Israel's Prime Minister and two American leaders told an American Jewish lobby that the world needs to back stronger sanctions against Iran to stop it from becoming a nuclear power. Despite politicians' calls not to invest in Iran, both leading US presidential candidates have investments in companies dealing with the anti-Zionist regime.

Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington Tuesday night, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stopped short of calling for attacking Iran if it does not allow international officials to inspect its nuclear facility. However, he clearly left the option open, saying, "the Iranian threat must be stopped by all possible means. International economic and political sanctions on Iran, as crucial as they may be, are only an initial step."
 
He and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also called on Europe to back stiffer sanctions against Tehran. Referring to a United Nations report this week that suggested Iran is withholding information from international monitors, she dismissed Iran's claims that its aims are peaceful.

Asking why Iran has prevented inspectors from visiting several sites, she told the audience, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's just hard to imagine that there are innocent answers to these questions."

"Our partners in Europe and beyond need to exploit Iran's vulnerabilities more vigorously and impose greater costs on the regime - economically, financially, politically and diplomatically," Secretary Rice said. Prime Minister Olmert called on the international community to penalize Iran by barring business travelers and imposing sanctions on companies that refine gasoline for Iran.

Monday night, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain spoke before the AIPAC audience and said, "The United States should impose financial sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran."  He also said the U.S. should launch an international divestment campaign from companies doing business with Iran in order that "the radical elite who run that country will become even more unpopular."

However, both Sen. McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama have investments in foreign companies working in Iran, United Press International (UPI) reported.

Sen. McCain's wife Cindy controls a trust fund that lists $315,000 in mutual funds whose investments include companies operating in Iran. Sen. Obama, who last year sponsored a bill to encourage states to redirect investments from Iran, has a fund that includes $100,000 in similar investments. Sen. Obama's spokesman said the investments will be sold immediately.

Sen. Obama is to outline his Middle East policy in an address to AIPAC on Wednesday.

Republican Presidential nominee John McCain and lead Democratic candidate Barack Obama attacked each other's stands regarding the Iranian danger Monday, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made it clear Tuesday that force was still an option for dealing with Iran. 

Speaking before American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in Washington, D.C., McCain said: "The Iranians have spent years working toward a nuclear program. And the idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history. In reality, a series of administrations have tried to talk to Iran, and none tried harder than the Clinton administration…"

'Summit Would Achieve Nothing'
"Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before," McCain said, in a reference to Obama's statements on the matter. "Yet it's hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another. Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents, as the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appe
"It's hard to see what a summit with Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants."
arance of respectability."

"Rather than sitting down unconditionally with the Iranian president or supreme leader in the hope that we can talk sense into them," McCain explained, "we must create the real-world pressures that will peacefully but decisively change the path they are on. Essential to this strategy is the UN Security Council, which should impose progressively tougher political and economic sanctions. Should the Security Council continue to delay in this responsibility, the United States must lead like-minded countries in imposing multilateral sanctions outside the UN framework... A severe limit on Iranian imports of gasoline would create immediate pressure on Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to change course, and to cease in the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

McCain noted that he was one of the senators who authored an amendment calling for the designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. "Over three quarters of the Senate supported this obvious step, but not Senator Obama," he said. :He opposed this resolution because its support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq was, he said, a 'wrong message not only to the world, but also to the region.' But here, too, he is mistaken. Holding Iran's influence in check, and holding a terrorist organization accountable, sends exactly the right message -- to Iran, to the region and to the world."

McCain Policy is 'Failed and Dangerous'
Sen. Obama was quick to respond to McCain's criticism: "John McCain stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure," he contended. "Here are the results of the policies that John McCain has supported, and would continue. During the Bush Administration, Iran has dramatically expanded its nuclear program, going from zero centrifuges to more than 3000 centrifuges. During the Bush Administration, Iran has expanded its influence throughout a vitally important region, plying Hamas and Hezbollah with money and arms. During the Bush Administration, Hamas took over
"John McCain continues to run on a platform of doubling down on George Bush's failed policies."
Gaza. Most importantly, the war in Iraq that John McCain supported and promises to continue indefinitely has done more to dramatically strengthen and embolden Iran than anything in a generation."

"Confronted with that reality, John McCain promises four more years of the same policies that have strengthened Iran, making the United States and Israel less safe," Obama continued. "He promises to continue a war in Iraq that has emboldened Iran and strengthened its hand. He promises sanctions that the Bush Administration has been unable to persuade the Security Council to deliver. He promises a divestment campaign, even though he refused to sign on to Barack Obama's bipartisan divestment bill, refused to get his colleagues to lift an anonymous hold on the bill, and willfully ignores the fact that trade and investment between Iran and Iraq continue to expand. He stubbornly refuses to engage in aggressive diplomacy, ruling it out unconditionally as a tool of American power.

"Instead of recognizing reality," the Democratic contender added, "John McCain continues to run on a platform of doubling down on George Bush's failed policies, while carrying on his divisive brand of politics. The United States and Israel cannot afford four more years of an unwillingness to change course."

'The Day is Right Now'
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke at length about the Iranian threat in the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday. "Iran must understand that the threat of a military move exists and is not off the table," she said. "The clearer that becomes, the need for [a military strike] in practice may become smaller... Weakness can be interpreted as a sort of acceptance of fate," Livni explained. Click here for more of Livni's remarks.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a United Nations summit on global food security Tuesday as a forum for his latest verbal attack on Israel, calling it a “false Zionist regime” that is “doomed to go.”

Appealing his European audience, Ahmadinejad said that "European peoples have suffered the greatest damage from Zionists and today the costs of this false regime, be they political or economic costs, are on Europe's shoulders."

Speaking to the summit attendees through an interpreter, he defended his statements: "I do not believe that my declarations create problems. People like my comments, because this way the public can save themselves from the imposition of the Zionists."  He also reiterated his firm belief in the destruction of the Jewish state, saying that Israel is a "fabricated regime" that is doomed to go whether or not Iran is involved.

Following the remarks, Ahmadenijad was shunned by Western leaders at the summit, including Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, who made it clear that they will not meet with him.  The Italian television network RAI reported that the government was embarrassed by the Iranian leader's remarks, and that his name was removed from the summit's closing gala event guest list. Pope Benedict XVI also turned away a request for a private audience with the Iranian president. Spokesmen for the Vatican quickly denied, however, that the pope was snubbing Ahmadinejad, claiming that the religious leader was declining all similar requests from summit delegates.

In the meantime, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni continued to warn Iran with the threat of military action in response to Iran's continued development of a nuclear weapons program. "Iran needs to understand that the threat of military action exists and has not been taken off the table," Livni told Knesset ministers during a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "As long as that's made clear, the need to use [military force] will be reduced."

Livni stressed the urgent need to take timely action and the Foreign Ministry's attempts at communicating that need to a reluctant world: "The time for a decision is now. Weakness can be interpreted as a form of acquiescence."

"We are clarifying to every official that we meet, that in this region, either you beat up the neighborhood thug, or you join him, and the world needs to be measured by its action," insisted the foreign minister.

"The day of decision is not the day of the bomb, and when they have the technology, but rather now," declared Livni. "Every hesitation on action against Iran creates an impression of weakness", she affirmed, on the part of Israel and the international community in its confrontation with the oil-rich and recalcitrant Persian Gulf state.

The FM continued by criticizing the international community for failing to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. "The uranium enrichment continues and the international condition for conducting negotiations with them is the cessation of enrichment," she noted. "Israel is acting so that the international community will continue to stand by its condition."

Livni also cited growing uneasiness of Iran's Arab neighbors at the prospect of an atomically armed Iran, telling FADC members that the international community must act on these fears to convince Arab leaders that a nuclear Iran is a threat to them as well. "There are still more moderate parties in the Arab world which are 'sitting on the fence' and debating the question of whether they could come to terms with a nuclear Iran. These are states which are directly threatened by Iran, and some of them border the country," she pointed out. "There is a big gap between what they say in the back rooms and what they say - and their willingness to act or to speak - in public."

Iran is also a major concern for Israel due to its comfortable relationship with Syria. Amidst continued Israel-Syrian negotiations over the Golan Heights, Syrian President Bashar Assad demanded Sunday that Syria's borders must extend "all the way to Tiberias". The Turkish agency Champress reports that Israel has already agreed in the first round of talks to hand over the entire Golan Heights to Syria, easily placing Iranian nuclear rocket launchers at Israel's doorstep and rendering the defense against a missile strike virtually impossible for Israel in the event of a Syrian-Iranian pact.

Police Commissioner David Cohen lashed out at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Tuesday night and said he should look at himself instead of the police to find out who leaked details on the criminal investigation against him to the media. Cohen also rejected the Prime Minister's charges that the police are incompetent.

Prime Minister Olmert, whose long political career is in serious jeopardy due to strong suspicions of fraud and breach of public trust, recently complained that the police were "pumping the media and endlessly leaking [information]." He accused the investigators of "waging a media war that deviates from any acceptable norm that would otherwise characterize a decent police force."

At the height of the probe, he asserted, "I am acting in a statesmanlike way, and you are constantly leaking details from the investigation."

Cohen lashed out at the Prime Minister while speaking at a memorial ceremony for fallen policemen. "The police insist on fairness and responsible reporting, and anyone accusing [us] of strong leaks should examine his own surroundings," he stated.
Anyone accusing [us] of strong leaks should examine his own surroundings.

Recent media leaks have charged American businessman Morris Talansky with contradictions between what he told police investigators and what he said at a court hearing. The leaks, apparently originating from attorneys for Prime Minister Olmert, indicate that their defense is very weak, police sources said.

The investigation, the fifth criminal probe against Prime Minister Olmert in two years, reached a climax last week when Talansky testified that he personally forwarded to the Prime Minister envelopes stuffed with well over a hundred thousand dollars. Talansky also testified that he paid more than $4,000 for Olmert and his wife's three-night hotel stay at a posh Washington hotel, as well as for their lodging in a luxury New York hotel.
 
Cohen defended police investigators against the Prime Minister's charges of incompetency. He said, "This is a sensitive complicated investigation being carried out by skilled professional investigators, while accompanied by the state prosecutor and the attorney general."

The probe is continuing this week in the United States, where investigators are questioning at least one billionaire who gave Prime Minister Olmert cash and are seeking information on cash withdrawals and transfers.

Are you a young Anglo living in Israel, looking for that community feeling you had in the states? Have you given up on that dream because of the high prices out there today? Well, there is now something in the works that offers a solution to this common problem. Over 400 young Anglo couples and singles have recently joined a new Facebook group titled "Young Couples without Millions, Looking for a Nice Community in Israel." This group has grown over the past few weeks at an insane rate.

Due to the large number of members, the group is generating a lot of hype among Israeli contractors and real estate agents. The group has already met once to discuss one option of building a new community. A contractor, lawyer, and builder came to the meeting to "pitch" their idea. Whether this specific idea will work out is yet to be known, but there will no doubt be many more meetings and whether it happens now or later, this group seems sure to produce results.

Due to the large number of members, the group is generating a lot of hype among Israeli contractors and real estate agents.
The original goal of the group was to ensure that "they don't miss the next boat like we did with Modiin and Yad Binyamin." With their large number of members, they hope to define the "next boat."

For more information, see their facebook page at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13501242855

Residents of Kedumim in Samaria held a protest Tuesday morning against the alleged retreat by IDF forces when Arab rioters attacked.

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The incident in question occurred this past Sabbath.  Dozens of Arabs threw rocks at Jews in the outpost of Shvut Ami, adjacent to Kedumim, throughout the morning prayer service and intermittently over the course of the day.  Army forces finally arrived around 6 PM, by which time some 150 Arabs had arrived, apparently attempting to enter and take over the Jewish neighborhood.  The Jews were not encouraged when the senior officer of the IDF force, the deputy regiment commander, was quoted as having saying, "I'm here to arrest Jews."

The Arabs continued to throw rocks, the soldiers fired in the air, and a Kedumim security team member was hit near the eye by a rock.  He was evacuated to a hospital for treatment, and was later reported to have narrowly escaped serious injury.

Within a short time, though the Arabs continued to attack, the army forces retreated. Shortly afterwards, when the Sabbath ended just after sundown, the soldiers returned, evicted the Jewish residents from Shvut Ami - for possibly the seventh time in a year - and declared the area a "closed military zone." 

The residents say they will return, as they have done after every past eviction.

Residents Protest Army Cowardice
At the demonstration Tuesday morning, dozens of residents rallied outside the local army base and demanded to know why the soldiers retreated, leaving the citizens unprotected and at risk of their lives.

"What has happened to our army?" asked Hila Mordechai, one of the organizers of the protest, through her megaphone.  "This is not the IDF we know, nor the IDF we strive for... We have come to remind you of your job... We stand here shocked and outraged, at your behavior in the face of Arab rock-throwing and cursing, and at the shameful commands issued to you by your commanders... "

Finally, the deputy commander arrived, but did not respond to the accusations.  One protestor called out through the megaphone: "We are all partners in the IDF. We send our husbands and sons to protect our homeland - and at the same time, officers like you abandon our children to Arab murderers!  Who will take responsibility for the next murder that will happen here?!"

Another protest is planned for this Friday.

An Arutz-7 query regarding the incident has been submitted to the IDF spokesman's office. 

The Defense Minister's settlement advisor says the government will not be able to meet the summer deadline it set for the destruction of Migron.

The 43 families of Migron - a Jewish neighborhood in the southern Binyamin region of Samaria, with the official status of "unauthorized outpost" - have apparently passed yet another hurdle on their way to becoming a permanent Jewish presence in the Land of Israel.  Despite the efforts of the radical left-wing Peace Now organization, which led to a government pledge to destroy Migron by this coming August, it now appears that this pledge will not be fulfilled.

"Migron will not be evacuated by August," Eitan Baroshi, the Defense Minister's Advisor for Settlement Affairs, told Army Radio this morning, "despite the State's promise to the Supreme Court."  Baroshi said that the goal is to reach an agreement with the residents on relocation to a nearby spot, and to avoid a violent evacuation - but that this will take time.

Migronites: We're Not Leaving
The residents of Migron are pleased, though not particularly surprised. More than anything else, they are insistent that they will not leave their homes of their own volition.  "We are the testing ground for all the residents of Judea and Samaria," it was written recently in an internal Migron memo, "vis-a-vis the government's weakness.  We are the first stone in the dam, but it is within our power to prevent the fall of the entire dam."

Itai Harel of Migron told Arutz-7, "Despite rumors to the contrary, we are very strong and very firm, and we have no intention of leaving on our own."  Shuki Sat, another resident, said, "Migron is in the consensus, and we will not fall.  If someone wants to evacuate something, let them find some empty containers on a hilltop, not an existing, thriving community."

Strategically Located
Migron was founded in 2002 on a strategic hilltop overlooking the main Jerusalem-Shomron highway, between Psagot, Adam and Michmas. Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, then the Central District Commander who was a strong force behind Migron's establishment, said at the time that it was strategically important for Israel to grab that spot.

Migron quickly grew to over 40 families, a spurt that was abruptly stopped when the government - which had provided roads and infrastructures - tightly clamped down on bringing new caravans into the town.  Migron currently has 50 caravans and two permanent houses.

Peace Now placed Migron in its sights, seeking out and finding Arabs who claimed to own some of the land on which Migron was built.  A court suit demanding Migron's destruction was filed, ultimately leading to the government's August threat. The government is hoping to decide where to relocate the residents by August, but the acutal relocation - even if the residents agree - could take months or years.

Bar Ilan University political scientist Dr. Mordechai Kedar said on the pro-Hamas Al Jazeera television network, "Jews were in Jerusalem while Muslims were drinking alcohol." In a heated debate with the narrator, he added, "We don't need your permission to build" in the capital.

The encounter occurred earlier this week, when Jews around the world celebrated Jerusalem Unification Day. Dr. Kedar has frequently appeared on the Qatar-based network but this time encountered a sharp attack from the show's host.

"Building in Jerusalem is another coffin in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority," the narrator told Dr. Kedar, who answered that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel 3,000 years ago. His reference to Muslims drinking alcohol, which is forbidden in their religion, infuriated the host.

The narrator wagged his finger in the air and said excitedly, "If you want to talk about history, you cannot erase Jerusalem from the Koran, and don’t attack the Muslim religion if we want to continue talking." Dr. Kedar replied, "Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. Jerusalem is a Jewish city."
Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. Jerusalem is a Jewish city.

Expanding his remarks on Voice of Israel government radio Wednesday, the political scientist noted, "The Muslim religion did not come to live with Judaism and Christianity but instead lives at their expense. They build themselves on the destruction of Israel and to suggest otherwise is an attack on their faith."

He explained that Al Jazeera takes a jihadic and anti-Israel stance in order to detract viewers' attention from the wealth of the oil-rich Arab kingdoms, including Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based.

"The amount of poison that they disseminate about us from our home is too dangerous, and something had to be done," he recently told the Jewish Forward, referring to the Israeli government's unannounced partial boycott of the network. He labeled Al Jazeera "the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood," the radical terrorist party that is gaining popularity in Egypt.

Al Jazeera television claims 100 million viewers and has studios in Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah.

Machon Meir Institute in Jerusalem features a unique exhibit of newpapers and other artifacts from the days of the establishment of the State of Israel.

The exhibit features newspaper aricles, photographs and other objects that document not only the events of that historic period, but also the excitement and fears that gripped the public at that time.

For instance, a Haaretz newspaper from the 7th of Iyar (May 16) 1948, the first edition published after the State of Israel was declared, headlined a verse from Jeremiah across the top of the front page: "I [G-d] have rendered you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and walls of brass... They will make war against you and will not succeed."

A poster by the hareidi-religious Agudat Yisrael party calls on males, aged 17-25, to recognize that G-d had "privileged us to independence in our own state" and to enlist in religious units of the army.  It also calls on females of the same ages "who stand in awe of G-d's word" not to enlist in the army, but rather "to register [and] fulfill your obligation to your natio and your land!  Register for service to the nation!"

Ben-Gurion Stands Up for Jerusalem
An audio recording of David Ben-Gurion's response to the UN's demand to internationalize Jerusalem can be heard: "We see it as our obligation to declare that Jewish Jerusalem is an integral and organic part of the State of Israel, because it is an inseparable part of Israeli history and faith, and is its breath of life. Jerusalem is the heart of hearts of the State of Israel."

Machon Meir specializes in teaching Torah to newly-observant Jews in accordance with the philosophy of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook - love for the State of Israel and its builders and appreciation for the historic process that the nation is now undergoing.

Rabbi Avraham Ettinger, a long-time teacher in Machon Meir, is responsible for collecting most of the artifacts in the exhibit over a period of many years.  "It is very important that the young generation get to know the atmosphere and public sense of those historic years," he says. "The youth of today is very special, but they are missing the knowledge and understanding of the threats and dangers that faces the State of Israel in those early years."

"They hear lectures in their yeshivot about the spiritual significance of those events," Rabbi Ettinger says, "but they need to also know historically what exactly happened and how.  This exhibit will give them many insights that will help strengthen their connection to this land and to our country... The Haggadah for Pesach says that everyone must feel as if he himself had left Egypt - and how? By having each generation recount the story to the next generation.  Today, as well, we must tell the story to the generations that follow us."