Home » Levitt Letter » Levitt Letter Extra News

www.JTA.org

A United States congressman urged Energy Secretary Steven Chu to modify his trip to the Middle East to include Israel.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), in a letter to Chu, wrote of his disappointment that the secretary’s trip this week to the Middle East does not include Israel. Chu is visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to promote investments in energy technologies — which is exactly why Israel should be included, the New York representative wrote.

“Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation and leads the world in civilian research and development spending per capita,” the letter said. “We know that the United States is addicted to foreign oil — by focusing on the petrodollar states it creates the appearance of an addict rewarding his pusher.”

By Jon Leyne, news.bbc.co.uk

Airlines that fail to comply with the ruling will be banned or detained.

Iran has warned that airlines will be banned from flying into its airspace, unless they use the term “Persian Gulf” on their in-flight monitors. The transport minister has threatened to impound planes that fail to comply.

The nation is most insistent that the stretch of water separating it from its southern neighbors should be known as the Persian Gulf. To call it the Gulf, annoys the authorities; to call it the Arabian Gulf, infuriates them even more.

Conferences are held to make the matter quite clear, an ancient map with definitive proof of the correct name was sent on a world tour. And recently a foreign member of the cabin crew working for an Iranian airline was sacked and expelled from Iran when he got it wrong.

* BBC style is to refer to the body of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Gulf. * Iran calls it the Persian Gulf, also the more historically recognized term. * Saudi Arabia and most other Arab states insist on calling it the Arabian Gulf.

Now the Iranian transport minister has given foreign airlines 15 days to change the name to Persian Gulf on their in flight monitors. If they failed, they would be prevented from entering Iranian airspace, he warned. And if the offense was repeated, foreign airliners would be grounded and refused permission to leave Iran.

Numerous Arab airlines fly into Iran every day, not to mention Europeans and others, so it remains to be seen how they will respond.

As for the minister, Hamid Behbahani, it may or may not be a coincidence that he is making a stand on this patriotic matter at a time when he is facing calls for his impeachment for alleged lack of competence.

By Danny Ayalon

Wall Street Journal online.WJS.com

The recent statements by the European Union’s new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel’s rights to what are generally called the “occupied territories” but what really are “disputed territories.”

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered “occupied” in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.

The name “West Bank” was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan’s insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: “No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations.” (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous “Green Line,” so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map.

After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for “peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be.

It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: “Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338… rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to “secure and recognized borders,” which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194.”

Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution’s main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.”

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, “the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.” This would encompass “less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel’s prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure.”

Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to “withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate.”

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors.” There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away.

Before Israel was founded, ‘Muslims would not have disputed the connection Jews have’

By Aaron Klein, www.WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM – A prestigious Palestinian professor told WND that the Muslim denial of a Jewish connection to the Temple Mount is political and that historically Muslims did not dispute Jewish ties to the site.

“If you went back a couple of hundred years, before the advent of the political form of Zionism, I think you will find that many Muslims would not have disputed the connection that Jews have toward [the Mount],” said Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University in eastern Jerusalem.

“The problem began arising with the advent of Zionism, when people started connecting a kind of feeling that Jews have toward the area with the political project of Zionism,” Nusseibeh stated.

Zionism refers to the political movement that supports the reestablishment of the Jewish state in the land of Israel.

According to sources inside the Palestinian Authority, Nusseibeh has come under some PA pressure for writing in a recent study that Jews historically revered the Temple Mount before the time of Mohammed and Islam.

The PA sources denied any security threats against Nusseibeh but conceded that PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s office had asked the professor to issue a clarification acknowledging the Palestinian line denying Jewish ties to the Mount.

The sources indicated that if Nusseibeh did not issue a clarification his position as Al-Quds’s president could be in jeopardy.

Nusseibeh, however, denied that he has received any threats over the matter.

“I am surprised that people are surprised by what I wrote. There is nothing in Islam that denies the fact that Judaism is one of the religions of the book,” he said.

Nusseibeh contributed to an Israeli-Palestinian study about the Temple Mount entitled, “Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade.” In the study, Nusseibeh does not affirm the existence of the Jewish Temples on the site but writes the Mount was revered by Jews before the time of Mohammed.

The PA long has denied any Jewish historic connection to the Temple Mount or Jerusalem.

Israel’s Maariv daily newspaper reported Nusseibeh was threatened by Palestinians regarding his participation in the study.

In a previous WND interview, Chief Palestinian Justice Sheik Taysir Tamimi declared the Jewish Temples never existed and Jews have no historic connection to Jerusalem. He also claimed the Western Wall really was a tying post for Mohammed’s horse, the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels, and Abraham, Moses and Jesus were prophets for Islam.

Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Mohammed Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

“Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880s,” said Tamimi.

“About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the [Temple Mount],” Tamimi said during a sit-down interview in his eastern Jerusalem office.

The Palestinian cleric denied the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples throughout Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount itself; excavations revealing Jewish homes and a synagogue in a site in Jerusalem called the City of David; or even the recent discovery of a Second Temple Jewish city in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Tamimi said descriptions of the Jewish Temples in the Hebrew Tanach, in the Talmud and in Byzantine and Roman writings from the Temple periods were forged, and that the Torah was falsified to claim biblical patriarchs and matriarchs were Jewish, when they were prophets for Islam.

“All this is not real. We don’t believe in all your versions. Your Torah was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses never mentions Jerusalem. Maybe Jerusalem was mentioned in the rest of the Torah, which was falsified by the Jews,” said Tamimi.

He said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus were “prophets for the Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam.”

Asked about the Western Wall, Tamimi said the structure was a tying post for Mohammed’s horse and that it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, even though the Wall predates the mosque by more than 1,000 years.

“The Western Wall is the western wall of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It’s where Prophet Mohammed tied his animal, which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah.”

The Kotel, or Western Wall, is an outer retaining wall of the Temple Mount that survived the destruction of the Second Temple and still stands today in Jerusalem.

Tamimi went on to claim to WND the Al Aqsa Mosque , which has sprung multiple leaks and has had to be repainted several times, was built by angels.

“Al Aqsa was built by the angels 40 years after the building of Al-Haram in Mecca. This we have no doubt is true,” he said.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was rebuilt in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. That Temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in A.D. 70. Each Temple stood for a period of about four centuries.

The Temple was the center of religious worship for ancient Israelites. It housed the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant and was said to be the area upon which God’s presence dwelt. All biblical holidays centered on worship at the Temple. The Temples served as the primary location for the offering of sacrifices and were the main gathering place for Israelites.

According to the Talmud, the world was created from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount. It’s believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, the location where Abraham fulfilled God’s test to see if he would be willing to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple have been uttered by Jews since the Second Temple was destroyed, according to Jewish tradition.

The Al Aqsa Mosque was constructed in about A.D. 709 to serve as a shrine near another shrine, the Dome of the Rock, which was built by an Islamic caliph. Al Aqsa was meant to mark what Muslims came to believe was the place at which Mohammed, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible 656 times.

Islamic tradition states Mohammed took a journey in a single night on a horse from “a sacred mosque” – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia – to “the farthest mosque” and from a rock there ascended to heaven. The farthest mosque became associated with Jerusalem about 120 years ago.

According to research by Israeli Author Shmuel Berkovits, Islam historically disregarded Jerusalem as being holy. Berkovits points out in his new book, How Dreadful Is this Place! that Mohammed was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for. He wrote that Mohammed made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place – the Kaaba in Mecca – to signify the unity of God.

As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings influenced the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula and that “in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron.”

A guide to the Temple Mount by the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem published in 1925 listed the Mount as Jewish and as the site of Solomon’s Temple. The Temple Institute acquired a copy of the official 1925 “Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” which states on page 4, “Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which ‘David built there an altar unto the Lord.’”

WAQF 1925 Guidebook -- cover

page 4 of WAQF 1925 Guidebook

WAQF 1925 Guidebook description of Temple substructure

For additional information see an expanded article from the November 2008 Levitt Letter p. 31. Visit http://www.levitt.com/news/2008/10/10/supreme-muslim-council-temple-mount-is-jewish/

By Karin Laub, Associated Press

GAZA City, Gaza Strip – Hamas officials said Monday, Feb 15, that they have detained a British freelance journalist for up to 15 days, an unprecedented step against a foreigner since the Islamic militants seized Gaza in 2007.

Documentary filmmaker Paul Martin was detained Sunday at a Gaza military tribunal where he was to testify on behalf of a local man accused of collaborating with Israel, said Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab Ghussein. He had just begun to speak when the prosecutor ordered police to arrest him, saying the Briton was wanted in the case, according to Ehab Jaber, the attorney for the Gaza man accused of collaborating.

“The policeman put the handcuffs on him, and took him out of the court to prison. They were rough with him,” said Jaber, who witnessed the scene.

Ghussein said Martin, who has produced reports in the past for British Broadcasting Corp. and The Times of London, is suspected of harming Gaza’s security. He said the order to detain him was based on a confession by a suspected collaborator with Israel – an apparent reference to the man on trial.

Martin was being questioned and will be held until the investigation is completed, Ghussein said, adding that the current arrest warrant gives authorities the right to detain him for 15 days with the option to release him early.

Martin has met with British consular officials since his arrest, Ghussein said.

The British Consulate in Jerusalem said Martin is 55. A spokeswoman said the British government was “very concerned” and has been in touch with Martin’s family. She spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Iyad Alami, a lawyer for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, met with Martin for half an hour on Monday. Martin was in good condition, Alami said, adding that he wanted to learn more about the case before deciding whether his group would represent the journalist. He would not share any more details on the meeting.

The rights group’s director, Raji Sourani, said earlier Monday that he was asked by Martin to represent him.

Martin’s colleagues called for his immediate release.

“We expect Hamas, as we do all parties, to respect the rights of every journalist on assignment, to work without fear of being arrested,” said the Foreign Press Association, which represents journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Since Hamas wrested Gaza from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas nearly three years ago, it has carefully avoided confrontations with foreign visitors, particularly journalists. It also has tried to reach out to the West in hopes of ending an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

In the two years before the Hamas takeover, more than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers were abducted in Gaza, which was plagued by political violence and lawlessness.

Most of the kidnappings were carried out by gunmen seeking favors from the government or trying to settle scores with rivals. Hamas has neutralized most of its rivals and prides itself in restoring a sense of security in Gaza.

Gaza’s Foreign Ministry said it “wishes to reassure all journalists working in the region that the Palestinian government guarantees their freedom to work in the Gaza Strip without interference.”

Ahmed Youssef, a ministry official, said that Martin “is being detained for clear security reasons, and it is nothing to do with his job as a journalist or (him being) a Westerner.”

The chain of events began Sunday when Martin went to the military court to speak on behalf of Mohammed Abu Muailik, who is being accused of collaborating with Israel, said Jaber, Abu Muailik’s defense attorney.

The attorney said Martin had been working on a documentary about Abu Muailik, who has been in detention since June.

A spokesman for a Gaza militant group, the Abu Rish Brigades, said Abu Muailik is a former member. The brigades are a violent offshoot of Hamas rival Fatah, the movement led by Abbas.

Jaber would not discuss details of Abu Muailik’s past, but said his client works in computer maintenance and has a business relationship with an Israeli partner.

Asked about confessions that might have implicated Martin, Jaber said: “These confessions … came under psychological and physical pressure. Anyone who was under such torture would say the same. We have evidence that he is not a collaborator.”

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The Saudi religious police launched Thursday a nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to the banned celebrations of Saint Valentine’s Day, a Saudi official said.

Members of the feared religious police were inspecting shops for red roses, heart-shaped products or gifts wrapped in red, and ordering store owners to get rid of them, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Red-colored or heart-shaped items are legal at other times of the year, but as Feb. 14 nears they become contraband in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine’s Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.

Most shops in Riyadh’s upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves. A statement by the religious police, informally known as the muttawa, was published in Saudi newspapers, warning shop owners against any violations.

“Those who don’t comply will be punished,” the statement said, without spelling out what measures would befall the offenders.

The Valentine’s Day prohibition is in line with Saudi’s strict Wahhabi school of Islam that the kingdom has followed for more than a century. The birthplace of Islam also bans several Muslim holidays except the two most important ones because it considers them “religious innovations” that Islam doesn’t sanction.

Even birthdays and Mother’s Day are frowned on by the religious establishment, although people almost never get punished for celebrating them.

Many Saudis who still want to mark the popular Valentine’s Day do their shopping weeks before the holiday.

Each year, the religious police mobilize ahead of Feb. 14 and descend on gift and flower shops, confiscating all red items, including flowers.

Attitudes toward Valentine’s Day vary across the Arab world, with devout Muslims opposing the holiday as a Western celebration of romantic love that corrupts Muslim youth.

The Egyptian capital, Cairo, is a sharp contrast to the Saudi restrictions, with shops and restaurants going overboard in red ribbon and heart decorations.

Dubai, a conservative Muslim city-state with a Western outlook, is every year taken over by a Valentine craze. Luxury hotels are draped in red, offering romantic dinner specials. Malls and cafes are decorated with giant hearts and flower shops offer promotional deals on roses and fancy bouquets.

Apparently prompted by the Saudi ban, a group in the Philippines advocating the welfare of Filipino overseas workers — a million of whom work in Saudi Arabia and another million elsewhere in the Middle East — cautioned its countrymen to celebrate Valentine’s Day only in private and refrain from publicly greeting anyone with “Happy Valentine’s” across the region.

“We are urging fellow Filipinos in the Middle East, especially lovers, just to celebrate their Valentine’s Day secretly and with utmost care,” said John Leonard Monterona of the Migrante group.

He said the group advised against carrying anything that is red, including toys, hearts, and flowers, or even wearing red dresses or T-shirts. Instead, he urged Filipinos to visit Internet cafes to chat with their loved ones, give them a call or send text messages.

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, CNSNews.com

Photo: Dutch politician Geert Wilders following a court appearance in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Jan. 13, 2010. He is seeking to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims with his film, ‘Fitna. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

The complaint also refers to comments he has made about Islam in the Dutch media, in particular an open letter published in 2007 calling for the Koran to be outlawed in the Netherlands on the grounds that it contains verses instructing Muslims “to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women, and to establish an Islamic state by force.”

As part of the effort to prove his contention that his views on the nature of Islam are accurate, Wilders had wanted the court to hear, in their own words, van Gogh’s unrepentant and Koran-quoting killer as well as two hard-line Iranian ayatollahs, a radical imam based in The Hague, and a controversial Sunni scholar.

Also on his witness list were scholars and researchers specializing in Islam, human rights and law, including a former Muslim who is an expert in sharia (Islamic law).

The public prosecutor opposed Wilders’s request, and the court last week agreed that he could call only three of the 18.

One of the three is Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born critic of Islam who caused an uproar in a 2006 al-Jazeera interview when she spoke of a clash “between civilization and backwardness, chaos and rationality, a conflict between freedom and oppression, democracy and dictatorship, human rights on the one hand and the violation of these rights on the other, between those who treat women like animals, and those who treat them like human beings.”

The other two permitted witnesses are Dutch scholars Hans Jansen, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism; and Simon Admiraal, whose research focuses on radicalization in Arabic sermons.

The judges also ruled that the three witnesses’ testimony would have to be heard behind closed doors.

“Apparently the truth about Islam must remain a secret,” the Wilders trial website commented.

In their ruling, the judges said the accused would have ample opportunity to tell the court during the trial how he views its decision to disallow most of the witnesses he had requested.

‘A judgment on Islam’

Among those rejected by the court were:

– Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the secretary of the powerful Council of Guardians and current Friday prayer leader in Tehran, who frequently rails against America.

– Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a former head of Iran’s judiciary, who said in February 2000 that the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 calling for the death of Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie was “divine” and “irrevocable” and would be carried out, “Allah-willing.”

– Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential Egyptian Sunni scholar controversial for having called Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis justifiable “martyrdom operations.”

Radio Netherlands International reported that “some feared that had the judges allowed all seventeen [sic] defense witnesses, the trial would become a judgment on Islam, rather than a judgment on whether or not Geert Wilders has incited hatred.”

Robert Spencer, author on The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran and the editor of Jihad Watch – and another of those on Wilders’s list turned down by the court – said last week that Sultan, Jansen, and Admiraal would be “excellent” witnesses.

“Nonetheless, this decision indicates the court’s bias against Wilders, and so does not bode well for him,” he commented.

Spencer said the court was “railroading” Wilders.

“He had wanted to call Mohammed Bouyeri, the Qur’an-inspired murderer of Theo Van Gogh, who would have proven his point immediately, and others who would have buttressed the truth of what he has said,” he said. “That the court has hindered his ability to do this shows that the railroad tracks are being laid into place.”

By Nasser Karimi, Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran began enriching uranium to a higher level on Tuesday, February 9, an acceleration of its nuclear program that was followed by a U.S. threat of a “significant regime of sanctions.” Speaking in Washington, President Barack Obama said the process of developing an additional set of sanctions on Iran was moving along quickly, but he gave no specific timeline. Iran, he said, was still pursuing a nuclear program that would lead to nuclear weapons.

Iran’s announcement Tuesday that it has begun enriching uranium to a higher level raised fears that the process could eventually be used to give the Islamic republic nuclear weapons. Iran denies that its program is geared toward acquiring a nuclear weapon.

France and the U.S. have said that Iran’s action left no choice but to push harder for a fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions to punish it. Russia, which has close ties to Iran and has opposed new sanctions, appeared to edge closer to Washington’s position, saying the new enrichment plans show the suspicions about Iran’s intentions are well-founded.

Iranian state television said the process began in the presence of inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Uranium has to be enriched to fuel nuclear power plants and Iran needs the 20 percent enriched fuel for a research reactor producing medical isotopes. Enriching uranium to 90 percent, however, creates the material for nuclear weapons, which many countries are afraid Iran is seeking. Iran denies the charge.

In an effort to defuse the crisis, the International Atomic Energy Agency brokered a deal last year in which Iran would ship out its low enriched uranium to be processed abroad and returned a year later. Iran initially rejected the deal, then later said that if an acceptable alternative could be reached, it would not continue the high level enriching process. Ali Akbar Salehi, a vice president as well as the head of the country’s nuclear program, said the further enrichment would be unnecessary if the West found a way to provide Iran with the needed fuel.

“Whenever they provide the fuel, we will halt production of 20 percent,” he told state TV late Monday. Iran has so far enriched uranium to a level of 3.5 percent, which is suitable for use in fueling nuclear power plants.

On Tuesday, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Ramin Mehmanparast, said any plan by the West to impose new Security Council resolutions would not be helpful. “If they attempt another resolution, they are making a mistake. It is not helpful in resolving the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West,” he said. “They are completely wrong if they think our people will back down even a single step.”

Salehi said Iran has been trying to buy the higher enriched fuel for its research reactor for the past several months, but the West made providing the fuel conditional on Iran’s acceptance of the U.N.-drafted agreement to ship its uranium stockpile abroad first. That plan would come with some safeguards, because the enriched fuel provided to Iran would be in a form that would be difficult to further process to make weapons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, listens to a technician during his visit of the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility.

According to the report on state TV, the higher level enrichment began after Iranian scientists injected 25 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched UF6, or Uranium hexafluoride, gas into a cascade of 164 centrifuge machines at a laboratory in the central town of Natanz, some 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of Tehran. The machines are expected to produce some 2.5 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium out of 25 kilograms of gas every month, according to the report. It said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were present during the injection.

When asked about the enrichment process, Gill Tudor of the IAEA only said that the agency had inspectors in the country already. “The agency continues to have inspectors in Iran conducting normal safeguard operations,” Tudor said.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes a new U.N. resolution would lay the legal groundwork countries need to impose sanctions independently and pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Germany is “very concerned about the developments in Iran,” and that “if Iran insists on refusing to join negotiations, talks at the United Nations will be unavoidable and we will then have to talk about new measures.”

“There is also the possibility of widening the sanctions,” he told reporters in Berlin.

No new U.N. Security Council sanctions can be passed, however, without unanimous agreement from all members, including China, which has been reluctant to impose new punitive measures on Iran. China called for more talks on Tuesday, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, saying “I hope the relevant parties will step up efforts and push for progress in the dialogue and negotiations.”

Russia, another Security Council member, has also been reluctant to back new sanctions. The nation’s security chief said on Tuesday, however, that Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to higher levels has added to doubts about its nuclear program. “Iran says it doesn’t want to have nuclear weapons. But its actions, including its decision to enrich uranium to 20 percent, have raised doubts among other nations, and these doubts are quite well-founded,” Nikolai Patrushev was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Iran says it needs the 20 percent enriched fuel for a research reactor producing radio isotopes to treat cancer and manufacture radiography materials. Iran says more than 850,000 people need the products for their illnesses.

By Jeff Jacoby

Boston Globe MetroWest Jewish Reporter

Of all the ways in which the United States marches to the beat of its own drummer, few are more striking than the American people’s consistent and deep-rooted support for the Jewish state. In a recent nationwide survey, the Gallup organization asked Americans: “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” For the fourth year in a row, 59 percent—nearly 6 in 10—said their sympathies were with Israel, while just 18 percent sided with the Palestinians. When respondents were asked for their opinion of various countries, 63 percent said they had a favorable view of Israel (21 percent said very favorable), compared with just 15 percent who thought highly of the Palestinian Authority.

Conversely, only 29 percent of Americans told Gallup that their opinion of Israel was negative, even as a whopping 73 percent expressed a negative attitude toward the Palestinians.

This overwhelmingly positive feeling for Israel is normal for the United States, but it puts Americans sharply at odds with the rest of the world. At the United Nations, for example, nothing is more routine than the castigation of Israel. Similarly, any time Israel is forced to use its military power in self-defense, it comes under the harsh glare of the international media, which subject it to a scrutiny far more unforgiving than any other country receives. It was only a few years ago that a poll commissioned by the European Union found that a plurality of Europeans regarded Israel as the greatest threat to world peace—more menacing than even North Korea or Iran.

So what makes Americans different?

Foreign policy “realists” could certainly suggest reasons why close friendship with Israel is not in America’s interest, beginning with the fact that most of the world doesn’t share it. There are 300 million or more Arabs in the world, and they sit atop a vast share of the world’s oil supply. Why endanger American access to that oil by maintaining such close ties to a nation with only 6 million people and no petroleum to export? Why risk incurring the wrath of Islamic terrorists by supporting Israel, a nation most of them detest? Surely it would make more sense—so a “realist” might argue—for Americans to distance themselves from the world’s lone Jewish state, and tilt instead toward the much greater number of nations and governments that are hostile to Israel.

Yet most Americans instinctively reject such advice. The national consensus in support of Israel is longstanding and durable, and it isn’t grounded in economics, energy policy, or a quest for diplomatic popularity. Nor, as some conspiracy-minded critics have claimed, is it because a “Zionist lobby” in Washington routinely hijacks US foreign policy, manipulating America into serving Israel’s ends.

The roots of America’s bond with Israel lie elsewhere.

First, Americans stand with Israel because in it they recognize a liberal democracy much like their own: a nation in which elections are lively, fair, and democratic; in which freedom of speech and the press are core values; in which the political rights of minorities are respected; and in which a commitment to civil liberties and justice is woven into the very fabric of society.

Second, Americans know that Israel is a stable ally in one of the world’s most critical and volatile regions. Its intelligence service is perhaps the world’s finest, its military is the best in the Middle East, and its painfully acquired expertise in counterterrorism is invaluable—all the more so as we wage our own war against jihadi terrorists.

Third, Americans sympathize with Israel because they understand that the enemies of Israel hate the United States as well. The suicide bombers who revel in the death of innocent Jews, the fanatics who chant “Death to Israel,” the Iranian- and Syrian-backed forces that launch rockets from Gaza or Lebanon with the aim of shedding Israeli blood—they are steeped in the same murderous ideology as Osama bin Laden and the Islamists who slaughtered so many Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

And fourth, there is a deep religious bond between American Christians and the Jewish people, a bond that stretches back to the earliest era of American history. More than a century before the Revolutionary War, the Puritan leader Increase Mather taught his followers to anticipate the day when the Jews would return to their homeland and establish “the most glorious nation in the whole world.” In 1819, former President John Adams wrote of his wish to see “the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.” Today, tens of millions of American evangelicals passionately support—even love—the Jewish state, and consider it nothing less than their duty as Christians to stand with Israel and her people.

Why are Americans so pro-Israel? For reasons practical and idealistic, religious and strategic. They are linked by the kinship of common values—an affinity of strength and decency that reflects the best of both nations, and sets them apart from the other nations of the world.

By Michael Schneider, www.IsraelToday.co.il

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has released the following figures for 2008:

1. 1,970 newborn boys and 515 girls were given the name Noam. Among girls, Noa continues to be the most popular name.

2. Young people in a young state: There were 2,453,140 Israelis under the age of 1—a third of the total population.

3. 156,900 babies were born.

4. Following Noam, which means “pleasant,” the most popular names for boys in Israel are: Itai, Daniel, David, Idan, Moshe, Yosef, and Yonatan.

5. Following Noa, the most popular names for girls are: Shira, Yael, Tamar, Maya, Talia, Hila, Michal, and Adi.

6. Arab boys are often called by variants of the name Mohammed: Mahmoud, Ahmad, Muhamed.

7. Popular names among Arab girls are Hala, Nur, and Miriam.