FEIGLIN TRYS HARD

Feiglin: Election Results are Stepping Stone to Victory - August 15, 2007...

A celebratory atmosphere was present among Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) supporters in Israel and North America last night after yesterday's Likud primary.
Moshe Feiglin, Manhigut Yehudit's candidate for head of the Likud party, doubled his support in the party over the previous Likud primary for the second consecutive election. If this trend continues, Feiglin will prove victorious at the next Likud primary, and will then run for Prime Minister of the State of Israel.Feiglin received 25% of the vote, and he was happy and encouraged by this result. It proves that a quarter of the Likud wants a leader who believes in G-d... Today the revolution to bring a leadership of faith has begun.Reversing years of defeatist, corrupt and inept leadership in government is not an overnight process. Manhigut Yehudit has a plan and G-d willing authentic Jewish Leadership for the nation of Israel is close at hand. This will be remembered as an emotional day in which Israel started to return to the people, so that it will no longer be controlled by a leftist minority and by politicians on the Right who do their bidding, Feiglin told reporters. We are on a journey toward victory, and this was a big step along the way.

Tova Abadi
Media Liaison
917-301-0997 (cell)
tova@jewishisrael.org

The Manhigut Yehudit website is www.jewishisrael.org - Manhigut Yehudit is the largest faction inside the Likud party, and strives to Turn the State of the Jews into The Jewish State.

Netanyahu wins Likud leadership AUG 15,07

Mr Netanyahu's popularity has soared this year Former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been re-elected as leader of the main right-wing opposition party, Likud. Mr Netanyahu won 73% of the vote. In his victory speech, he vowed to focus Likud's efforts on bringing Israel a new leadership. Recent polls show Mr Netanyahu would be a popular choice for prime minister. Mr Netanyahu was prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and has since held several senior cabinet posts. Party officials released final election results early on Wednesday - showing Mr Netanyahu had far outstripped his main rival, the hardline religious challenger, Moshe Feiglin, who won 23% of the vote. Last year Mr Netanyahu led Likud to a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections.

But BBC correspondents say his popularity has soared in opinion polls since last year's inconclusive war in Lebanon. Israeli general elections are due in 2010 but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval ratings have dropped and some commentators anticipate elections as early as next year. Mr Olmert heads the centrist Kadima party. Tonight the internal contest ended, and as of tomorrow, we will focus our efforts on bringing a new leadership to Israel, Mr Netanyahu told supporters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. He had appealed to Likud members to vote as he feared a low turnout might play into the hands of Mr Feiglin. Around 40% of Likud's 95,000 members cast ballots across the country. Polling stations were even opened in some Israeli holiday resorts.

NETANYAHU WINS LIKUD PRIMARY - But can Bibi come back?
By Joel C. Rosenberg

(WASHINGTON, D.C., August 15, 2007) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu decisively won the chairmanship of the Likud Party on Tuesday. He's running far ahead in national polls, and now appears well positioned to be elected the next leader of Israel. That said, numerous obstacles still stand in his way. The media hates him, the left hates him, the right sometimes wonders if he has the fire in the belly to fight for Israel's security and to re-energize an increasingly exhausted Zionist movement, and the center remains wary of his mercurial leadership style. What's more, elections aren't scheduled until 2010. Bibi is riding high in the polls now, but will it last?

Can Bibi come back? Honestly, it's too early to say, but given the leadership crisis facing Israel today (Olmert's approval ratings are at a dismal 8%) -- and the existential threats Israel faces from the combined forces of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, armed and aided by Russia -- I for one certainly hope so.

Excerpts from Israeli election coverage.

The Jerusalem Post: Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu was reelected Likud chairman in Tuesday's party primary, defeating the two Likud activists who challenged him -- Moshe Feiglin and Danny Danon -- by a hefty margin. According to the final count, Netanyahu won 73.2 percent of the votes, while Feiglin had 23.4% and Danon 3.4%.

Ynetnews: Re-elected Likud chairman tells Ynet outcome of primary elections proves rival camp has marginal impact on party. In victory speech in Tel Aviv which Feiglin was barred from attending, Netanyahu pledges new leadership for Israel. Surrounded by dozens of supporters and staffers, re-elected Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu looked like an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders late Tuesday night.
Haaretz: Netanyahu is expected to consider steps to limit the strength of Feiglin, a religious settler with a platform that calls for barring Arabs from the Knesset, encouraging non-Jews to emigrate and pulling Israel out of the United Nations

Agence France Presse (from early Tuesday, before the polls closed): Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who is set to be re-elected as head of Israel's right-wing Likud party on Tuesday, is a media-savvy arch-hawk determined to move back to the political centre stage. Netanyahu was expected to sweep to victory during a Likud primary with at least 70 percent of the vote, according to internal opinion polls, in a contest against two other candidates. Fifteen months after leading Likud to its biggest-ever electoral defeat, the 57-year-old politician is determined to use his expected victory in the primary to bury the humiliation and return to the country's leadership. Bibi, as Netanyahu is widely known in Israel, is hoping to ride a wave of dissapointment with the ruling Kadima party over scandals and last year's Lebanon war back to the top of the Israeli political spectrum....Netanyahu is the public's first choice to be Israel's next prime minister -- 36 percent favoured him in a recent opinion poll, compared with eight percent for Olmert and 22 percent for former premier Ehud Barak. The same poll showed that Likud would more than double its seats in the Knesset, winning 26, if new elections were held.

EU clears way for Intel and STMicro to combine flash memory units
The Associated PressPublished: August 13, 2007

BRUSSELS: The European Union cleared the way Monday for Intel and STMicroelectronics of Switzerland to combine troubled units that make a type of flash memory used primarily in cellphones.The chip makers and the private equity firm Francisco Partners will form a new company that will acquire the assets of Intel's and STMicro's NOR flash businesses, a technology that has been steadily losing ground to less expensive NAND flash memory for digital cameras and music players.The European Commission concluded that the joint venture would not cause antitrust problems, saying its market investigation found that strong rivals existed for both types of flash memory and customers would be able to choose from a sufficient number of alternative vendors.Overall revenues for the NOR flash chips were $8.3 billion last year, but the entire segment was unable to turn a profit, according to the research firm iSuppli.The STMicroelectronics and Intel units reported a combined $3.6 billion in sales last year.

Denmark joins international race to claim the Arctic
15.08.2007 - 09:13 CET | By Lisbeth Kirk

Denmark has sent a research team to the Arctic ice pack to seek evidence that the Lomonosov Ridge underwater mountain range is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland.The research team, with specialists from Canada, Denmark and Sweden, set off on Sunday (12 August) from Tromsoe in northern Norway on board the Swedish ice-breaker Oden. They will return to Norway's Svalbard islands on 17 September.Canada, Russia, the US and Norway have also claims in the Arctic region, where the US Geological Survey has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden.The race for the Arctic is also intensifying because global warming is shrinking the polar ice cap, which could some day open for new shipping lanes linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Russia believes the Lomonosov Ridge underwater feature is linked to its Siberian territory and made a submission to the United States as early as 2001 claiming sub-sea rights stretching to the Pole.To back up the claims, members of Russia's parliament watched from a mini-submarine when their country's flag was planted on 2 August four kilometres (2.5 miles) below the North Pole.The meter-high flag is made of titanium so as not to rust, said Russian news agency ITAR-TASS. The move was treated with derision by Canadian foreign minister Peter MacKay who likened it to tactics used in the 15th Century, the BBC reported.Canada itself has just started Arctic sovereignty claims with prime minister Stephen Harper announcing last week plans to build an army training centre and a deep-water port at Nanisivik near the eastern entrance of the Northwest Passage to help refuel its military patrol ships.

Ottawa also plans to buy at least six new patrol ships for the area.Washington has sent a coast guard cutter on a mapping mission to the Arctic this week to determine whether part of the area can be considered US territory. It is the third US Arctic mapping cruise since 2003.The North Pole seabed is not currently regarded as part of any single country's territory and is governed instead by complex international agreements.Danish claims for the areas go via Greenland. Although part of the Danish Realm, Greenland is not a part of the European Union.A visit to Greenland by European Commission president Jose Barroso in June was largely focussed on climate change but also included signature of an EU-Greenland partnership deal.

Israel, Syria not interested in war: Barak Wed Aug 15, 6:55 AM ET

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Neither Israel nor archfoe Syria is interested in a war, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday as he observed military exercises in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel does not want a war and Syria, according to our estimates, does not wish for one either," he said during the exercises on the strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and annexed in 1981.Which is why there is no reason for a start of an armed conflict, he said.He said the war games were taking place in the Golan because the Israeli army's training grounds were located there and in the southern Negev desert.We have not trained enough during the past five years and at present, all (army) units are training to be ready for any test, he said.

Over the past few months, Israeli and Syrian leaders have both said their countries do not want a war, but were preparing for any possibility while each side has accused the other of arming for a conflict.On Tuesday, Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara said that Damascus was not looking for a conflict.Syria does not want a war, Israel knows this well, Shara said. But Syria is preparing, as Israel is looking for any excuse to launch a war.We have to be ready to repel any Israeli aggression, he said.Peace talks between Israel and Syria broke down in 2000 over the fate of the Golan, which overlooks the Sea of Galilee.

Rebuilding European Arms Control - illustration only
by David Mosher And F. Stephen Larrabee
UPI Outside View Commentators
Washington (UPI) Aug 15, 2007

Russia's recent announcement that it intends to formally suspend its compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which limits Russian and NATO conventional forces and heavy weaponry in Europe, has caused consternation in Western capitals. In addition, Russian officials threatened that Moscow may also withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which limits the deployment of intermediate-range missiles.Signed in 1992 after 10 years of painstaking negotiation, the CFE Treaty is regarded as the cornerstone of stability in Europe. The Bush administration has expressed dismay regarding the Russian decision to scrap the agreement. But the administration's own unilateral actions and approach to arms control have contributed to the current dilemma and provided both a motivation as well as a pretext for the Russian action.In effect, the Russians have simply adopted the Bush administration's own unilateralist approach to arms control.Unilateralism was at the heart of the Bush administration's foreign policy when it came to power in 2001. The administration quickly denounced a wide range of international agreements and ongoing negotiations, many of which had been created by years of U.S. leadership.Examples of these agreements include the Kyoto accords on climate change, the International Criminal Court, and negotiations on the Biological Weapons Convention and the fissile material cutoff.The centerpiece of the administration's agenda was scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the United States could develop and deploy missile defenses how and where it wanted. In response, an angry Russia refused to ratify the strategic arms reduction treaty called START II, an accord that was negotiated by Bush's father and would have eliminated all multiple-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Today all that remains of the limits on offensive nuclear forces and missile defenses are the START I and INF treaties, which are now the only accords that permit on-site inspections of nuclear forces and require consultative meetings.START I is set to expire in 2009, and the Bush administration has shown no interest in extending it. The 2002 Moscow treaty will reduce forces below START levels by 2012 but has no inspection provisions and will expire the day after the limits are reached.The rationale for scrapping decades of arms control with Russia was that the Cold War was over and the United States and Russia were no longer enemies. Removing treaties that codified an adversarial relationship was the key to moving forward, the Bush administration argued. The assessment of the emerging U.S.-Russian relationship was correct, but America's largely unilateral approach has complicated the transition and set a precedent that is now coming back to haunt the administration.Arms control, of course, should not be pursued simply for its own sake. Nor should U.S. policymakers shrink from amending -- or even scrapping -- arms agreements that no longer serve American interests. However, as the United States and Russia seek to adapt their military forces to a radically changed post-Cold War security environment, they need to preserve a framework that ensures some predictability and continuity.

Prudently pursued, arms control agreements provide a means for controlling unbridled arms competition, create transparency, and act as a brake on precipitous actions that can negatively affect the security of the other side.Moscow's principal concern appears to be the unpredictability that has been created by unilateral U.S. moves: no limits on defenses, no long-term limits on strategic nuclear forces, and no forum for regular discussion. At the same time, a stronger, more assertive Russia wants to be free of the constraints in the CFE treaty, which limits the number of forces it can deploy on its northern and southern flanks -- the Baltic area and the Caucasus region.Moreover, Moscow's threat to withdraw from the INF treaty suggests that this may be the first step in a broader effort to scrap other arms control agreements that it no longer believes serves its national interests.The problem is that unilateralism begets unilateralism.The U.S. actions have now freed Russia to take unilateral steps of its own. Moreover, the American policy has given Russia a ready-made justification for abrogating agreements that it now finds onerous, following the precedent set by the United States.

However, Moscow's threat to suspend the CFE treaty does not necessarily signal an irrevocable determination to abrogate the treaty. The Russians have left the door open to a possible renegotiation of the agreement.There is still room for creative U.S. diplomacy. While insisting that the Russians honor their commitments under the CFE treaty, Washington should indicate a willingness to discuss further adjustments in the treaty once the Russians have carried out their current obligations. At the same time, the United States should use the occasion to begin to rebuild a more comprehensive arms control framework that provides greater predictability and transparency.Rebuilding such a comprehensive framework will not be easy. But it is vital that the two sides begin the effort before the whole edifice painstakingly constructed over the last three decades collapses, leading to the onset of a new era of unbridled Russian-American arms competition.(David Mosher is a senior policy analyst and F. Stephen Larrabee holds the corporate chair in European security at the RAND Corp., a non-profit research organization.)(United Press International's Outside View commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)Source: United Press International.