A7News: A secret mission to Iran

Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report
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Friday, Aug. 31 '18, כ' באלול תשע"ח



HEADLINES:
1. A SECRET MISSION TO IRAN
2. AMSTERDAM: THREE INJURED IN STABBING ATTACK
3. IN GOOD OR BAD TIMES: WHY AREN'T OUR PAYCHECKS GROWING?
4. ANALYSIS: TRUMP INTERVENES IN IRAQ IN ORDER TO STOP IRAN
5. DON'T LIKE THE NEW NATION-STATE LAW? IT'S YOUR PROBLEM
6. ISRAELI KILLED IN THAILAND: YEDIDYA KELLERMAN
7. WATCH: MASS BRAWL RIPS THROUGH PONOVEZH YESHIVA
8. 'WE SAW AN ISRAELI TRUCK BRINGING WILD BOAR'


1. A SECRET MISSION TO IRAN
by Arutz Sheva Staff

Arutz Sheva has discovered that Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar recently visited Iran on a secret diplomatic mission.

He was sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

All official sources have refused to confirm details such as the purpose of the visit and the exact dates.

It is possible that Rabbi Lazar's visit to Iran is connected to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's attempts to prevent Iran from establishing itself in Syria.

Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of both Iran and Syria signed an agreement to tighten military and security cooperation between their countries.


2. AMSTERDAM: THREE INJURED IN STABBING ATTACK
by Arutz Sheva Staff

Three people were injured in a stabbing attack at an Amsterdam train station.

The count includes two victims, as well as the stabber himself, who was injured by a bullet. All three were transferred for treatment, the NL Times reported.

Police fired at the suspect before arresting him.

AT5 reported that witnesses saw two people start fighting on the train platform. As the flight escalated, one of them drew his knife.

It is not yet clear what the motive for the stabbing was.


3. IN GOOD OR BAD TIMES: WHY AREN'T OUR PAYCHECKS GROWING?
by Arutz Sheva Staff

Just this week, President Trump tweeted "for all of you that have made a fortune in the markets or seen your 401Ks rise beyond your wildest expectations, more good news is coming!"

Even though the economy appears to be strong and growing stronger by many measures, for workers in "production and nonsupervisory" positions, paychecks have fallen in the past year relative to inflation.

Heidi Shierholz is director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, under President Obama. Harry Holzer is a professor of Public Policy at Georgetown. He also served as Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, under President Clinton.

Both of them try to answer why our paychecks don't grow.
[קישורים:6:Radio]


4. ANALYSIS: TRUMP INTERVENES IN IRAQ IN ORDER TO STOP IRAN
by Yochanan Visser

Almost seven years after former US President Barack Obama pulled out the US military to the last soldier from Iraq, the United States announced it would keep its current force of between 7,000 and 9,000 troops in Iraq despite the defeat of Islamic State's caliphate.

Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, said the United States would keep its Special Forces in Iraq "as long as we think they're needed."

Ryan said that once ISIS is definitely defeated Iraq, would still need help to stabilize the country which has seen relentless war since the American invasion in 2003.

The announcement by the American spokesman came two days after the State Department issued a travel warning for US citizens not to go to Iraq because of "terrorism and armed conflict."

Iraq is currently going through a new political and humanitarian crisis, while ISIS is once again stepping up its attacks on the Iraqi military and civilian targets.

As I pointed out in an analysis about Iraq two weeks ago, ISIS has currently 17,000 Jihadist fighters in Iraq who are increasingly destabilizing the warn-torn country.

This week ISIS terrorists caused the death of at least 70 Iraqis and slaughtered 20 cows belonging to residents of the village of ad-Udheim in revenge for their alleged cooperation with the Iraqi security forces.

Another reason for the continuation of the US presence in Iraq is the political crisis in the country which started immediately after the parliamentary elections on May 12, and the Iranian attempts to turn the country into another proxy state.

Firebrand anti-Iranian Shiite politician Muqtada al-Sadr surprisingly won these elections - after which the Iranians interfered and dispatched Qassem Soleimani, the shrewd commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, to Bagdad in order to secure the forming of a pro-Iranian government.

To offset the Iranian meddling in the forming of a new government in Iraq, the Trump administration this week dispatched Brett McGurk to Baghdad in order to discuss the situation with Iraqi politicians.

McGurk together with Douglas Silliman, the American ambassador in Iraq, have been conducting talks with high-level Iraqi politicians all week.

This was done to end the stand-off created by Soleimani who succeeded in forcing al-Sadr into accepting the forming of a government with the Iranian-controlled Fatah Alliance led by Hadi al-Amiri.

Al-Amiri is a Shiite extremist whose Badr organization maintains a close relationship with the Iranian Islamist regime and who fought on the Iranian side in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

The Iranians also attempted to deny Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi - an ally of the United States - a second term. To realize this goal, they created a manmade humanitarian crisis in southern Iraq by cutting off the electricity supply.

The already dire humanitarian situation in Iraq was furthermore exacerbated by a severe water shortage which this week caused the illness of more than 17,000 people who drank contaminated water.

The London-based Arabic language paper Asharq al-Awsat (The Middle East) reported that "17,000 cases of colic and diarrhea were reported due to contaminated water over the past two weeks."

"The hospitals in Basra receive about 1,500 such cases on a daily basis," Asharq al-Awsat wrote, quoting Riad Abdul-Amir, the Director-General of the Public Health Directorate in Iraq's southern district Basra.

Al-Abadi, not Iran, was blamed for the humanitarian crisis and the ensuing violence which spread from Basra to other regions in Iraq. Iraq subsequently released $2.5 billion to solve the crisis but it didn't placate the anger among the Iraqi population.

The Americans apparently understood their ally was in trouble and staged their own intervention in the political process which must lead to the forming of a new government in Iraq.

McGurk's intervention immediately led to demonstrations in Bagdad's so-called Green Zone where protesters held banners saying "those who sit with (US President) Donald Trump's messenger betray the martyrs' blood."

Some Iraqi politicians, furthermore, want to block what they dub American meddling in internal Iraqi affairs and want the new Iraqi parliament to debate Trump's decision to keep US troops in Iraq, which they say is illegal under international law.

Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, called for a day of rage after the American announcement.

The controversial winner of the Iraqi elections told his followers to hold a million man march against sectarianism, corruption, terrorism and against "the occupation."

Sadr's call about a protest against the "occupation" was interpreted by commentators as a signal to the Trump Administration to end what Iraqi politicians call "interfering" in the negotiations aimed at forming the biggest parliamentary bloc.

Trump, however, is looking at the broader picture and realizes he has to act in Iraq in order to implement his new Iran containment policy.


5. DON'T LIKE THE NEW NATION-STATE LAW? IT'S YOUR PROBLEM
by Jay Shapiro

Jay Shapiro Claims that the opposition to the new Nation-State Law is due to a distortion of its meaning.

In his opinion, the new Nation-state law deals with the character of the state and not with civil rights.

[audio:2046758]

[קישורים:7:Radio]


6. ISRAELI KILLED IN THAILAND: YEDIDYA KELLERMAN
by Tal Polon

The Israeli man killed in northern Thailand in a traffic accident has been identified as Yedidya Kellerman, 25, a resident of Nof Ayalon.

Kellerman, who married around a year ago, was traveling with his wife, Kesem, for their honeymoon at the time of his death. Kesem was also moderately injured in the accident.

The Israeli consulate in Bangkok, ZAKA, and Chabad emissaries in Thailand are working to have the body transferred to Israel.

According to Mati Goldstein, commander of ZAKA's international unit, Kellerman was run over by a drunk driver as he walked with his wife on a street in the town of Pai in northern Thailand. He said that Kellerman was killed on the spot.

"The impact of the crash was hard and deadly. The local doctor who arrived was forced to confirm his death at the scene."

Yedidya worked as an mortgage adviser and event photographer. He served in the IDF's armored corps and participated in 2014's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

The tragedy follows a string of incidents in recent months in which Israelis have been killed while traveling abroad.

In July, a man was killed and his wife was seriously injured in a zip-lining accident in Honduras. The Israeli couple was also on their honeymoon at the time.

A week before that, an Israeli citizen was killed in a traffic accident when his motorcycle collided with a bus in the Kullu district of the state of Himachal Pradesh in India.

A week prior, a 19-year-old Israeli youth was killed in a motorcycle accident in Zanzibar, off the eastern coast of Africa.


7. WATCH: MASS BRAWL RIPS THROUGH PONOVEZH YESHIVA
by Tzvi Lev

Students hurled tables and book holders on Wednesday at Bnei Brak's flagship Lithuanian-haredi Ponevezh Yeshiva as part of a long-running feud between two rival factions.

The brawl raged on throughout the morning and only ended when police detained the main instigators after being called to the scene. Three students were injured after being sprayed by tear gas

The quarrel was part of a longstanding dispute between the two factions over control of the yeshiva and the division of its territory. The supporters of Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz on the one hand, nicknamed the "haters," and Rabbi Eliezer Kahaneman's rival camp, called the "terrorists" have long been at loggerheads and tensions frequently lead to violence.

The flagship Yeshiva of Lithuanian haredi Judaism has been roiled by the power struggle between the two for over twenty years, and both sides observe an uneasy status quo, in which campus space in Bnei Brak is evenly divided between the two factions.

Ponovezh head Rabbi Berel Povarsky pleaded for calm after the violence and said that the students should concentrate on studying Torah. "The evil inclination wants to interrupt our learning of Torah during the month of Elul in the most important yeshiva in the world, our yeshiva," he said.

A similar brawl took place a year ago after one faction appropriated a new classroom for themselves, upsetting the delicate status quo. Students from the other faction subsequently defaced the classroom with derogatory graffiti.

The brawl broke out in the Yeshiva dining hall soon after, when a student from the "haters" faction shoved a supporter of the "terrorist" faction. The fight quickly spread to other parts of the campus, as students hurled furniture, deployed tear gas, and set off fire extinguishers.

Ponovezh is one of the top institutions in the haredi world, and the ongoing internal strife has been a black eye for the community.


8. 'WE SAW AN ISRAELI TRUCK BRINGING WILD BOAR'
by Mordechai Sones

The Ad Kann organization revealed documentation from a Combatants for Peace organization tour where residents of the a-Dik village in western Samaria claim that area settlers release wild boar into the village.

An Ad Kann secret plant documented leaders of the tour, held four years ago in the village, describing how the settlers come at night with trucks full of of wild boar and release them in the village, and the damage that the animals cause residents and their crops.

On tape a village resident speaks in Arabic as a Combatants for Peace interpreter describes to the people how the wild pigs harm the residents: "We're suffering. The peasants and the farmers suffer from the pigs spoiling their agriculture; the pig only looks for where there's dirt and garbage. Lately, the pigs have begun to enter the houses and the gardens of the houses."

Later on, the interpreter explained that the settlers were the ones who brought the boar to the village, saying "the pigs that are here now are from the settlers, they brought them," and "we saw the truck bringing pigs. An Israeli truck carrying boars." In addition, a female resident spoke in Arabic, and the interpreter explained how she "saw a truck with pigs coming from the town of'Ali Zahav and released them into the village".

Ad Kann chose only now to reveal the documentation with the false story because it did not want to compromise the plant at the time.

The organization says they intend to release more material about Combatants for Peace in the coming days. The organization added that Combatants for Peace is behind the alternative memorial ceremony for the "Palestinians" held on the eve of Memorial Day for Israel's Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Hostilities.

Ad Kann Director Gilad Adam said: "During a tour of the extremist Combatants for Peace organization, activists uncovered a blood libel from the anti-Israeli organizations, this time a false claim that residents from Alei Zahav brought trucks full of wild pigs at night into the village and disperse them among the houses there.

"The need of these organizations to cling to such blatant lies in order to turn the Jews into monsters is reminiscent of dark periods in history. Of course, on the other side stands the village of arch-murderer, the engineer Yihya Ayash. Ad Kann organization will continue to uncover the truth behind this distorted phenomenon," he added.

[audio:2046729]




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