News Digest — 6/12/23
Source: If Iran Enriched Uranium To 90%, Israel Would Attack
A senior source in Israel responded to the concern of the diplomatic and security echelons following reports that Iran and the West may reach an agreement on a nuclear deal.
Speaking to Israel Hayom, Sunday (11th), the source said, “Iran knows if it breaks out uranium enrichment to 90%, there will be an Israeli attack.”
He added that the US and the West know that Israel’s red line is 90% enrichment.
In a series of conversations Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held in European capitals at the beginning of his term, he told the leaders of Germany, Italy, France and Britain that 90% enrichment would be a red line from Israel’s perspective.
The Israeli source also estimated that despite great efforts on the part of the US to reach agreements with Iran, there will not be any such agreements, since Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not interested in such.
However, after the source made his statements, Khamenei spoke in favor of a limited agreement with the West.
Meanwhile Israel is convinced that the current U.S. administration will avoid reaching an agreement with Iran, and instead will make do with understandings, due to the desire to avoid having to bring the agreement to Congress and face criticism from the Republican party.
Israel opposes any kind of agreement between the U.S. and Iran, especially since it will allow billions of dollars into Iran, as already happened last week.
Former IDF Chief Revealed Israel Attacked ISIS Targets In 2015
Former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, revealed on Sunday (11th) that Israel assisted in attacks on Islamic State targets throughout the Middle East and discussed an event from 2015 “where we were asked to attack and carry out a very extensive strike, which inflicted significant damage on many Islamic State terrorists.”
Eisenkot said in an address at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) that “the campaign against the Islamic State was intensive and took place in more than one country, with results in some areas that exceeded all expectations in the type of operations and attacks that were carried out.”
“Some of the operations went under the radar. The IDF managed this campaign with the intelligence corps, Air Force, special units, and foreign relations,” he added.
Eisenkot explained that “not many countries in the world can identify targets the size of a postage stamp and insert a missile into a target within a radius of one thousand kilometers around Israel. Our enemies saw it, the Russians saw it, and the Americans saw it.”
“Those who know best how much the IDF operated throughout the Middle East are Islamic State militants because they paid the price with hundreds of casualties, injured personnel and damages, and they knew who had the ability to carry out these operations,” he added.
“In those years, during the Syrian Civil War, Israel engaged in intelligence cooperation with other agents that targeted Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria using Israeli intelligence,” Eisenkot said.
Five years ago, it was revealed in The New York Times that Israel had attacked Islamic State targets multiple times. According to the report from February 2018, in the preceding years Israeli Air Force aircraft attacked targets in Egyptian territory over 100 times to assist Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in his fight against the Islamic State in Sinai.
According to the report, Israeli assistance to Egypt began after the downing of a Russian plane in the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015 by the terrorist organization. In the disaster, 224 passengers and crew members, mostly Russian citizens, were killed.
Germany To Purchase Israel’s Arrow Defense System For 4.3 Billion Euros
Germany intends to purchase Israel’s Arrow 3 air defense system for nearly four billion euros, Reuters reported over the weekend, with the government in Berlin expected to request the German Parliament to authorize a 560-million euro down payment in the coming week for the system which is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere.
The transaction is to be executed by the end of the year as a deposit in case Germany withdraws from the agreement. The system is expected to be delivered to the German Air Force in 2025.
Although missile strikes from the Soviet bloc were a tangible threat during the Cold War era, Germany and other Western allies have largely neglected their air defense capabilities since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted Germany’s dearth of surface-to-air capabilities to intercept conventional or non-conventional threats beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, raising concerns among decision-makers and military officials alike.
The Arrow 3 system is expected to provide Germany with a layer of defense against medium and long-range missiles at altitudes of up to over 62 miles.
Germany is expected to pay almost double the earlier estimates given during a meeting between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then-prime minister Yair Lapid last September, underscoring Berlin’s urgency in bolstering its air defenses. Furthermore, Scholz’s government will have to delay other important defense projects in order to fund the purchase.
The system is not only intended to defend Germany and accelerate the modernization process of its army, but also to make Germany a leader in air defense among European Union nations.
The prospective sale of the Arrow to Germany had been first reported last year, with Berlin reportedly choosing the Israeli system over U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s THAAD system.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas Has Been Unable To Fulfill His Duties Due To Poor Health – Report
Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Fatah faction, has been unable to fulfill his duties lately due to his failing health, an Arabic media outlet reported over the weekend.
On Saturday (10th), the Lebanon-based, pro-Syrian Al-Akbar newspaper cited multiple Fatah officials who claimed that Abbas’ medical condition has deteriorated to the point where he has often been left incapable of fulfilling his duties as Palestinian Authority chairman.
Abbas was slated to visit Ramallah’s Istishari Hospital several weeks ago for medical checks, the sources claimed, but canceled the trip at the last minute, instead calling for doctors to examine him at his office in Ramallah.
The Palestinian Authority chairman also reportedly was secretly transported to Jordan for a number of urgent medical treatments prior to his appearance at the United Nations on May 15th.
The age and ongoing health concerns of the 88-year-old Palestinian Authority leader, who is now serving his 19th year of a four-year-term, has raised concerns regarding the future stability of the PA both in the U.S. and within the ruling Fatah party.
“Recently, the heads of the movement’s central committee examined medical reports on his health condition, and actually began to prepare for the next stage of the fight to replace Abu Mazen,” a senior Fatah official said, referring to Abbas by his nom de guerre.
(reuters.com; worldisraelnews.com)
US Ready To Rejoin Anti-Israel UN Agency That Denies Jewish Ties To The Western Wall
The U.S. has informed UNESCO that it plans to rejoin the anti-Israel cultural agency six years after the Trump administration left it, the Axios news site reported Sunday (11th).
The U.S. pulled out of UNESCO in October 2017, with Israel shortly following suit, saying the move reflected “U.S. concerns with mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.
Among other things, UNESCO notoriously passed a number of resolutions that denied any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.
The organization also rejected Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. In 2017 UNESCO declared Hebron an endangered Palestinian world heritage site, even though that city, home to the Cave of the Patriarchs, is also considered one of the holiest to Judaism. At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the move, calling it “yet another delusional decision by UNESCO.
As early as November 2021, the current U.S. administration had already urged Israel to rejoin UNESCO.
Israeli Breakthrough Will Make Nut Allergies Disappear
Sheba Hospital’s ARC center presented a new food powder that may change the lives of millions who have dangerous nut allergies by accustoming the body to the food safely, Channel 12 reported Monday (12th).
“To get a person, even a child to…eat without having an allergic reaction, you have to feed him what he’s allergic to,” Dr. Mona Kidon, head of the allergy clinic in the Safra Children’s Hospital in Sheba’s medical center, explained to Channel 12.
There were already such ways to wean people off of dairy and egg allergies, but it didn’t work for peanuts, which are often life-threatening. Those with an anaphylactic allergy carry EpiPens wherever they go just in case they are in need of an emergency injection of epinephrine to allow them to breathe after an inadvertent exposure to the product.
Kidon began collaborating with Dr. Ran Hovav, a peanut expert in the Volcani Institute, the largest center in Israel that focuses on agricultural research.
They decided to take the peanut at an unripe stage when the allergenic proteins have not yet made their appearance and make a powder out of it. They gave the powder to selected parents and told them to make whatever foods they wanted out of it, from pancakes to cookies. By raising the amount of powder gradually, they exposed the children to peanuts slowly and safely throughout the clinical test.
“Giving them one or two cookies a day for 40 weeks brought them to the point where…they could eat a small bag of Bamba [Israel’s ubiquitous peanut-flavored treat], and half a year later they are successfully passing our exit test – eating 100 pieces of Bamba,” Dr. Kidon said.
The treatment was so successful that it is now being optimized, the researchers said, and soon industrial production will begin of peanut cookies made from this powder.
The same process can work for other nuts as well, Kidon pointed out.
“This platform is not only for peanuts,” she said. “We know how to do it with walnuts, cashews, hazelnuts, almonds – any of these things can use this process, which is safe and good, to move a child from a place where his life is in danger when he eats something, to a place where he can eat like children all over the world.”
“We think … the treatment we developed her can affect all those children all over the world who today cannot eat different types of foods and whose lives are in danger on a daily level,” added Prof. Eyal Zimlichman, VP of Innovation and Transformation at Sheba. “If we succeed in cracking this – then we will have made an impact not only in Israel, but on all humanity.”
The ARC Center in Sheba was established in 2019 and named for its strategy to Accelerate Innovation and Redesign Healthcare by collaborating with startups and industry giants in order to bring their new healthcare solutions to the public.
