historischen Sitzung lobten beide Länder die guten Beziehungen - und mahnten Teheran, im Atomstreit nachzugeben. Sonst drohten Sanktionen.

Zitat:Obama: I misjudged the will for peace

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met US Mideast envoy George Mitchell Thursday night, a few hours after Time magazine published an interview with US President Barack Obama in which he admitted that he erred during his first year in office by raising too high expectations of a Middle East breakthrough.

"I'll be honest with you, this is just really hard," Obama said when asked about the Middle East. For all his administration's early engagement in the conflict, he acknowledged, things were not where he would want them to be.

"This is as intractable a problem as you get," Obama said. "Both sides - the Israelis and the Palestinians - have found that the political environment, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that."


[...]

Zitat:10,5 Millionen Dollar für Zerstörung während Gaza-Offensive
Israel entschädigt die Vereinten Nationen

Israel hat die Vereinten Nationen für die Zerstörung von UN-Einrichtungen im Gazastreifen während der israelischen Offensive entschädigt.
...

Ursprünglich hatte die UNO 11,2 Millionen Dollar gefordert.

Das Geld ist Schadensersatz für UN-Eigentum, das bei den Angriffen zwischen Ende Dezember 2008 und Mitte Januar 2009 zerstört wurde. Darunter waren Schulen für Palästinenser, aber auch Warenlager und UN-Fahrzeuge.
...
Stand: 22.01.2010 22:10 Uhr

Zitat: IDF set to counter Goldstone Report

The IDF report to be submitted in response to the Goldstone Report will include photographed evidence contradicting war crime charges against Israel.

The New York Times published Saturday findings from the IDF report that contradict some of Goldstone's claims regarding destruction in Gaza during Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

Among other things, a flourmill that was said to have been targeted by Israeli warplanes was in fact hit by Hamas fire, according to Israel's rebuttal. In another case, Israel will argue that a sewage facility said to have been deliberately targeted by the IDF was mistakenly hit during a firefight with Hamas.

[...]

"I have read every report, from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Arab League,” Mandelblit was quoted as saying. “We ourselves set up investigations into 140 complaints. It is when you read these other reports and complaints that you realize how truly vicious the Goldstone Report is. He made it look like we set out to go after the economic infrastructure and civilians, that it was intentional. It’s a vicious lie.”

Zitat:Netanyahu: Settlement blocs forever Israeli

Ahead of Tu B'Shvat holiday, prime minister plants trees with West Bank settlers, says 'vast majority of Israel's citizens accept settlement blocs as inseparable part of Israel'

"The message is clear – we are here and will remain here. We are planting and building; this is an inseparable part of the State of Israel," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday during a tree-planting tour of the West Bank settlement blocs.
[...]

Zitat:European Anti-Semitism Worse Since 2008

Anti-Semitism in Western Europe last year was the worst since World War II, according to the Jewish Agency’s arm for fighting attacks and incitement against Jews.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein directly linked worsening anti-Semitism with the United Nations “Goldstone Report” on alleged war crimes in last year’s Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign aimed at putting a halt to eight years of lethal rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.

[...]

“Another flare-up in the region, similar to the Gaza operation, will probably lead to an even more severe outbreak of anti-Semitic activity against communities worldwide,” warned the Jewish Agency’s Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism

The Jewish Agency’s report Sunday comes three days before the U.N.-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday, which coincides with the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi Germany.

[...]

Zitat: Goldstone Report anti-Semitic

Peres in Berlin, Netanyahu in Auschwitz, Lieberman in Budapest and Edelstein at UN headquarters in New York all plan attack UN report into Gaza war on International Holocaust Day. 'It's not an easy connection, but we must learn the lessons from what happened,' information minister tells Ynet

Israel to launch attack on Goldstone Report on Holocaust Day. The world will mark International Holocaust Day on Wednesday. Monday will see President Shimon Peres fly to Berlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leave for a visit to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. They will be joined by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in Budapest and Information Minister Yuli Edelstein in New York.


Before meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Edelstein referred to the report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, calling it "anti-Semitic".

[...]

Zitat:Obama gesteht Scheitern in Nahost
Tel Aviv - US-Präsident Barack Obama hat öffentlich das Scheitern seiner Nahost-Politik eingestanden und Israelis und Palästinenser gleichermaßen dafür verantwortlich gemacht. Beide Seiten hätten zu viele interne Probleme, die einer Friedenslösung im Weg stünden, sagte Obama in einem Interview mit dem US-Magazin Time. "Und ich denke, dass wir unsere Fähigkeiten überschätzt haben, sie zu überreden", fügte er an. Wenn seine Regierung manche der Schwierigkeiten früher gesehen hätte, "hätten wir die Erwartungen nicht so hoch geschraubt", sagte der Präsident. Obamas Äußerungen wurden im Nahen Osten als erstes Anzeichen für einen Rückzug der US-Administration gewertet.....

Zitat:What was Obama thinking?

[...]

“It took him a year to discover the obvious,” a senior Israeli official says. “What was Obama thinking exactly when he decided to skip a visit to Israel and preferred to deliver a speech in Cairo and laud the ‘holy Koran’ 15 times? Did he truly believe that bowing down to the Saudi king would help him enlist the moderate Arab world to the cause of restarting negotiations?”

[...]

Nightwatch schrieb:Das habe ich ja schon weiter oben gepostet.
Schon recht lustig wie Obama hier schon selbst sein Scheitern einräumen darf ohne das es irgendjemanden groß interessiert. Und statt seiner eigenen Inkompetenz müssen natürlich die anderen schuld sein.
Aber egal, faktisch hat Netanjahu den Möchtgern im Weißen Haus recht ordentlich gehändelt und ihn voll im Regen stehen lassen.
Und das noch so das seine Regierung in Israel keineswegs als Buhmann dasteht.

Zitat:Netanyahu at Auschwitz: Never again

“From the cursed ground at Auschwitz, Birkenau and other camps rise the voices of our brothers and sisters, our people who choked to death and were burned and murdered,” said the prime minister, in English, wishing “decency, truth and hope ... for all mankind” before switching to Hebrew, “the language the Nazis sought to exterminate.”

He began his speech with the Aramaic words that open the Kaddish prayer - "yitgadal veyitkadash Shmeh Raba" - "may the name of G-d be grow great and be sanctified" - and said that the last words of many of the Jews who were murdered at Auschwitz were the call of "Shema Yisrael" - "Hear O Israel."

"I came here from Jerusalem to tell you that we will never forget," he said. "We will always remember what the Nazi Amalek did to us and we will not forget to be alert and ready when a new Amalek appears on the stage of history and threatens to destroy the Jews once again. And we will not make that mistake again, of taking the matter lightly and thinking that the threats are empty, or that the Holocaust denials are empty words. We will not forget and we will always remember to stand guard."

"The lesson of the Holocaust is that murderous evil must be stopped as early as possible when it is still in its early phases and cannot yet realize its intentions," Netanyahu said, in a clear allusion to Iran's nuclear threats. "This lesson must be internalized by all the world's enlightened nations. We, the Jewish people, internalized it well, after losing one third of our nation on the blood-soaked earth of Europe. We learned that we must be prepared to defend ourselves. We have learned that the only guarantee for the survival of our nation is a strong Israel and its army - the Israel Defense Force. We learned that we must alert the nations of the world and be prepared to defend ourselves."

"From this place I vow, as the head of the State of the Jews: never again will we let the machine of evil cut off the life of our nation. Never again."

“Am Yisrael Chai, we have returned to our homeland, to the land of our forefathers, to Jerusalem, our capital. We have converged from all corners of the world, Holocaust survivors, Arab Jews, Jews from former Soviet Union states, Ethiopian Jews,” Netanyahu said, choosing frosty Poland as the location for his rebuke to those who claim the Jewish population of Israel is comprised mostly of emigrants from Europe.

“We bow our heads in memory [of Holocaust victims] and raise our heads as our flag waves with its two blue stripes and the Star of David at its center. We still haven't lost our hope.”

Zitat:Israelischer Präsident hält bewegende Rede im Bundestag

Mit einer eindringlichen Rede hat der israelische Präsident Schimon Peres im Bundestag an die Opfer des Holocaust erinnert und die Bestrafung noch lebender NS-Verbrecher gefordert. Zugleich warnte er am Mittwoch in einer Gedenkstunde für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus vor „blutrünstigen Diktatoren“ mit Massenvernichtungswaffen im Iran. Der 86-jährige Friedensnobelpreisträger war nach Ezer Weizman und Mosche Katzav der dritte israelische Präsident, der vor dem Parlament sprach.

[...]

Zitat:Israels "Nie wieder" gilt heute vor allem dem Iran

Bewegender Auftritt im Reichstag: Schimon Peres hat in seiner Rede eine direkte Verbindung vom Holocaust zur Gründung des Staates Israel bis zur heutigen Bedrohung des jüdischen Staates durch das iranische Atomprogramm gezogen. Der Kanzlerin dankte der israelische Präsident für ein deutliches Bekenntnis

[...]

Nightwatch schrieb:zum Holocaust Gedenktag:
...

Zitat: Goldstone co-author: Hamas fired 'something like two' rockets before Gaza war

A co-author of the Goldstone Gaza report, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of war crimes, claims the Gaza militant group fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last year's winter conflict, according to a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

The center, headed by Dore Gold, former Israel Ambassador to the UN, revealed the report at a press conference on Wednesday.

Travers rejects the idea that Israel launched the offensive in Gaza on December 27, 2008, as an act of self-defense in response to Hamas rockets.

The Jerusalem center report says he bases this idea on a "fact" that he presents that in the month prior to start of the war, only "something like two" rockets that fell on Israel.

The report quotes an extensive interview with Travers in the Middle East Monitor, in which he also says that Hamas had sought "a continuation of the cease-fire" prior to Israel's offensive in Gaza.

Travers also rejects Israel Defense Forces photographs as proof that Hamas hid weapons in mosques during the conflict.

"I do not believe the photographs," Travers said, describing the IDF evidence as "spurious."

Travers also criticized Israel's past presence in Southern Lebanon, asserting that Israeli soldiers had "taken out and deliberately shot" Irish peacekeeping forces in the area.

[...]