10 September 2013

 
EVP Eitan
EVP News Letter - 11 September 2013
Latest News

The New Years's long weekend is behind us and Yom HaKippurim is before us.  This is a day of "Cheshbon Nefesh" (self contemplation) where we contemplate our lives, our hopes and dreams, our actions (or lack of them).  For Jews everywher, whether religous or not, this day holds a deep and very special significance and is one of the Holiest occaision in the Jewish calendar. It is a day of fasting and of prayer and a day and a day during which we wish our family, friends and all those we meet "Gmar Hatima Tova" (May you be inscribed in the Book of Life).

According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into the Book of Life on Rosh HaShana and waits until Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict. During the Days of Awe (between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur), a Jewish person tries to amend their behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God. 

Gmar Hatima Tova 

The EVP Team
 

Obama: US exploring Russian diplomatic initiative on Syria, but military poised to act

 

President Barack Obama gave a speech from the East Room of the White House on Tuesday night, opening the door for negotiations with Russia over Syria's chemical arsenal while arguing that a military strike against Bashar Assad's regime would be morally justified.

 

"Sometimes, resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough," Obama said in a prime time, nationally broadcast address. "When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other way."

 

  

 

The White House had planned the address before Russia had proposed-- and Syria had theoretically agreed-- to a deal that would rid Syrian President Bashar Assad of his massive stockpile of chemical weapons.

 

The US on Tuesday welcomed the Assad government's decision to disown its 1,000 ton stockpile, the largest in the world, and to sign on to the United Nations' Chemical Weapons Convention.

 

If the plan is seen through, Syria will have shifted a decades-old policy of refusing to acknowledge the existence of its chemical weapons program virtually overnight. Just Sunday, Assad was denying its existence to CBS' Charlie Rose.

 

Taken from the Jerusalem Post 

 

Full transcript of Obama's speech here 

Syria and the World's reaction.

 

The emerging Russian-brokered deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria to forestall any US attack is - from Israel's point of view - a very mixed blessing.

The good news is that if Syrian President Bashar Assad honors the deal - a huge "if," considering that Assad is a butcher who has killed tens of thousands of his own people to stay in power - then a very deadly weapon will be removed from Israel's doorstep. Israel will no longer have to worry about chemical warfare with its bitter enemy to the north.

 

Chemical weapons out of Assad's hands, therefore, is a net gain - that is the good news.

 

The bad news, however, is that Assad is left standing.

 

The message of his surviving this whole incident as president of Syria is that - yes - in the 21st century you can wipe out entire neighborhoods and cities, use missiles, planes, artillery fire and even sarin gas to indiscriminately kill your own people, and still be allowed to rule.

 

That Assad is left standing, and may even end up remaining in power, is bad for Israel because it sends the following reassuring message to those in the neighborhood - particularly Iran - either perpetrating heinous acts or contemplating them: No worries, this world won't interfere, you can get away with it.

 

Even if Assad has to forfeit his WMD stockpile, he will still literally get away with murder because - to borrow loosely from Bruce Springsteen's song "Born in the USA" - "He's still there, they're all gone."

New Olympic Committee chief heads group that aids Israel boycott

 

The newly-elected president of the International Olympic Committee heads a German-based organization that helps companies to guarantee that their products do not contain anything from Israel

 

 

Thomas Bach, a German who was elected Tuesday at an IOC session in Buenos Aires, is chairman of Ghorfa, the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which was set up in the 1970s by Arab countries to boycott trade with Israel

 

."It betrays the principles of sportsmanship and fair play for the IOC to be headed by someone who actively participates in ongoing Israel boycott campaign measures," said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee Berlin Ramer Institute

 

Ghorfa helps German companies ensure that products meet the import requirements of Arab governments, some of which ban products and services from Israel

 

The group continues to issue certificates of German origin for trade with Arab countries. Its earlier practice of certificates verifying that no product parts were produced in Israel stopped in the early 1990s when Germany enacted trade regulations forbidding the use of certificates of origin to enable de facto trade boycotts, according to the AJC.

(Jerusalem Post)

Fatah-aligned Aksa Martyrs Brigades call for terror attacks against Israel

A leaflet distributed on Tuesday by the Fatah-affiliated Al- Aksa Martyrs Brigades called for launching "fedayeen [guerilla] operations" against Israel as of this coming Friday.

 

  

 

The group called on all its "units and sleeping cells" to start launching attacks against "the Zionist enemy." It said that Palestinians should regard Friday as a "green light from our consciences to all our units and sleeping cells" to launch terror attacks against Israel.

The leaflet said that the attacks would be launched in protest against Israel's alleged efforts to "Judaize and divide" the ElAksa Mosque

    

The leaflet was apparently issued by Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip, a Fatah official in the West Bank said

 

He said he did not believe that the group's West Bank branch had been consulted about the call for resuming terror attacks against Israel

 

Declaring Friday as a day of "popular mobilization against the cowardly Zionist occupier," the group called for initiating confrontations with Israel at the border crossings between Palestinian territories and Israel

 

"We call upon our people to participate in a popular intifada on Friday in honor of the blood of the martyrs and to defend our land and Aksa Mosque, which is being subjected to Judaization and division," the leaflet read

.

Ahmed Assaf, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, warned Israel against "continued incursions into the Aksa Mosque by settlers and extremist Jewish groups

 

He was referring to routine visits to the Temple Mount by Israelis

 

Assaf said that the visits may "sabotage the peace talks and international efforts to achieve a two-state solution on the 1967 borders"

    
He also warned that the visits could plunge the entire region into extremism and violence..
(Jerusalem Post)
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