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Monday, Aug. 08 '16, ד' באב תשע"ו
HEADLINES:
1. ISRAEL ORDERED TO PAY IRAN $1.2 BILLION
2. HOLOCAUST HERO WALLENBERG EXECUTED BY SOVIETS, DIARIES SHOW
3. MINISTER: WE MUST NOT REPEAT GUSH KATIF
4. NUMBER OF HAREDI RECRUITS TO NATIONAL SERVICE PLUMMETS
5. CANADIAN JEWISH GROUPS PROTEST CONFAB THAT GIVES PLATFORM TO BDS
6. SWEDES DEMAND ISRAEL FIX GAZA FLOTILLA SHIP AFTER COURT VICTORY
7. COULD HACKERS DERAIL CLINTON'S WHITE HOUSE DREAM?
8. 'PREPARATION FOR TEMPLE NO LONGER A DREAM'
1. ISRAEL ORDERED TO PAY IRAN $1.2 BILLION
by Rachel Kaplan
The Swiss Supreme Court in Lausanne has ordered the Israel-controlled Trans-Asiatic Oil Company to pay a debt of $1.2 billion to Iran's national Oil Company.
According to Global Arbitration Review, which published the Swiss court's ruling, Iran's oil company has been removed from the sanctions regime, so there is no legal obstacle to paying it any money.
On June 27, the court directed Trans-Asiatic to pay the Iranians 250,000 Swiss francs (about 1 million shekels, or $260,000) of the monies that have been deposited with the court, and another 200,000 francs in court costs.
Trans-Asiatic appealed, and lost, saddling the company with a heavy fine.
The lost appeal is the latest skirmish between Israel and Iran over an oil transporting and marketing partnership the two countries formed before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The partnership had two parts: the Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, which operated overland to stream Iranian oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, and Trans-Asiatic Oil Ltd (TAO), which was registered in Panama, operated out of Tel Aviv, and ran a fleet of tanker ships and marketing channels to sell Iranian oil to Europe.
The partnership, signed in 1968, lasted only 11 years. In 1979, after the Islamic Revolution, Iran cut off all ties with Israel. Despite the diplomatic cold shoulder, Iran still faced off with Israel in three different legal procedures, in an attempt to glean money for the oil it forwarded to Israel on credit before the revolution, for the value of their half of the partnership.
The total disputed sum is in the ballpark of $7 billion. Since the Iranian oil company has been formally separated from Iran, global financial sanctions don't apply to it.
In 2015, two of three arbitrators ordered TAO to pay Iran some $1.2 billion for 50 oil deliveries made before the revolution, along with $362 million in interest. The arbitrators rejected a countersuit by Israel, claiming the debt should be erased to repay Israel for all the oil which Iran failed to deliver after the revolution.
According to Israel, the original agreement called for Iran to supply oil until 2017.
An Iranian source last year leaked the results of the arbitration, but Israel, which treats the arbitration with Iran as classified, refused to comment on the matter, other than a vague statement that it would not pay Iran.
TAO attempted to appeal the latest Swiss verdict on technical grounds, but was denied the appeal, and ordered to pay the compensation and court costs to Iran.
2. HOLOCAUST HERO WALLENBERG EXECUTED BY SOVIETS, DIARIES SHOW
by JTA
JTA - Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazi gas chambers, was executed in a Soviet prison, according to a KGB head's diaries.
The diaries of Ivan A. Serov, who ran the former Russian secret police and intelligence agency from 1954 to 1958, were discovered inside the walls of his second home in northwestern Moscow, which his granddaughter is now renovating. Discovered four years ago, the diaries were published this summer, The New York Times reported Sunday.
"I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947," Serov wrote
The diaries contains references to several previously unknown documents referring to Wallenberg, including one recording the cremation of his body. They were published under the title "Notes From a Suitcase: Secret Diaries of the First KGB. Chairman, Found Over 25 Years After His Death," which went for sale in Russia in June.
Serov died of a heart attack in 1990 at age 84. He is thought to have hidden the diaries around 1971.
A 1991 joint Russian-Swedish effort to discover what happened to Wallenberg, which included archival research and interviews with retired state security employees, yielded no definitive conclusion when it ended in 2000. The investigation found that documents had been destroyed or altered to eliminate all traces of him.
Wallenberg was posted to Nazi-occupied Hungary during World War II, where he issued protective passports to Jews in the final months of the Holocaust. He disappeared in 1945 after being seen surrounded by Soviet officers in Budapest. The Soviets later claimed Wallenberg had died of heart failure in prison.
The diplomat's parents both reportedly committed suicide in 1979 in despair over his disappearance. In November 2015, Wallenberg family members asked Swedish authorities to declare him dead.
3. MINISTER: WE MUST NOT REPEAT GUSH KATIF
by Hezki Baruch
"The Katif Conference," marking 11 years since Israel evacuated Gaza, opened Monday morning with the issue of national responsibility.
The conference is the initiative of the Katif Center to Commemorate the Legacy of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria. It was attended by government ministers, MKs and other dignitaries.
The conference began with the blessing of Chairman of the Public Municipaliy of Central Katif, David Hatuel, after whom the head of the Hof Ashkelon Municipal Head, Yair Parjon, took to the podium.
As the conference continued, Agriculture Minister MK Uri Ariel argued that, "I didn't come to congratulate, I came to respect and to join with my brothers and good friends from all over the country. This is the 11th year since the expulsion of the Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. We, and you especially, are proving throughout forty years what is national responsibility."
"National responsibility is to go and live in Kfar Darom...to build Gush Katif and Gaza, and not to be deterred by terrorism, and the rest of the attacks, and to continue onward in creating connections in society, with all of its diversity, which creates the most beautiful rainbow out of all the colors."
"National responsibility is to be in an intifada, and to bite your tongue. To know that the response is in planting, and to know that the Zionist answer lies in building.
"National responsibility is to act as they did in Gush Katif, and not to pick up your hand [to strike], and not hurt anyone in the security forces. That's not national responsibility, to create psychological warfare...as if these people were exploiters. It is not national responsibility to exile 8,000 people from their homes, that is not the answer of national responsibility. It is national responsibility to say that after we evacuate those people, we go and settle the land. That is national responsibility, and that is the continuation of national responsibility.
"It is a national responsibility not to evacuate the people of Amona again. We were in this horror film already the year after the expulsion of Gush Katif. The residents acted with 100 percent responsibility, and didn't strike any soldiers, even though they attempted to fabricate claims. For whom? For those who did not have [a sense of] national responsibility," Ariel dismissed.
"It is our national responsibility to pass through the Knesset a law to legalize Amona and all settlement, and not to search out each time a one-time solution," Ariel emphasized.
Head of the Katif Center to Commemorate the Legacy of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, Mochi Beter, emphasized that "the difficult emotions left over from the disengagement only strengthen all the more the need to act...especially today, with our differing world views, disputes, and difficult arguments, we choose to move forward with the dialogue, the conversation and the listening born out of mutual respect, in order to continue the idea of establishing the state of Israel as the home of the Jewish people."
4. NUMBER OF HAREDI RECRUITS TO NATIONAL SERVICE PLUMMETS
by Ben Shaul
While the number of haredi recruits in the IDF has been on the rise, the number of haredim enlisting in the civilian national service has fallen sharply.
According to figures provided by the National Service Authority, only 728 haredim volunteered for service this year.
The number falls far short of the 1,800 set as a goal by the government last February.
The document, first publicized by BeHadrei Haredim, offers some possible explanations for the drop in enlistment, despite the concurrent increase in IDF enlistment among haredim.
Chief among the reasons for the decline, claimed the report, is increased opposition by some within the haredi community, curtailing efforts to directly recruit volunteers.
"First of all, it is impossible to have a broad, open campaign [to encourage enlistment], due to fears over the opposition of extremists, leading to a lack of awareness within the haredi public both regarding the options for national service as well as the advantages and benefits at the end of the service."
"Some of the haredi leadership," the report added, "is not enthusiastic about the idea of civilian national service, and at best expresses silent support for it."
The report also noted the effect of the "hardak" campaign to delegitimize haredi recruits for the army or national service.
"In addition, there is among many in the haredi community a negative image of haredi servicemen in the civilian national service. Extremists within the haredi community attack the service and those who serve and threaten them, claiming they won't be able to find a spouse, that they will be ostracized from the community, their children will be expelled from the haredi education system, etc."
5. CANADIAN JEWISH GROUPS PROTEST CONFAB THAT GIVES PLATFORM TO BDS
by JTA
JTA - Canadian Jewish groups are protesting public sponsorship of an anti-globalization conference that is giving a major platform to anti-Israel and 9/11 conspiracy theory voices.
The Aug. 9-14 World Social Forum is due to bring 10,000 delegates here, to Quebec's largest city.
Critics are pointing to at least 20 conference activities that promote boycotting Israel or blame the West for the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
Sponsors include the Quebec government, the City of Montreal, major unions and McGill University.
"Public funding, when granted, must come with the responsibility to ensure that it is not used to promote hatred and discrimination," the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs' Rabbi Reuben Poupko wrote in the Montreal Gazette. "That our tax dollars are going to fund in any way a podium for the likes of self-proclaimed 'Bolsheviks' and conspiracy theorists is deeply troubling."
B'nai Brith Canada also said parts of the conference are possibly anti-Semitic.
The World Social Forum was founded 15 years ago in Brazil as a meeting place for civil society organizations. This year, the event is being held in North America for the first time.
Subjects to be addressed include xenophobia, the environment and apartheid.
In the wake of pre-conference Jewish protests, the World Social Forum deleted a listing on its website of the Canadian government as a sponsor, as well as a cartoon on the site seen as anti-Semitic.
The Jewish Defense League has promised to come to Montreal to protest the conference.
One provincial political party, Québec Solidaire, criticized Ottawa for denying entrance visas to 200 participants without what it considered legitimate reason.
But the Canadian immigration authority said all visitors to Canada must meet the requirements for temporary residence. "The onus is on the applicant," the authority said.
6. SWEDES DEMAND ISRAEL FIX GAZA FLOTILLA SHIP AFTER COURT VICTORY
by Arutz Sheva Staff
A Swedish organization 'Ship to Gaza' said Monday it will demand Israeli authorities to repair a Gaza flotilla ship impounded since 2012, after Israel's Supreme Court ordered the ship's release.
Ship to Gaza spokesman Dror Feiler told AFP that the Finnish-flagged Estelle was in Israel's northern port of Haifa, still afloat but unfit to put to sea.
"Last time we had a person who checked the boat, it was maybe one year or nine months ago, the condition of the boat was not good, to put it mildly," he said in English by phone from his home in Sweden.
"It's in salt water and we don't know the condition of the engine, we don't know the condition of the sails," he said. "We will demand that the boat will be put into seaworthy condition so we can sail."
Israeli-born activist Feiler was one of 11 Swedish nationals on the vessel when the Israeli navy commandeered it in 2012 as it neared the coast of the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Feiler had previously renounced his Israeli citizenship and holds Swedish nationality.
The Swedes, along with activists from Norway, Canada, Spain, Italy Greece and Finland, were arrested and later deported.
In its ruling on Sunday the Supreme Court said the state impounded the ship illegally and awarded its owners legal costs of 40,000 shekels ($10,500).
"In light of everything that was said in the ruling, the judges... ordered the release of the ship immediately," a justice ministry statement said.
Feiler said Ship to Gaza would now file a claim for damages.
"They kept the boat for four years and now the court is stipulating that it was illegal so we shall try to get economic compensation," he said. "It's much larger (than the court expenses)."
The Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli security blockade since 2006
The Estelle voyage was one of several unsuccessful attempts to breach the cordon.
AFP contributed to this report
7. COULD HACKERS DERAIL CLINTON'S WHITE HOUSE DREAM?
by David Rosenberg
When FBI Director James Comey announced in July that the agency would not recommend charges be filed against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Clinton campaign staff and Democratic National Committee officials breathed a collective sigh of relief.
An indictment of Mrs. Clinton over her mishandling of classified government material on her private server would have upended a race that according to most polls and predictions markets, has been hers to lose.
But while the threat of a criminal indictment has passed, Clinton and Democratic Party officials have another fear intruding into what should be an optimistic election cycle – hacked emails. With then-Secretary of State Clinton's private server vulnerable to hacks, the possibility that foreign agents acquired material that could upend the election will continue to hang over the head of the Clinton campaign like a digital Sword of Damocles.
After WikiLeaks released thousands of hacked DNC emails on the eve of the party's convention in Philadelphia, Democratic insiders are increasingly concerned that something much bigger may be in the offing.
The WikiLeaks email dump, which exposed the party's efforts to bar insurgent candidate Bernie Sanders from the nomination and ensure a Clinton victory, led to the resignation of senior Democratic officials, including DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, has pledged to release more material from the DNC and Hillary Clinton, signaling the worst may yet to come for the former First Lady and her campaign.
Speaking to RT on Saturday, Assange gave a sneak preview at some of the upcoming leaks.
For instance, Assange stated that the US, during Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, used Libya to transfer weapons clandestinely to jihadist groups operating in Syria.
"The US government at the times when Hillary Clinton was in charge of the foreign policy did use Libya as a conduit to get arms to jihadists in Syria."
Assange also claims that a foreign corporation which allegedly struck "business deal" with the ISIS terror group had a "long-term relationship" with Clinton and donated to the Clinton Foundation.
"La Farge… [a] giant transnational concrete company was involved in Syria. There are more than 350 La Farge related emails in our Syria emails release. The investigations by Le Monde reveals that they paid ISIS money, taxes for their operations in certain areas, were engaged in a variety of business deals with ISIS."
"Money from La Farge in 2015 and 2016 went to Hillary Clinton foundation. There is actually a long-term relationship between La Farge and Clinton; she was a member of the board."
But WikiLeaks is not the only potential spoiler in the race. Foreign hackers like "Guccifer 2.0" boast of stealing documents from the Clinton server during her tenure in the State Department.
Democrats have pointed to Russia, charging the former Cold War rival of tipping the scales in favor of Donald Trump, a charge Russia has denied.
Even if Clinton wins the White House this November, her email woes could well continue into her presidency, draining her political capital and drawing attention away from her agenda.
8. 'PREPARATION FOR TEMPLE NO LONGER A DREAM'
by Arutz Sheva Staff
[youtube:2017930]
In the run up to the 2,849th annual commemoration of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Tisha B'Av), the Temple Institute has released a video proposing the rebuilding of the third Temple.
The Temple Institute is dedicated to doing everything possible to build the third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount. They have published tens of volumes and recreated over 70 sacred vessels for use in the third Temple.
The video uses the metaphor of a glass, which is broken as part of the Jewish wedding ceremony, to signify that the celebration is incomplete so long as the Temple isn't rebuilt.
Rabbi Chaim Richman, International Director of the Temple Institute, commented: "Everyone that has ever attended a Jewish wedding knows that we break a glass, but how many internalize the message. The broken glass isn't supposed to let guests know when to shout 'mazal tov', on the contrary it is a catalyst to move people into a new level of consciousness that fuses mourning with celebration - giving hope for a time in which we will finally rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Every single bridegroom announces the proclamation that he and his future household will not forget Jerusalem, because it is incumbent on everyone of us, at all times to prepare for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple. With the work of the Temple Institute over the last three decades, preparation for the Temple is no longer a dream, it's a reality, in which everyone can play a part".
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