“I want to make it clear that if Israel, the enemy, does not abide by these demands that it agreed to, then we would treat this as if there was no [ceasefire] at all, the [ceasefire] agreement was void, and we will resume the fighting, God willing.” — The head of the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group Ziad Nakhaleh. The terror leader said that the ceasefire was dependent upon the release of two high-proifle PIJ prisoners, Khalil Awawdeh, and Bassam Al-Saadi. (WIN, Aug. 9, 2022)
“… these are dark times for our Nation. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.” – Former President Donald Trump on news that the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida removing boxes of material and breaking into his safe. This raid marked the first such incursion ever against a former president. (Epoch Times, Aug. 9, 2022)
“To have 30 FBI agents … descend on Mar-a-Lago, give absolutely no notice, go through the gates, start ransacking an office, ransacking a closet. … they broke into a safe. He didn’t even have anything in the safe. They do it for one reason, because they don’t want Donald Trump to run and win again in 2024 … that’s what this is about today. … Why does the political persecution only go one way in this country?” – Eric Trump to Fox host Sean Hannity. The Justice Department says its investigating Donald Trump’s management of classified documents and the FBI raid Monday is a part of that probe. (NY Post, Aug. 9, 2022)
“I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization When Republicans take back The House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.” — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) promised that if Republicans take back the chamber after November’s midterm elections, they will investigate the Department of Justice, telling Attorney General Merrick Garland to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar.” (The Hill, Aug. 8, 2022)
“The decision by the Justice Department to conduct a full-scale morning raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home does not seem justified, based on what we know as of now. If it is true that the basis of the raid was the former president’s alleged removal of classified material from the White House, that would constitute a double standard of justice.
“There were no raids … on the
homes of Hillary Clinton or former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger for comparable allegations of mishandling official records in the recent past. Previous violations of the Presidential Records Act typically have been punished by administrative fines, not criminal prosecution. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons for applying a different standard to Trump’s conduct, but those are not readily obvious at this stage.“The more appropriate action would have been for a grand jury to issue a subpoena for any boxes of material that were seized and for Trump’s private safe that was opened. That would have given Trump’s lawyers the opportunity to challenge the subpoena on various grounds — that some of the material was not classified” – Constitutional lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz. (The Hill, Aug. 9, 2022)
“[Attorney General Merrick] Garland plays with fire here given that Americans of both parties have reason to distrust the political meddling of the FBI. … He plays with fire given what we recently learned about the agency he just sent to ransack Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago palace. According to an investigation by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, the FBI deliberately promoted the fiction that the Hunter Biden laptop was foreign disinformation to help Joe Biden in the 2020 election, though the agency had been in possession of the laptop for nearly a year and knew it to be legit. Mr. Garland had better have a strong case against Mr. Trump and not just be trying to appease progressives because the laptop evidence in his possession puts him in a position of making decisions also about the Biden family that are no less politically loaded.” – Columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr. (WSJ, Aug. 9, 2022)
“… When Clinton set up a secret private server to circumvent transparency … it was a potential felony. In that illegal server, the FBI would find 100 emails containing classified information, 65 marked “Secret,” 22 marked “Top Secret,” and over 2,000 emails that would be retroactively marked classified. Many felonies. Unlike Trump, who had the power to declassify any document he wished, Hillary could not. … No one’s home was [then] raided by the FBI. … [instead,] Comey showered Clinton’s staff with immunity. … Hillary would kick off the entire bogus Trump-Russia investigation, signing off on the leak of a fictitious oppo-research document …
“Now we’ve moved on to Jan. 6 committee hearings. The same double standards … are again in play. When Republicans hold committee hearings, Democrats get to name their members. When Democrats hold committee hearings, they get to name all the members. When Obama Attorney General Eric Holder is held in contempt of Congress over his role in sending guns to drug lords, he can laugh it off. When former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro is held in contempt, he is shackled by the FBI…. if Republicans were doing any of this, Democrats would be calling it authoritarian. And they’d be right.” – political analyst David Harsanyi. (The Federalist, Aug. 9, 2022)
“… the Justice Department is trying to make a Capitol riot case, but Garland is not sure … that he has one he’s comfortable bringing. … In a powder keg, AG Garland is trying to turn up a smoking gun. Unless he can make a convincing violent-crime case against Trump, though, an indictment based on extravagant theories of fraud or mishandling of classified documents will blow up on the Justice Department.” – columnist and former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. He speculates that the DOJ is using the issue of classified documents as a ploy for finding information that would prove that President Trump knew that his allegations of a stolen election were false. “That’s what the DOJ needs, at a minimum, to indict Trump for crimes arising out of the January 6 uprising.” (National Review, Aug. 9, 2022)
“Foreign governments have no trouble recognizing this [FBI raid on Trump’s home] as a gross breach of the rule of law and due process in the United States. They didn’t even have to hear about the procedural violations to recognize it for what it is … So it matters that it was just a few hours after the Mar-a-Lago raid that the government of Russia … announced a suspension of on-site inspections of Russian nuclear sites under the New START treaty … This is what our current president would refer to … as a “big [effing] deal.” … But this is as much a crossing of the Rubicon by Russia as the raid on Mar-a-Lago is by the Biden Justice Department. This means U.S. treaty inspectors have no access to most if not all of the nuclear weapon sites operated by our chief adversaries: Russia and China. We have no treaty with China. The treaty with Russia has just been effectively rendered non-functional for verification and accounting purposes.” – retired US Naval intelligence officer J.E. Dyer. (Optimistic Conservative, Aug. 9, 2022)
IN RARE INTERVIEW TO ISRAELI TV, GAZA MOTHER SAYS SUPPORT FOR WARS FADING (Gaza City) — In a rare interview with Israel’s Channel 12 news, a woman who lives in the Gaza Strip described her terror during Israeli air strikes in recent days as part of Operation Breaking Dawn and said public support for the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror groups was fading. (Times of Israel, Aug. 9, 2022)
ISRAELI SECURITY FORCES KILL WANTED TERRORIST IBRAHIM NABULSI IN NABLUS (Nablus) — Israeli forces killed wanted Palestinian terrorist Ibrahim Nabulsi in Nablus during an hours-long gun battle. (JNS, Aug. 9, 2022)
UN ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ INVESTIGATOR ENDORSES ‘KILLING ISRAELIS,’ NGO CHARGES (Geneva) — Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch NGO, has called on United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to condemn “ugly incitement to violence” by a UN official. Francesca Albanese, the UN’s “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967,” defended Palestinian terrorists after a ceasefire was put into effect following three days of fighting between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). (WIN, Aug. 9, 2022)
ISRAEL’S FISCAL SURPLUS UP TO $3 BILLION (Jerusalem) — Israel’s Ministry of Finance Accountant General reports that in the 12-month period ending July 2022 the nation’s fiscal surplus totaled 9.7 billion shekels ($3 Billion), or 0.6% of GDP. The surplus means that Israel is bringing in more in tax revenues than it spends. June was the only month during this period of time to have a fiscal deficit. (WIN, Aug. 8, 2022)
ISRAEL DECIDES NO MORE AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MEDICAL STUDENTS (Jerusalem) — The government has decided not to allow foreign students to study medicine in Israel, barring them from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Ben-Gurion Faculty of Health Sciences (BGU) in Beersheba and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in Haifa. The Council for Higher Education (CHE) and the Health and Finance Ministries’ decision was finally taken following a 2018 recommendation by the CHE due to the large number of Israelis who go to Europe to become physicians because they are not accepted at faculties here. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 9, 2022)
RUSSIAN-IRANIAN SATELLITE COULD HARM ISRAELI, WESTERN INTERESTS (Moscow) — A Russian rocket carrying an Iranian satellite successfully launched into space, causing national security and intelligence concerns for Israel and the West. The remote sensing satellite, called “Khayyam” was launched by a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Israeli officials are concerned that the latest space cooperation between Moscow and Tehran will increase Iran’s capabilities to potentially launch intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads in the future, as well as improve its monitoring of targets in the Jewish state and throughout the region. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 9, 2022)
PALESTINIANS DEMAND ELECTIONS AS DISCONTENT WITH LEADERSHIP GROWS (Ramallah) — Hundreds of Palestinian political activists and academics are preparing a petition to demand that the Palestinian Authority leadership hold general elections without delay. The demand for holding new elections comes more than a year after PA President Mahmoud Abbas called off the parliamentary and presidential elections, which were supposed to have taken place in May and July 2021. (Jerusalem Post, Aug. 5, 2022)
BEN & JERRY’S FEARS ITS NEW ISRAELI OWNER COULD SELL ‘JUDEA AND SAMARIA’ ICE CREAM IN LATEST COURT HEARING (West Bank) — Could the new owner of Ben & Jerry’s Israeli business interests rename a flavor “Judea and Samaria”? Avi Zinger, who bought the company’s Hebrew and Arabic branding from parent company Unilever last month, recently told an Israeli news outlet that he had the right to do so, and even proposed renaming “Chunky Monkey” to the Biblical name for the West Bank. (JTA, Aug. 8, 2022)
CANADA FINDS JEWS WERE MOST-TARGETED RELIGIOUS MINORITY FOR HATE CRIMES IN 2021 (Ottawa) — Statistics Canada said that the Jewish community, comprising about 1% of the population, were victims of 14% of reported hate crimes. Jews saw a 47% rise in reported hate crimes compared to 2020 making the 380, 000 Jews the most targeted religious minority for hate crimes reported to police in 2021. Only Black Canadians, who make up about 3.5% of the country’s population, reported more hate crimes. (Times of Israel, Aug. 4, 2022)
US DISTRICT COURT IN DC AWARDS JUDGMENT TO FAMILIES OF TERRORISM VICTIMS (DC) — Three families of American citizens whose loved ones were murdered by Hamas in Israel have been awarded a judgment against the Iranian and Syrian governments by the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs include the family of Taylor Force, a West Point graduate and business student who was stabbed to death by a Hamas terrorist in Tel Aviv in March 2016. The awards were for $171,403,803 in compensatory damages and an additional $342,807,606 in punitive damages. (Jerusalem Post. Aug. 5, 2022)
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN, ‘GREASE’ STAR AND GRANDDAUGHTER OF JEWISH NOBEL LAUREATE, DIES AT 73 (California) — Olivia Newton-John, 73, the iconic pop singer of the 1970s and ’80s, died at her home in Southern California of breast cancer. Newton-John was most famous for her starring role as Sandy Olsson, alongside John Travolta’s Danny Zuko, in the 1978 musical “Grease,” and as the singer of the 1982 hit song “Physical.” Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, to Brinley Newton-John and Irene Born, the daughter of Max Born, a Jewish Nobel laureate and one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Born, who was a friend of Albert Einstein, moved to England after being suspended from his position at a German university by the Nazi regime, likely saving his life. There, his wife worked to help Jewish refugee women find employment. (JTA, Aug. 8, 2022)
EU PRESENTS ‘FINAL TEXT’ TO IRAN FOR REVIVING NUCLEAR DEAL (Brussels) —– U.S. and European officials announced that a text for restoring the 2015 nuclear accord had been completed and that negotiations were finished, saying Iran must now decide whether to take or leave the deal. Iranian officials pushed back immediately saying they had already conveyed an initial response to the draft and would come back with additional views at a later point. (WSJ, Aug. 8, 2022)
AL QAEDA NEXT LEADER SAIF AL-ADEL HAS DEEP TIES TO IRAN (Tehran) — With the death of Al Qaeda kingpin Ayman Al Zawahiri, the man likely to become Al Qaeda’s next top dog is Saif Al-Adel, a ruthless jihadist who has spent decades using Iran as a base of operations and who maintains deep ties to the hardline mullah regime, including Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi. This move signals that two of the world’s leading terrorist forces could exponentially expand relations soon with Iran emerging as the “new headquarters” of Al Qaeda, under the leadership of Saif Al-Adel. (Blitz, Aug. 8, 2022)
RUSSIA SUSPENDS STRATEGIC ARMS INSPECTIONS UNDER US TREATY (Moscow) — The Russian foreign ministry said facilities that are subject to inspections under the New START treaty will be “temporarily” exempt from such inspections. The announcement comes as ties between Russia and the United States unravel over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine and debilitating Western sanctions. New START is the last remaining arms reduction pact between the former Cold War rivals and caps to 1,550 the number of nuclear warheads that can be deployed by Moscow and Washington. (Alarabiya News, Aug. 8, 2022)
DRONES USED BY IRAN-BACKED MILITIAS ARE COMING FROM CHINA, US SAYS (DC) — Unmanned drones fired by Iran-backed militias at targets across the Middle East in recent years, sometimes with lethal effect, are being supplied from China. Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top Middle East policy official, called it “an irony” that Beijing has been pushing sales of its military drones to Arab Gulf states while doing nothing to stem the flow of other Chinese-made drones to militias backed by Iran in the region. (Al-Monitor, Aug. 5, 2022)
