DAY IN COURT FOR THE SON OF HAMAS!
by Hana Levi Julian (Arutz Sheva News)

Former Shin Bet spy and “Son of Hamas” Mosab Hassan Yousef faces an immigration judge in San Diego today to plead against deportation.

Known by his undercover name, The Green Prince — green is the signature color of Hamas — Yousef is the first-born son of one of the founders of the terrorist organization that now controls Gaza. But his subsequent conversion to Christianity, combined with his public admission of helping Israel, marked him as a traitor among his own people.

Yousef would indeed be likely to face death if he returned to Judea and Samaria following the publication of his book, “Son of Hamas,” in which he confessed to collaborating with Israel for a decade.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey agreed, writing in a letter released to the media by Steven Seick, Yousef’s attorney, “It is not an exaggeration to say that such an action would set us back years in the war on terrorism. Mosab’s deportation would be such an inhumane act it would constitute a blight on American history.”

More than 20 members of Congress also wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano this week, warning her that the 34-year-old former spy would be in “grave danger” if the United States deports him.

Ex-Shin Bet officer Gonen Ben-Itzhak, known for years only as “G” or “Captain Loai” went so far as to break his own cover in an attempt to help his former protege. Ben-Itzhak, identified in court papers only as “Loai,” has agreed to testify, and told hundreds of attendees at an awards ceremony last week that Yousef saved hundreds of lives with his actions.

Members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee have also written to recognize his work for the Shin Bet and to express their thanks, although there has been no official comment from the State of Israel.

Yousef applied to the United States for asylum after arriving in Los Angeles with a tourist visa in January 2007. However, in February 2009, the Department of Homeland Security decided that Yousef was a terrorist danger to the U.S., precisely due to the information he revealed in his book, and initiated deportation proceedings.

The Department quoted passages from the text in court documents shared with the Associated Press by Seick to support its position that Yousef “discusses his extensive involvement with Hamas,” which is on the official American list of banned terrorist organizations. Citing an instance in which Yousef identified five suspects in a 2001 suicide bombing, and admitted driving them to safe houses, the Department nevertheless did not offer any further pre-hearing detail about any specific threat the ex-spy might pose to America, according to AP.

Although hearings such as this are generally closed to the public, applicants have the option to allow them to be open. Yousef has welcomed the publicity, noting in his Internet blog that “exposing terrorist secrets and warning the world in my first book cost me everything… and now the country I came to for sanctuary is turning its back.” He has invited anyone who is interested to attend the hearing in San Diego.

LIEBERMAN: STOP DREAMING ABOUT A PALESTINIAN STATE!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (IsraelNationalNews)

Israel’s straight-shooting Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that one can only dream about a Palestinian Authority state by 2012.

Lieberman, whose style of skipping over diplomatic niceties has earned him praise and criticism, said at a joint conference, “We can express interest, we can dream, but in reality, we are still far from reaching understandings and agreements on establishing an independent state by 2012.”

PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib retorted, “Lieberman is issuing a challenge to the international community, which is in agreement on the two-year ceiling.” Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, previously have said that if the PA is not recognized as a country in two years, they will turn to the United Nations to unilaterally impose the state within Israel’s current borders.

Lieberman’s remarks captured extra attention because they coincided with the arrival of U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell who is trying to bridge gaps between Israel and the PA over the proposal for creating a new Arab state in place of Judea and Samaria, the Old City of Jerusalem and all of the neighborhoods that were restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.

The Quartet, which includes Russia, has been pressuring Israel to agree to most of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ conditions for the creation of the PA as a new Arab state.

Lieberman has been promoting his own recipe for a new PA state, based on a land swap with Israel whereby Israel would surrender heavily populated Israeli Arab cities in return for Arab recognition of Israeli sovereignty over large Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Virtually all surveys have shown that Israeli Arabs would suffer a serious loss in their economic status if they were to give up their citizenship in order to become part of a Palestinian Authority state.

IRAN IS SURROUNDED BY US TROOPS IN 10 COUNTRIES!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (IsraelNationalNews)

Iran literally is surrounded by American troops, notes an oil market analyst, Energy and Capital editor Christian A. DeHaemer. There is no evidence of an imminent attack, but he connects a number of recent events and the presence of American soldiers to warn that oil prices might soar — with or without a pre-emptive strike aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear power ambitions.

Iran is bordered on the east by Pakistan and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been waging a costly war, in terms of money and lives, against Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

The Persian Gulf is on Iran’s southern border, and last week’s report, confirmed by the Pentagon, that 11 warships had sailed through the Suez Canal, raised alarm bells that the U.S. is ready to fight to keep the Persian Gulf open.

Iran has threatened it could close the waterway, where 40 percent of the world’s oil flows in tankers, if the United Nations or the United States by itself carry out harsh energy sanctions against the Islamic Republic. An Israeli ship has also reportedly joined the U.S. armada.

Kuwait, which is heavily armed by the U.S. and is home to American bases, is located on the southwestern border of Iran. The country’s western neighbors are Turkey and Iraq, also home to American bases, and Turkmenistan, the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijan are the Islamic Republic’s northern neighbors.

The US Army last year advanced military cooperation with Turkmenistan. An independent Caspian news agency has confirmed unusually heavy activity of American troops along the border with Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Brigadier General Mehdi Moini said last week that his forces increased patrols, including tanks and anti-aircraft units, along the border with Azerbaijan because they noticed increased American activity. Iran charged that Israeli forces were also present, sparking a virtual war alert among the Iranian Guards.

In addition, the Times of London reported earlier this month that Saudi Arabia has agreed to open its air space for Israel Air Force jets, a claim that the Saudi monarchy denied. It also denied Iranian news agency claims that Israeli helicopters unloaded military equipment at a northwestern Saudi Arabian air base, from where Israeli planes theoretically could reach Iran in the shortest possible time.

There has been no confirmation of Israel-Saudi cooperation from any other source, but one IDF reserve officer, who has been involved in secret military projects for private companies, told Israel National News that the it could be true if both countries found it in their common interests. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel and has treated the Jewish State with disdain. However, the possibility of Iran’s dominating the Arab world with nuclear power has changed all political scenarios.

Several defense websites have reported that Israel is deploying one to three German-made nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf as a defensive measure against the possibility of a missile attacks from Lebanon and Syria, as well as Iran.

“The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before,” DeHaemer wrote, “but the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.”

Amid the buzz of increased military activity around Iran looms the specter of higher oil prices, which is DeHaemer’s field of expertise. “The last oil price shock in the Middle East was in 1990 when the United States invaded Iraq for invading Kuwait. The price per barrel of oil went from $21 to $28 on August 6…to $46 by mid-October. The looming Iran War is not priced in,” he warned in his news letter.

Iran has the third-highest oil reserves in the world and is second only to Saudi Arabia in production. If any action prevents the flow of Iranian oil, the price of “black gold” would soar, he added.

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR OREN SAYS ‘RIFT’ COMMENT MISTRANSLATED!
by Maayana Miskin (Arutz Sheva News)

Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has denied saying there is a “tectonic rift” in Israel-US ties. In an interview with the Washington Post printed Monday, Oren said his comments were taken out of context and poorly translated.

What he really said, Oren stated, was that there had been “a tectonic shift in American foreign and domestic policies” and that “Israel has to adjust” to the change. The word “shift” was mistranslated to “rift,” he said. The difference between the two words “may be a subtlety that escaped the Israeli ear,” he suggested.

He pointed out that in a recent media interview, he had praised the Obama administration as “as good if not better” than many other American administrations when it came to Israel. His “tectonic shift” remark was meant to emphasize Obama’s push for change, he said.

He confirmed reports that he had said that under the Obama administration, crucial foreign affairs decisions are made at the White House and not in the State Department. “This is one of the most centralized administrations in post-World War II history,” he added.

Oren spoke recently at the Foreign Ministry. Sources who heard his briefing reported that the Ambassador said, “There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs. Instead, relations are in a state of ‘tectonic shift’ in which continents are drifting apart.”
Oren’s alleged remarks were quickly picked up by the Israeli and foreign media.

GAZA TERRORISTS BURN DOWN UN CAMP, HANDCUFF GUARDS!
by Maayana Miskin (IsraelNationalNews)

Masked terrorists stormed into a United Nations children’s camp in Gaza early on Monday morning, attacked and handcuffed the camp guards, and set the place on fire. UN workers said the facility sustained heavy damage.

The attack was the second of its kind this summer. In late May terrorists set fire to the United Nations’ largest Gaza summer camp and left behind bullets and a note threatening to kill John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) head in Gaza.

Ging responded to Monday’s attack by calling to “change the circumstances on the ground that are generating such extremism.” He complimented Hamas’ emergency responders for responding quickly to the incident.

Ging made similar remarks following the May attack. At that time, Fatah blamed Hamas for the incident, accusing the Islamic terrorist group of “targeting the education process and the UNRWA curriculum.”

Hamas has opened its own summer camps as an alternative to UNRWA. The Hamas camps focus on teaching the Koran and terrorist philosophy, including hatred of Israel. Many include paramilitary training. Approximately 100,000 Gaza children attend Hamas camps, while 250,000 attend the UN camps.

The UN camps have faced criticism from Islamist organizations other than Hamas, including Salafi groups that consider Hamas too moderate. Salafi terrorists have been behind previous attacks in Gaza, including dozens of bombings targeting music stores, restaurants, Internet cafes and pharmacies.

SHIN BET AGENT BREAKS COVER IN US FOR “SON OF HAMAS”
by Hana Levi Julian (IsraelNationalNews)

A Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) agent has broken his cover in an attempt to help his former fellow agent avoid deportation from the United States.

Gonen Ben-Yitzchak, who left the service four years ago, worked for 10 years as one of the handlers of Mosab Hassan Yousef, author of the book “Son of Hamas.”

Yousef is the eldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder of Hamas, and for a decade was also an informant for the Jewish State. The team was responsible for preventing countless terrorist attacks, among them assassination attempts on the life of President Shimon Peres and Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Yousef subsequently emigrated to the United States, and converted to Christianity. But he now faces what might be a life-threatening situation, having revealed his identity to the American authorities in an application for asylum. The former agent said he did not realize that publishing the details of his life in his autobiography might jeopardize his chances of remaining there, rather than prove his intent to sabotage Hamas.

Ben-Yitzchak has avoided cameras up to this point and was known in the organization as “Captain Loai” or “G.” However, early last week he traveled to the United States to testify on his former protege’s behalf at an immigration hearing. The intelligence operative will appear before a judge in San Diego on June 30.

Ben-Yitzchak allowed himself to be photographed on Wednesday at a Washington dinner honoring Yousef and others. The honorees received the Endowment for Middle East Truth’s Rays of Light in the Darkness Award.

“He risked his life every day in order to prevent” terrorism,” Ben-Yitzchak said of Yousef. “The truth is Mosab always prevented killings. Mosab is not a terrorist!”

In his book, Yousef noted that many Shin Bet operations were canceled “because of [Ben-Yitzchak’s] command” in order to avoid endangering his life. Numerous advocates for the former agent have said that his life would be endangered if he is deported to Judea and Samaria.

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has declined to comment on the case. Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO), another honoree at the dinner, said he had sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano also requesting that Yousef not be deported.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY IN ISRAEL: PRAISE FOR ISRAEL, WORRIED OVER IRAN!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

U.S. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on Sunday and said, “Iran has not left anybody very much choice but to move down the road that we are going.” He referred to tougher sanctions on Iran but did not mention the military option.

“No one in the United States underestimates or mistakes the challenge that Iran is posing to the region,” Sen. Kerry added. “We have put some tough sanctions into place… and in the Senate; we just went further last week.”

The sanctions that the Democratic-controlled Congress wants has placed it at odds with U.S. President Barack Obama, who faces increasing criticism for failing to push harsher measures through the United Nations Security Council.

The Senator’s visit is viewed as a warm-up for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to the White House next month, one week after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will travel to Washington. The Arab world has held out for Israel to accept the Saudi 2002 Initiative, demanding a surrender of all of the land restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War as well as allowing the immigration to Israel of approximately five million Arabs claiming to be descendants of former residents of Israel.

“President Obama, I know, is very much looking forward to the meeting with the Prime Minister,” Sen. Kerry stated. “Let me begin by congratulating you.” Referring to Israel’s relaxing the partial land embargo on Hamas-controlled Gaza, he added, “I think everyone in Congress, and in the administration, and in our country was pleased and excited by the steps that Israel has taken now. We are very sympathetic to your right to defend yourself… I personally visited Sderot, I know the problem of the rockets coming in, and how many have come in, this needs to change, and that’s what we are all working on.”

He used the opportunity to promote the American-mediated “proximity talks” under the leadership of U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell. “Former Senator Mitchell will be back here continuing to work on it… I think time is the enemy for all of us here. We need to get this moving because the patience of people who have been waiting a long time on both sides, on all sides, has been tried.”

Sen. Kerry previously has visited Syria and Gaza in an effort to win backing for a regional peace summit, even though the United States considers Syria a country that supports terrorism.

President Peres told Kerry, “I do not believe that we can move without the leadership of the United States.… We are very grateful to the United States for its strong support of Israel. It is important to raise the level of discussion between Israel and the Palestinians from proximity talks to direct talks. It is also necessary to have a secret channel, because everything made public is no longer negotiations, but rather public relations.”

WITHOUT A STATE, PA IS IRRELEVANT
by ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saeb Erekat warns stalled peace talks may lead to end of the PA.
Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Friday that the Palestinian Authority was founded to establish the institutions for a Palestinian state, “not to keep Israel as a source of authority forever.”

If Israel insists on maintaining control, he said, the Palestinian Authority “cannot stand — it’s irrelevant,” and he indicated it might be dissolved.

Erekat was speaking during a debate with Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor in New York.

Meridor said Israel wants to return to direct negotiations with the Palestinians and indicated that indirect talks brokered by US special envoy George Mitchell were making progress.

“I do hope in the coming weeks negotiations will skip over this strange proximity talks into real talks,” he said. “We need to talk to each other and make the tough decisions needed, and if this is done we’ll see progress this coming year.”

Meridor said, however, that if there is no full agreement on the outstanding issues of Jerusalem, refugees, final borders and security “we will not let the negotiation collapse.”

“It should not be all or nothing. We all wish for all, but if we can’t get it, we should be very cautious not to risk everything on that,” he said.

Erekat responded, saying the Palestinians never objected to negotiations but are insisting on a stop to settlement construction, which he stressed was not a condition but a key requirement in the 2003 roadmap leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state that was presented by the US, UN, European Union and Russia.

“This government of Israel has a choice, settlements or peace,” he said. “They can’t have both.”

Erekat accused Meridor and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government of refusing to answer key questions: Will Israel begin negotiations where they left off in December 2008, and will it accept east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and the 1967 border as a baseline for a two-state solution?

“Israel has three options,” Erekat said, a two-state solution, a single state including Jews and Palestinians, or what he called a continuation of Israel’s “racism” and “apartheid system” in the West Bank where Arabs and Christians can’t use roads reserved only for Israelis.

Erekat warned the Israelis that “if by the end of this year we do not have a two-state solution, you will sweat, you will sweat.”

Meridor said the future of Palestinian refugees is the most crucial issue for Israel.

“It’s more important than even the exact delineation of the border, which is a problem but we can agree on this: It’s more important even than the security arrangements that are very important,” he said.

Meridor said Erekat’s statement that the Palestinian Authority has no right to negotiate the right of return of the refugees — that the refugees themselves will have to make the choice and they have the right both to return and to compensation — raised major problems.

Any peace agreement that did not settle the refugee issue would mean “there is no end to the conflict.”

US APPROVES NEW IRAN SANCTIONS!
by Maayana Miskin (Arutz Sheva News)

The United States Senate has voted 99-0 to approve new, tougher sanctions on Iran. The vote in the House of Representatives was 408-8. Like previous sanctions, the latest move aims to discourage Iran’s nuclear program.

The sanctions will penalize companies that sell gasoline to Iran or that do business with the Revolutionary Guard Corp.

US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman said he expects the sanctions to receive final approval within two weeks. The sanctions are the most comprehensive to have been approved to date, he said.

The pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs committee (AIPAC) praised the sanctions, saying they “provide the best hope that political and economic measures can peaceably persuade Iran to end its illicit nuclear program before it is too late.”

Americans for Peace Now expressed opposition to the sanctions, and cited Israel’s changed policy regarding shipments to Gaza. Imposing sanctions “is an approach that only last week Israel abandoned in Gaza, recognizing that squeezing the population of Gaza with a blockade on civilian goods had not only failed to force Hamas out of power, but had enabled Hamas (and the world) to blame Israel for all the misery the people of Gaza were facing,” said APN President Debra Delee. “It is regrettable that Congress did not draw the obvious lesson from these experiences,” she added.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently announced that Israel would allow a greater variety of goods to enter Gaza via crossings in the Negev. Previously, only items on a list of approved goods were allowed into Gaza from Israel; now, all goods are allowed in with the exception of weapons and materials used to manufacture weapons.

Despite his change of policy regarding Gaza, which followed a clash between IDF commandos and Gaza-bound activists and subsequent international condemnation, Netanyahu has expressed strong support of international sanctions on Iran.

JON VOIGHT, US SENATORS RIP OBAMA OVER ISRAEL! (Israel Today News)

Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight this week again demonstrated his deep commitment to the Jewish state by publishing an open letter to US President Barack Obama blasting him for “putting Israel in harm’s way.”

Published in The Washington Times, the letter accused Obama of being “the first American President that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel… against all their enemies.”

Instead, Voight wrote that Obama is aiding the Jewish state’s enemies in “propagandizing Israel,” and in so doing is “promoting anti-Semitism throughout the world.”

Voight insisted that the US and the rest of the West owe Israel much more.

“You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today,” he concluded.

Voight, a Bible-believing Christian, is an longtime, outspoken supporter of Israel. He visited the Jewish state in 2008 to participate in Israel’s 60th Independence Day.

In their own letter to President Obama, 87 out of 100 US Senators took a more diplomatic approach, but also chided the commander-in-chief for not being more supportive of Israel in a time when its enemies are starting to circle.

“Israel’s opponents have developed clever diplomatic and tactical ploys to challenge its international standing,” read the letter.

The senators singled out the exaggerated focus on Israel at the recent Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty summit, which Obama publicly criticized, but ultimately was responsible for. They also suggested that Washington should be backing up Israel in the Gaza flotilla controversy, rather than trying to ride the fence.