A 'Simple Message' From PM Netanyahu:

This first article sums up the situation perfectly:

Netanyahu Relays A Simple Message On Iran

Love or hate him, respect or disdain him, few can deny Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is an effective and powerful speaker. And one of the elements that makes him so is his ability to simplify.

At the UN General Assembly meeting last year, Netanyahu took out a cartoonish poster of a bomb to draw a red line on the Iranian nuclear program that everyone could understand. At first he was mocked, yet – as The Washington Posteditorialized months later – the Iranians took notice and have not crossed that line.

On Tuesday, he also made things very simple.

“I want there to be no confusion on this point,”Netanyahu said toward the end of a 30-minute speechdevoted overwhelmingly to the Iranian nuclear issue. “Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

Can’t get any simpler, or clearer, than that.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Israel will never acquiesce to nuclear arms in the hands of a rogue regime that repeatedly promises to wipe us off the map,” he said. “Against such a threat, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself.”

Those words were meant less for the Iranian leadership and more for the heads of the countries now set to engage the smiling, benevolent-looking, soft-spoken Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

Is he bluffing? Maybe, but Israel has proven in the past – particularly with its attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and again reportedly against a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007 – that when it feels its back is against the wall, it will act as it sees fit, even against world opinion.

More than any Israeli prime minister perhaps since Menachem Begin, Netanyahu unabashedly summons historical imagery in mustering his arguments on Israel’s behalf. He shies away neither from invoking the Bible to demonstrate the Jewish people’s connection to the Land, nor from the Holocaust or the Jews’ tragic past to explain what animates the country’s security perceptions.

Too many in the world underestimate the degree to which the Jewish past continues to animate Israel’s present and its hopes and fears for the future. Netanyahu sets them straight.

“In our time the biblical prophecies are being realized,” Netanyahu said in a very politically incorrect statement with which he concluded his speech. “As the prophet Amos said, ‘They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine. They shall till gardens and eat their fruit. And I will plant them upon their soil never to be uprooted again.’”

Ya'alon: Western Engagement With Iran 'Wishful Thinking'

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Wednesday acknowledged there were differences between Israel and the US on Iran, and criticized Western attempts to engage in diplomacy with Tehran, calling them the result of “wishful thinking” in the face of duplicitous Iranian “sweet talk.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday speech at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he warned the international community not to be taken in by the seemingly moderate diplomatic outreach of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, expressed exactly how Israel sees the threat from Iran, Ya’alon said.

While Rouhani engages in “sweet talk,” Iran sponsors terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, provides “funding, equipment and guidance” to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and “invests in terror infrastructure” in Gaza — all while the “centrifuges continue to spin,” Ya’alon said. This, he said, was why the Iranian nuclear program “must be stopped by any means.”

Defected Syrian General: Assad Sending Chemical Arms To Hezbollah

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been sending his chemical weapons to Hezbollah and Iraq in order to avoid giving them up for destruction as he agreed to do last month, a defected general from the Syrian Army said.

Brigadier GeneralZaher al-Sakat told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Tuesday that rebel surveillance had monitored 28 trucks traveling from Jdeedet Yabous to Lebanon, where they were transferred to Hezbollah.

Last month, Al-Sakat, who commanded a chemical weapons unit attached to the Syrian army’s Fifth Division, made a similar claim in an interview with the Washington Post. In mid-September the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported that Assad was smuggling chemical weapons out of Syria via tunnels connecting Syrian and Lebanese villages, while the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal reported that 20 trucks laden with equipment used in the manufacture of chemical weapons were driven across the border from Syria into Iraq.

Netanyahu Has Tough Task Of Rebuilding A Credible Israeli Military Option Against Iran

After Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama at the White House Monday, Sept. 30, Secretary of State John Kerry carried a message requesting moderation in the speech he was to deliver next day to the United Nations.

On the other hand, at least two European diplomats, German and French, made the opposite request: they asked for a hard-hitting Israeli peroration for setting boundaries - not so much for Iran’s nuclear program as for attempt to slow down President Obama’s dash for détente with Tehran.

It is feared in European capitals that the US is running too fast and too far in his bid for reconciliation with the Islamic Republic, to the detriment by association of their own standing I the Persian Gulf.

They are moreover miffed by the way Washington used Europe as a tool in the long nuclear negotiations between the Six World Powers with Iran and is now dumping them in favor of direct dealings with Iranian leaders.

Netanyahu decided not to accede to either request. Instead he laid out his credo: Iran must discontinue nuclear development and dismantle its program or face up to the risk of a lone Israeli military attack.

The look on the face of US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, sitting at the US delegation’s table in the UN hall, showed he had realized that the prime minister’s words were not just addressed to Tehran; they were an unforeseen broadside against the Obama administration’s Iranian strategy.

Binyamin Netanyahu now faces the uphill job of repairing his own credibility. For five years has had declared again and again that Israel’s military option is on track in certain circumstances, but has never lived up to the threat. He has followed a path of almost total military passivity.

President Obama knows that Israel’s military capacity is up to a solo operation against Iran. Tehran, however, though conscious of the IDF’s high military, technological and cyber warfare capabilities, is convinced that Israel like the United States has lost the appetite for a military initiative.

Netanyahu must now revive Israel’s deterrence and convince Iran that his challenge at the UN had ended an era of military passivity and should be taken seriously.

In the coming weeks, therefore, the Iranians will react with steps to upset US-Israeli relations, possibly by raising military tensions in the region directly or through their proxies. Until now Tehran operated from outside Washington and its inner councils. Now, smart Iranian diplomats will be sitting down with the US president close to his ear for friendly discussions on ways to further their rapprochement.

How about a little 'government shutdown' humor? 

The following is worth posting in full. 

Government Shuts Down, Nation Descends Into Riots, Looting And Cannibalism

The United States of America (1787-2013) came to a swift and sudden end last night as the government shut down. The nation which had survived Pearl Harbor, the War of 1812 and Jimmy Carter ceased to exist.

The savage population, which had only been kept in line through a policy of rigorous gun
confiscations, food stamps and Green Energy programs unleashed its pent up rage in a spree of riots, looting and mass murder that had only previously been encountered in Somalia.

"The government shut down! We can do anything we like," shouted Sam Hasbley of Grassley, Iowa, while tearing the tag off a mattress despite an explicit warning label forbidding such a dangerous course of action. "Tear yours off. The government is shut down. It can't stop you."

Eyewitnesses spoke of further horrors. On a quiet street in suburban Massachusetts, a man brought out a set of highly illegal lawn darts. In Maryland, there were allegations that an entire family had begun digging ditches to collect rainwater runoff.

With the fall of the government, citizen activists took it upon themselves to chronicle the culture of lawlessness. Men played Gibson guitars made of wood imported from India, but not finished by Indian workers. Women bought cold medicine without a photo ID. Children went hours without hearing lectures about the environment.

The victims were many. In Chuckolod County, Colorado, a transgender person was denied access to the Ladies Room. Frantic calls to the Justice Department were forwarded to an answering service in Depar, India, instead of Doneparre City, Indiana. In Brooklyn, New York, an overweight Senegalese woman was unable to obtain a sign language interpreter while waiting on line to collect her free Obamaphone. In Olegon Falls, Florida, the National Museum of Native American Yarn was forced to shut down depriving schoolchildren of an educational experience and three hours throwing bits of yarn at each other.

And there was worse to come.

The entire city of Detroit was seized by the Michigan Militia backed by Canadian air power. The village of Frankfurt, Illinois passed several ordinances in explicit violation of Title MXVIII of the Federal Charter of Approved Fruit Naming Ordinances. North Dakota seceded and declared that it was now the nation of Bismarckia, elected a Kaiser and petitioned to join OPEC.

An army of Mongols or possibly local residents dressed in Samurai helmets raided the Federal Dried Peach Reserve in Georgia hauling away thousands of tons of dried fruit and tossed them to waiting crowds. The end of food stamps in Martho, New Jersey led to an outbreak of cannibalism despite efforts by ACORN volunteers to bring order to the proceedings by soliciting volunteers to give up their privilege and be fed to the people.

In Massey Hills, Virginia, a gang of politically incorrect sports mascots entered a workplace and implicitly hurt the feelings of several minorities. Their calls to the Justice Department were forwarded to Eric Holder's private voicemail along with frequent messages from his coke dealer demanding to be paid, like right now, and requests for weapons manuals from several Mexican cartel bosses.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the entire United Organized Educators and Librarians Union attempted to commit mass suicide on the front lawn of the Madison Center of Union History to protest budget cuts and school closings. Their efforts proved in vain when the gasoline they poured on themselves in a failed attempt at self-immolation turned out to be apple juice.

In Caplow City, Maine, President Gerald Ford, long thought dead and believed to have been buried in Michigan, appeared and declared himself to be the nation's new leader. While some suspect him to be an impostor based on the plastic texture of his mask which has a hastily erased message reading "Impeach Nixon" on the side, the city fathers have chosen to embrace the possibilities offered by Emperor Ford and have set him up in style in a presidential palace on the eight floor of the Caplow Arms Hotel.

In the midst of all this chaos, a weary nation's eyes turn to Washington D.C. But since the shutdown, which also shut off all power, water and press releases to the embattled city, no word has reached the outside world of what is taking place there. The last message was a smoke signal dispatched by Elizabeth Warren from the roof of a burning Capitol Building. An expert in Native American smoke signals decoded it to read, "I told you so. Now we're all doomed."

The only surviving member of the national government outside the dead zone is believed to be Vice President Joseph Biden who showed up on a beach in Waddiddi, Florida, where he has spent hours entertaining himself by building an elaborate 1/100 scale model of the White House out of sand. Attempts to inform him that the tide was coming in have fallen on deaf ears.

As the nation descends into chaos, one thing is clear. The government shutdown has once again doomed us all. Just like the last 17 times.