Israel On Alert For Hizbullah Attack
Israel is on heightened alert for possible attacks by the Iranian-backed Hizbullah organization in Lebanon, according to a senior Israeli defense official speaking to this column.
The official said the Jewish state is concerned Hizbullah might try to spark a conflict to deflect attention from an international tribunal investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who died in a car bomb explosion in 2005.
The probe is reportedly set to indict members of Hizbullah for the murder. The indictments may come as soon as the next few weeks, reports have claimed.
Hizbullah is deeply concerned about the political fallout within Lebanon if its members are accused of murdering Hariri, the defense official said.
As such, Hizbullah may try to carry out attacks against Israel similar to those that prompted the 2006 Lebanon War. During that conflict, Hizbullah fired constant rocket barrages into Israel, killing 43 Israelis and wounding more than 4,200.
PA Establishing Facts On The Ground –
With Help From The U.S.
Despite its history of friendly relations with Israel, the U.S. has been aiding Palestinian Authority construction in areas where the work could tilt the outcome of Mideast negotiations in favor of the Palestinians.
By aiding Palestinian construction of infrastructure in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, the U.S. has effectively been helping the PA create facts on the ground that could push disputed neighborhoods toward becoming part of a Palestinian state, including areas where the land in question is wholly owned by Jews.
While the Obama administration has been demanding a complete halt to all Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, has been financing Palestinian infrastructure projects in those same territories. Some of the projects include the construction of PA municipal buildings as well as roads and other infrastructure.
Last month the State Department inaugurated a USAID-funded Palestinian school in Beit Ijza, a West Bank neighborhood about five miles northwest of Jerusalem. The U.S. has also been aiding in multiple other West Bank areas with the construction of roads and municipal facilities.
Some of the U.S.-funded construction has been carried out by a company owned by the son of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
Intensive Fast-Track Talks Up Ahead?
The White House is planning intensive Israeli-Palestinian talks that aim to create the borders of a future Palestinian state within two months, according to Palestinian Authority officials speaking to this column.
While such talks seem ambitious, the negotiations are timed around the possible acceptance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a two-month freeze-extension barring Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
A PA source conceded the talks likely will not lead to an agreement within two months.
“The U.S. proposed intensive negotiations regarding borders, meaning in the coming two months borders will be clear and maybe even closed,” said the source. “It’s very ambitious and is a lot to expect.”
While Netanyahu has not made any public statements regarding a freeze extension, the Israeli government sources told WorldNetDaily the prime minister will not allow any new Jewish construction in the foreseeable future in the West Bank or eastern sections of Jerusalem, excluding what are known as the three main settlement blocs – Gush Etzion, Maale Adumin and Ariel.
Another Radical Tied To Obama
A key organizer of last weekend’s “One Nation” rally in Washington, D.C., founded a radical black group whose leaders are deeply tied to Obama.
The rally, described as a counter to the tea party movement and to Glenn Beck’s Washington event in August, took place last Saturday and reportedly drew up to 140,000 activists in support of Obama and the Democratic Party.
The event was endorsed by “Organizing for America,” Obama’s 2008 campaign website which morphed into a fundraising arm of the Democratic National Committee.
It was sponsored by a slew of radical groups, including the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America, NAACP, Code Pink, the National Council of La Raza, George Soros’s Campus Progress, the International Socialist Organization, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the Gray Panthers, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Green For All, led by Van Jones, Obama’s former green jobs adviser, who resigned last year after media reported that he had founded a communist organization.
Roz Pelles, civil rights director for the AFL-CIO, served as one of three key rally organizers. Her official title was “steering committee liaison.”
In March 1998, Pelles helped to found the Black Radical Congress, endorsing a statement calling for the radical group’s establishment.
The founding conference for the Congress witnessed the attendance of multiple activists with deep ties to Obama, including:
Obama’s former green jobs adviser, Van Jones.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for nearly 20 years at Chicago’s Trinity United Church.
Bill Fletcher Jr., a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America, many of whose activists, WND previously reported, are associated with Obama. Fletcher co-founded “Progressives for Obama,” a powerful far-left lobbying group to aid Obama’s policies.
Cornel West, a race-relations professor at Princeton and a Marxist activist. Obama named West, whom he has called a personal friend, to the Black Advisory Council of his presidential campaign. West was a key point man between Obama’s campaign and the black community. West served as an adviser on Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March and is a self-described personal friend of the Nation of Islam leader. West authored two books on race with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was at the center of the controversy last year in which Obama criticized Gates’s treatment by police outside his home after a report of a burglary.
Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.
