Submitted by: M Mulukin
Biden Makes History: First President in 40 Years to Punt on Contacting Israel
20 February 2021
White House doesn't list Israel as American ally.
President Joe Biden is the first American leader in 40 years not to contact Israel’s leaders as one of his first actions in the White House, setting up what could be four years of chilly relations between America and its top Middle East ally.
Biden has already phoned multiple world leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping, but during his 23 days in office had yet to speak with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—although he has now done so-making Biden the first president in modern history to punt on bolstering U.S.-Israel relations during his initial days in office.
Every president going back to at least Ronald Reagan in 1981 made contact with their Israeli counterpart within a week of assuming office, according to a review of news reports.
Congressional foreign policy leaders slammed Biden’s Netanyahu snub, prompting a flurry of questions for White House press secretary Jen Psaki, [pictured below] who for many days declined to disclose when or if Biden will call the Israeli leader.
Psaki also said on Friday the White House would not list Israel as a U.S. ally when asked about the relationship during her daily press briefing.
Modern presidents going back to Reagan made calls or overtures to Israel during their first days in office, sending a message the United States would continue to stand for the Jewish state’s security.
Biden’s diplomatic slight comes as Israel faces encroaching terrorist threats and the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran.
He also has hired several individuals with a background in anti-Israel activism, including Maher Bitar, a top White House National Security Council official who spent his youth organising boycotts of the Jewish state.
The State Department’s Iran envoy, Robert Malley, also has been a vocal critic of Israel.
In Major Speech, Biden indicates US ready to re-engage with Iran on Nuke deal
20 February 2021
US President Joe Biden speaks virtually to the Munich Security Conference in Germany,
In a major speech, Biden indicates US ready to re-engage with Iran on nuke deal…..
US President Joe Biden indicated Friday he is ready to re-engage with Iran on the 2015 nuclear accord, which was abandoned by the Trump administration and which Iran has since been avowedly breaching.
Addressing the Munich Security Conference, Biden said his administration was ready to re-enter talks with the UN Security Council on Tehran’s nuclear program.
“We’re prepared to re-engage in negotiations with the P5+1 on Iran’s nuclear program,” he said.
The P5+1 countries are the six world powers that negotiated the deal with Iran — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.
Israel warned that the United States was helping Iran develop a nuclear weapons arsenal with its decision late Thursday night to push to rejoin the 2015 Iran deal.
Israel remains committed to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons and its position on the nuclear agreement has not changed, the Prime Minister's Office said.
"Israel believes that going back to the old agreement will pave Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal. Israel is in close contact with the United States on this matter," it added.
US Agrees to Re-engage Iran in Nuclear Deal at European Insistence
February 20, 2021
The Biden administration pledged to re-engage with Iran over the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Trump administration exited.
After a conference with the three European signatories’ foreign ministers on Thursday, state department spokesman Ned Price said the US would accept an invitation from the European Union to meet Iran at this “critical moment” for the talks.
The US, UK, France and Germany also said they were determined that Iran should not get a nuclear weapon. They called Tehran’s move to block inspections “dangerous.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif [pictured above] tweeted in response the refrain that his country would only comply with the deal fully once US sanctions had been lifted.
Nonetheless, Washington rescinded its request for the UN Security Council to renew sanctions for the production of ballistic missiles.
Netanyahu Renews Vow to Prevent Iran from Attaining a Nuke
20 February 2021
The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem said Friday in response to the US-EU statement on Iran: Israel stands by its commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and its opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal with six world nations.
Israel holds that returning to that accord will only serve to smooth Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal and is engaged in ongoing dialogue with the United States on this issue.
Are Biden’s Moves for Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran Stuck in the Sand?…...
February 20, 2021
One apparent reason for the blank wall reached by President Joe Biden’s policy for re-engaging Iran in nuclear diplomacy is that his advisers could not get together on a strategy for stalling its progress towards a weapon.
They agreed on the need for the Biden administration to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) signed with five other major powers, if only to stop the Islamic Republic from steadily stripping off its obligations under that deal.
This has been Iran’s response to President Trump’s decision to quit the accord. But the way forward was still missing in the face of Tehran’s intransigence.
In its latest step, Iran announced that as soon as next Tuesday, it would go back on its commitment to allow snap inspections by the UN watchdog.
On Thursday the E3 rushed in with a plan to save the entire diplomatic project from crashing.
They persuaded the Biden administration to accept an invitation from the UK, Germany and France to join them in sitting down with their Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Zavad Zarif.
Their plan was to use this event to broach necessary amendments in the original accord and get diplomacy moving.
That path was quickly blocked by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He dictated Zarif’s veto to the EU initiative, namely that there would be no discussions on such changes before President Biden agreed to lift all US sanctions.
This was a line that Biden had publicly vowed not to cross.
On Friday morning, shortly before Biden was due to make his first speech as US president to an international forum, the Munich Security conference, some Washington sources calculated that he had “fumbled the deal” with Iran.
How this happened is hard to explain given that Biden was supported by an A-team of old hands in the arts of diplomacy with the slippery regime in Tehran:
Jake Sullivan, as national security adviser; .Anthony Blinken, [pictured above] as secretary of state; Rob Malley,[pictured below] as special envoy for Iran; Colin Kahl, deputy defence secretary; and the most experienced of all, William Burns as Director of the CIA.
Did this high-powered team fail to produce an agreed formula?
Or was it the president who decided at the last minute to recoil from either accepting – or rejecting – diplomacy on Iran’s terms?
At the virtual Munich conference on Friday, therefore, Biden avoided setting out a timetable for talks with Iran, as expected, leaving it to “a senior official” to tell reporters, “We are keen to sit down and hear what the Iranians have to say.”
He also said that the West should address Iran’s destabilising activities in the Middle East.
And in Jerusalem, PM Binyamin Netanyahu, who had called a special security cabinet meeting for late Thursday, to discuss Israel’s response to American moves on Iran, cancelled without explanation.
The PMO instead issued the following statement:
“Israel stands by its commitment to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon and its opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal with six world nations. Israel holds that returning to that deal would only serve to smooth Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal. We are engaged in ongoing dialogue with the United States on this issue.”
The week ended with heightened fears in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Baghdad that the diplomatic impasse which had evolved had brought the crisis with Iran closer than ever to a military option.
Gantz: Hezbollah will be ‘Fatally Wounded’ if Israel Drawn into a War in Lebanon
20 February 2021
Defence minister warns of possible difficult days for home front after terror group head Nasrallah said it will bomb Israeli cities in response to any attacks in Lebanon.
Israel's Defence Minister Benny Gantz [pictured below] said on Thursday that Hezbollah will be “fatally wounded” if Israel needs to go to war in Lebanon, after the terror group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened Israel following an Israel Defence Forces exercise simulating war with the terror group.
“If we have to go to battle, Lebanon will tremble and Hezbollah will be fatally wounded,” Gantz said at a ceremony to honour soldiers who fell in battle and whose burial places are unknown.
“If there are days of fighting on the various fronts, they will be difficult for the Israeli home front, but it will be difficult and terrible first and foremost for our enemies,” Gantz said.
“This is especially true for Hezbollah and Hamas, which are building offensive capabilities from within civilian areas and committing war crimes.”
The comments came after Nasrallah issued a warning to Israel on Tuesday, following the IDF exercise.
Eye to Eye – Bill Koenig…
20 February 2021
Winter Storm Uri:
The Biden Administration’s major actions that will and/or could affect Israel as Uri produced an all-time record-setting event in Texas and the southern U.S. that arrived on Presidents’ Day weekend
Our focus in the coming weeks will be the alignment of nations in the Middle East and the World Economic Forum re-set activities.
Obviously, based on the following activities by Biden and his administration, they are doing a lot of things that are worrisome for Israel.
What a contrast between President Trump’s Israel and strong region focuses versus Biden’s appeasement of enemies of Israel and the United States as he operates from weakness.
The only good news is the further acceleration of final day events and nations prior to the Lord’s return.
As events pertaining to Israel came into focus, Texas was hit with a 100-year weather event.
A few meteorologists have said that Uri was a 500-year event. This fits the Eye to Eye record-setting patterns when the land or people of Israel are put at risk.
Texas may have more Israel supporters than any other state. Nonetheless, it was devastated.
Unfortunately, their leadership had allowed the green energy people to use wind turbines to have provided up to 42 percent of the power generation (according to the Wall Street Journal), not fully benefiting from their coal and natural gas.
Additionally, the natural gas infrastructure that affects utilities and the overall power grid wasn’t reinforced and impacted by record cold.
Texas has its own power grid. Hopefully, this will have motivated them to reinforce the electrical grid in the event of future record cold or heat events and/or an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) event?
Syria Wants End to Israel's 'Terrorizing' Strikes and Russia, Iran, Turkey Agree….
20 February 2021
Syria has demanded an end to Israeli airstrikes that it says endanger military and civilian life, and the influential Ezekiel 38.9 international trio of Russia, Iran and Turkey agree.
Newsweek recently reported on the hazards associated with multiple countries operating in Syria's crowded airspaces, where military and civilian aircraft face increasing risks from the country's civil conflict, which reaches it's 10th anniversary next month.
Syria's permanent mission to the United Nations said Israel's semi-secret campaign of raids targeting suspected Iran-linked sites and Syrian air defence positions constitutes a violation of post-war bilateral arrangements between the two neighbours.
The mission also saw Israel's aerial strategy as contrary to international law.
"These attacks also constitute a flagrant violation of the Chicago Conventions that guarantee the safety of civil aviation in the world, and a described hostile act condemned by the provisions of international law and the principles of the United Nations Charter," the mission told Newsweek.
"Furthermore, such an aggression shows disdain to the Security Council resolutions related to the situation in Syria, which all affirm respect for the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Syria."
These four principles were emphasised Friday during the latest trilateral meeting of the Ezekiel Coalition; Russia, Iran and Turkey.
The three countries represent the guarantors of a platform for resolving Syria's conflict called the Astana process, named for the Kazakh capital, which has since been renamed Nur-Sultan.
In a joint statement, Moscow, Tehran and Ankara [pictured above] "condemned continuing Israeli military attacks in Syria in violation of the international law and international humanitarian law and undermining the sovereignty of Syria and neighbouring countries as well as endangering the stability and security in the region and called for cessation of them."
The most recent round of Israeli attacks hit an air defence unit attached to Syria's 4th Armoured Division west of Damascus on Monday, a local source told Newsweek.
The attacks roughly coincided with an Israeli air exercise called "Galilee Rose" that simulated war across the country's hostile northern borders with Syria and Lebanon, where a Hezbollah spokesperson for the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement said last month its fighters remained prepared for any aggressions.
"Naturally, any attack will not be tolerated, and Hezbollah is in a constant state of preparedness to respond to any attack on Lebanon," the Hezbollah official said at the time.
Chinese Fighters Buzz Taiwan's Air Zone as it Appoints New Defence Minister….
20 February 2021
TAIPEI, Taiwan's air force scrambled on Friday after eight Chinese fighter aircraft flew into the south-western part of its air defence zone in another display of stepped-up military activity around the democratic island.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory, says it is responding to what it calls "collusion" between Taipei and Washington, Taiwan's main international backer and weapons supplier.
The Taiwanese Defence Ministry said four Chinese J-16s and four JH-7s as well as an electronic warfare aircraft flew near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the top part of the South China Sea.
The air force scrambled, with "radio warnings issued and air defence missile systems deployed to monitor the activity," the ministry said.
Shortly before the ministry's statement, Taiwan announced a reshuffle of senior security officials including a new, U.S.-trained defence minister, to help bolster military modernisation and intelligence efforts.
President Tsai Ing-wen [pictured above] has pledged to defend the island and has made modernising its armed forces a priority, including developing a fleet of new submarines, buying new F-16 fighters from the United States and upgrading its warships.
World Council of Churches Hardens Their Heart Towards Israel
20 February 2021 [excerpted]
The World Council of Churches (WCC) had a chance to draw a line in the sand.
It had a chance to show the world that it took the plague of anti-Semitism seriously and understood that ugly dishonest polemics about Israel undermine the ability of Christians to promote peace in the Holy Land.
The organisation also had a chance to come clean and admit that, yes, the WCC has been an ardent and persistent supporter of the BDS campaign that falsely portrays Israel as a singular human rights abuser on the world stage -- and in so doing, has fomented a plague of hostility towards Israel and Jews.
Instead of pretending that the WCC never supported BDS, the group could have declared that it is now doing what it can to distance itself from the bigoted and discredited movement that it previously embraced.
WCC officials also had a chance to admit that by singling out the Jewish state for condemnation -- while ignoring actual crimes against humanity in places like China and Syria -- their organisation had given Jews throughout the world every reason to regard Christians and the Ecumenical movement with suspicion.
With their refusal to confront their mistakes, leaders and staffers at the WCC have demonstrated once again that they see Jewish survival and self-determination as stumbling blocks to Christians who, after all, purport to follow Jesus -- a Jew himself.
The controversy began on February 6, 2021, when Reverend Frank Chikane, a prominent member of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, made false and incendiary comments during a webinar to promote a 27-minute film about the pro-Palestinian activism of Michel Sabbah. [pictured above]
[Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah served as the archbishop and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1987 to 2008, the first native Arab Palestinian to hold the office for centuries. He is a co-author of the Kairos Palestine Document and a member of the Kairos Palestine board.]
He falsely reported that people die every day as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and declared, among other things, that "the blood of the people of Palestine will be sought from" Israel's supporters.
In its advisory, the WCC's interim general secretary Ioan Sauca said the WCC "has never called for an economic boycott of the State of Israel."
The notion that the WCC has not promoted the BDS movement is simply laughable.
The media advisory declares that the WCC does not "espouse economic measures against Israel," but in reality, the WCC has been a primary and central supporter of the BDS movement in progressive Christian circles for years.
These days, the WCC's support for BDS flows through two of its institutions, the first being the Palestine-Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF), which was established in 2007 at a WCC meeting in Amman, Jordan.
In addition to declaring the Israeli presence in the West Bank a "sin against God and humanity" (without offering one word of condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, incitement, or pay-to-slay policies), the Kairos Palestine document promotes -- you guessed it -- BDS.
The document, which is posted on the WCC's website, calls for "the beginning of a system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel."
Why is the WCC now trying to deny its support for BDS?
One likely explanation is that it needs to maintain access to Jerusalem. In 2016, the Israeli government prohibited a WCC official from entering the country, in part because of the WCC's support for BDS.
Instead of saying, "We're done with BDS," the WCC is trying to gaslight everyone by telling us it never supported the movement.
Is it little wonder so many Jews view Christianity [including Roman Catholicism] with such suspicion?
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