Egypt’s blood is on Obama’s hands

Information Clearing House; February 3, 2011

The United States and Israel were caught off-guard by the size and ferocity of the demonstrations in Egypt, but they have since regained their balance and caught up to events. The two allies have settled on a strategy to preserve the Mubarak dictatorship (in some form) and assure that US-Israel regional hegemony will not be challenged.

Thus, the Obama administration will continue to offer lip-service to democracy and human rights, while coordinating efforts with Mubarak to maintain Washington’s stranglehold on power in Cairo.

The first step in this process, is to quash the rebellion with force.

Yesterday, after promising he would not use violence against the protesters, Mubarak deployed his goons to Tahrir Square where they attacked the assembly with batons, rocks, and clubs. Men on horseback and camels charged into the crowd sending droves of protesters fleeing in panic.

Al Jazeera reported that hundreds of people were injured in the melee. It’s clear that the so-called “Mubarak supporters” were not civilians at all, but members of the feared Egyptian security forces in disguise. The Obama administration is aware of the clashes but has refused to condemn the perpetrators. Obama is now sticking to a script that was written by powerbrokers in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Obama’s speech on Tuesday was aptly summarized by As’ad Abukhalil, blogging on The Angry Arab website. Here’s what he said:

“I just read the speech by Obama: it confirmed my suspicion, that basically Mubarak was permitted by the US to do with the Egyptian people as he would like…Every drop of blood that is spilled in Egypt from this day onwards should be blamed on Obama because he has embraced this new strategy of letting Mubarak defy the popular will of the Egyptian people.

I don’t trust the Egyptian army: the top brass is handpicked by the US/Israel and can be easily bought off by a combination of bribes, gadgets and perks. They could care less about the Egyptian people.  This is part of the ruling group of this tyrant. 

The speech by Obama was a not-so-coded language that let Mubarak do what he wished: the talk about transition means that he was basically told to stay in power, because Israel really freaked out at the prospect of Egypt without Mubarak… Make no mistake about it: this could be like the 1953 Operation Ajax in Iran.  The US is now arranging for a coup against the will of the Egyptian people… It requires utmost vigilance and steadfastness and thus far those qualities have been abundant among the Egyptian people. This move by Obama towards Egypt can be described as criminal because it will lead to blood on the streets…..

I say this without any hyperbole: the US is willing to have millions of Arab oppressed, killed, and tortured to preserve the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. I strongly believe that.” (Angry Arab website)

Israel’s leaders and surrogates in the media are “freaking out” as Abukhalil notes. Commentators across the ideological spectrum — from Thomas Friedman to Alan Dershowitz – have weighed in on how the world will come to an end if democracy breaks out in Egypt. Case in point, here’s a clip from Friedman’s latest essay:

“I’m meeting a retired Israeli general at a Tel Aviv hotel. As I take my seat, he begins the conversation with: “Well, everything we thought for the last 30 years is no longer relevant.”

That pretty much sums up the disorienting sense of shock and awe that the popular uprising in Egypt has inflicted on the psyche of Israel’s establishment. The peace treaty with a stable Egypt was the unspoken foundation for every geopolitical and economic policy in Israel for the last 35 years, and now it’s gone.” (“B.E., Before Egypt. A.E.., After Egypt”, Thomas Friedman, New York Times)

Friedman’s article is a shocking admission that “only Israel counts”. But what about other people’s struggles for freedom and human rights; don’t they matter or are the aspirations of millions of people living under tyranny supposed to be dismissed because  they could pose a challenge to Israel’s prized national security? This is cultural narcissism at its worst. The Egyptian people should not have to sacrifice their rights to satisfy the Zionist dream.

Here’s an excerpt from an article by Judith Miller of FOX News, who played a critical roll in propagating the lies which led to the Iraq War. Miller dispels any illusion that one might have about Israel’s commitment to liberty and democracy.

Judith Miller: “As long-standing allies and admirers distance themselves from Egypt’s autocratic regime, President Hosni Mubarak has found himself with only one serious ally left in the Middle East — Israel.

While Washington has publicly chided its stalwart ally of 30 years, urging him to stop repressing his people and speed the transition to democracy, only Israel and two conservative Arab monarchies — the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Saudi Arabia — have publicly embraced Mubarak…Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Mubarak by phone early in the crisis, the Israeli press reported, assuring him of Israel’s continuing support…..

It is Egypt, for instance, that has helped Israel and the United States maintain the embargo around the Gaza Strip… Cairo, like Israel, has also been critical of Iran’s efforts to flex political muscle in the region and its nuclear policies.” (“Mubarak Finds a Strong Ally in Israel”, Judith Miller, Fox News)

Is there any doubt where Miller stands on the issue of human rights vs. Israeli security?

Predictably, Obama has cast his lot with Miller, Netanyahu, and old friend, Hosni Mubarak. In fact, Imad Ad-Din Ad-Dib, the chief spokesman for the Mubarak regime, said today on Al-Arabiyah TV that the Egyptian Army was preparing a statement that would ban all future demonstrations. That means that Obama has given Mubarak the green light to crush the revolt while he works on his public relations strategy. We should expect that every act of brutality against unarmed Egyptian civilians will now be accompanied by a stern rebuke from Obama invoking his unwavering commitment to “universal values and human rights.”

Was there ever a bigger champion of the Bush Doctrine than Barack Obama?

The above article can be found here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27408.htm

EGYPT: IN SHADOW OF FITNA

Veterans Today

January 16, 2011

Analysts Revisit Israeli Spy Chief’s Boasts By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Jan. 14, 2011 (Veterans Today) — The New Year’s Eve church bombing in Alexandria, in which 23 Coptic Christians were killed, has reignited fears of sectarian conflict in majority-Muslim Egypt. But while mainstream news media has been quick to pin the crime on “Al-Qaeda,” some Egyptian observers point the finger at Israel, citing recent statements by an outgoing Israeli military-intelligence chief in which he explicitly boasts of Israeli prowess in sowing sectarian discord in Egypt.

“Recent statements by high-ranking Israeli intelligence officials confirm that Israel has a role in promoting sectarian unrest in Egypt,” Tarek Fahmi, political science professor at Cairo University and head of the Israel desk at the Cairo-based National Center for Middle East Studies, told Veterans Today.

Half past midnight on New Year’s Day, a powerful explosion ripped through Two Saints’ Church in Alexandria’s Sidi Bishr district. More than 20 people were killed instantly and several more have since succumbed to their injuries. Scores more were wounded, many critically.

Initial accounts attributed the blast to a car bomb. On January 1, an eyewitness told Egyptian satellite channel ON TV that he saw a car park outside the church shortly after midnight and two men get out. The explosion, he added, occurred almost immediately afterwards.

http://www.france24.com/en/20110101-suicide-bomber-kills-21-egypt-church

Authorities, however, quickly ruled out this theory. “The bomb was most likely carried by a suicide bomber who died among the crowd,” the Egyptian Interior Ministry declared in an initial statement.

No individual or group has claimed responsibility. But both the English- and Arabic-language news media have hastened to cast blame on the ever-elusive “Al-Qaeda” — alleged 9/11 perpetrator and convenient bête noir of the western world. Without further elaboration, Egyptian government officials have cryptically described the attack as the “work of foreign hands.”

The bombing comes only two months after the “Islamic State of Iraq” — a purported “Al-Qaeda affiliate” — was said to have claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a Baghdad church that killed dozens of worshipers. The shadowy group also reportedly vowed to target Christians in Egypt, in ostensible retaliation for the alleged detention by Coptic Church authorities of two Coptic women said to have converted to Islam.

But many local observers have come to question Al-Qaeda’s very existence, with some even suggesting that the 9/11 attacks in 2001 were the work not of Al-Qaeda but of US and Israeli intelligence agencies.

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/nine-years-911-questions-linger-0

“Since the US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Al-Qaeda has had no organizational existence whatsoever, with the exception perhaps of a few small self-directed groups that might sympathize with Al-Qaeda’s purported ideology,” Gamal Mazloum, retired Egyptian Army brigadier-general and expert on geo-strategy and defense issues, told Veterans Today.

.”[Israeli spy agency] Mossad, by contrast — widely known to have carried out major operations in Syria, Dubai and Iran — has vast operational capabilities and resources at its disposal and is heavily supported by western intelligence agencies,” he added.

The Alexandria attack was immediately followed by contradictory statements from the relevant authorities, suggesting that initial investigations of the crime scene had yielded few solid leads. “Nobody had a clue about how the explosion had happened or the person behind it,” read a January 6 statement from the Alexandria prosecutor’s office.

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/alex-bombing-investigations-questions-remain-unanswered

“Up until this point, there has been nothing but speculation; details of the bombing remain unclear,” said Mazloum. “What we can be sure of is that the operation was extremely well planned and carried out without leaving a trace of the perpetrators.”

Mounting Tension

The church bombing was followed by five days of Coptic demonstrations, in which angry protestors — blaming the government for failing to protect the nation’s Christians — frequently clashed with security forces. Security measures in and around churches, meanwhile, have been stepped up countrywide.

While there have been moving displays of national unity, with Egyptian Muslims turning out en masse to show solidarity with their Christian compatriots, there have also been less pleasant scenes. On January 2, a crowd of Copts vented their anger by surrounding and pounding on a car carrying Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb, a prominent Muslim official, as he left a Cairo Cathedral.

Only days later in Alexandria, a Salafi Muslim man who had been arrested in the wake of the church attack died abruptly while in police custody, leading to charges by his family — and several human rights groups — that he had been tortured to death while under interrogation. The incident served to anger large swathes of the Muslim population, further enflaming the already charged sectarian atmosphere.

“The situation’s getting really serious now,” said Fahmi. “Mounting sectarian animosity has reached the point where it now threatens the country’s very stability.”

The largest concentration of Christians in the Middle East, Egypt’s Coptic community is thought to account for some ten percent of the country’s 80-million-strong population. While Egypt’s Christian minority has traditionally coexisted peacefully amid the Muslim majority, the frequency — and intensity — of sectarian confrontation has picked up markedly in recent years.

“Over the last decade, Egypt’s sectarian situation has worsened,” Khaled Fouad, vice-president of the opposition Democratic People’s Party and organizer of a January 6 conference at the Egyptian Lawyers Syndicate devoted to the Alexandria bombing, told Veterans Today. “Before 2000, there might have been one or two serious sectarian incidents every decade; since 2000, hardly a year goes by without a major — and often bloody — sectarian incident.”

On January 6 of last year, the eve of Coptic Christmas, six Coptic Christians and a Muslim security guard were killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church in the Upper Egyptian city of Naga Hammadi, prompting a wave of Coptic outrage nationwide. Three Muslim men, all of whom deny the charges, are currently on trial for the crime.

And in late November, authorities halted renovation work on a church in Cairo’s Omraniya district, triggering violent clashes between Coptic demonstrators and security forces that left one Coptic protestor dead. Along with under-representation in the top echelons of government, Egypt’s Copts have long complained of stringent government restrictions on church building.

Most recently, on January 11, one Coptic Christian was killed and five others injured when an off-duty Muslim policeman opened fire on passengers on board a train in Upper Egypt. While initial news reports portrayed the incident as one more example of sectarian bloodletting, subsequent reports suggest that the shooting may not have been religiously motivated.

A Spymaster Boasts

Those who suspect an Israeli hand in the deteriorating sectarian atmosphere — and in the Alexandria church attack in particular — point to recent statements by Major-General Amos Yadlin, former head of Israel’s military-intelligence directorate, or AMAN. In Arabic-language press reports in early November, Yadlin openly bragged about Israel’s successes in “infiltrating” and “promoting sectarian tension” in Egypt.

http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=2010110414300857

“We have infiltrated Egypt in many areas, including the political, security, economic and military spheres,” Yadlin was quoted as saying in independent Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm on November 2. He went on to note that this activity had progressed “according to plan since 1979,” the year in which Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David peace accord.

Yadlin, whose statements were attributed to a report in Israeli-Palestinian Arabic-language weekly Kul al-Arab, was reportedly speaking on the occasion of his official handover to his appointed successor, General Aviv Kochavi.

http://kul.alarab.net/

Notably, Yadlin goes on to brag about Israeli success in sowing sectarian strife — fitna in Arabic — in Egypt. “We have succeeded in promoting sectarian and social tension there so as to create a permanent atmosphere of turmoil,” he is quoted as saying.

According to Fahmi, Yadlin’s was not the first such admission by a high-ranking Israeli intelligence officer. “One year ago, Avi Dichter [former head of Israeli domestic spy service Shin Bet] stated explicitly that Israel stood behind sectarian unrest in Egypt,” he said.

Yadlin’s frank assertions have inevitably led some local observers to raise the possibility of an Israeli role in the New Year’s Eve church bombing.

Speaking on state television in the immediate wake of the attack, Nabil Luqa Babawi, a prominent member of the ruling National Democratic Party, referred explicitly to recent statements by Yadlin. “Israel devotes millions of dollars to instigating Christian-Muslim conflict,” said Babawi, himself a Coptic Christian.

Shortly afterward, also on state television, Gamal Asaad, a Coptic member of parliament, warned of a “Zionist plot aimed at destabilizing the country and wrecking national cohesion.” He went on to refer to “Israeli attempts to exploit the tense sectarian atmosphere in certain parts of the Middle East.”

“Whoever committed the Alexandria crime wants to instigate fitna between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims in hopes of destabilizing the country and, perhaps, damaging its vital tourism industry,” said Mazloum. “And Israel stands at the top of the list of those who would benefit from such a scenario.”

Fahmi agreed, asserting that Israel “has more to gain from the Alexandria attack than anyone.”

Additional Infiltrations

According to Yadlin, Egypt isn’t the only country to be subject to Israeli intrigue. In his statements in early November, he spoke of additional “infiltrations” in a handful of other states in the region — including Lebanon, Sudan and Iran — during his five-year term as military-intelligence chief.

“We have reformulated a number of espionage networks in Lebanon and formed dozens of new ones,” he is quoted as saying. “The result is that we now have complete control over the country’s telecommunications sector.”

Within the last two years, Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has uncovered more than 100 suspected Israeli spies operating in Lebanon (one of whom, remarkably, is a first cousin of alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah). Hezbollah also claims Israel was behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafiq Hariri — which brought the country perilously close to civil war between Sunni and Shiite — and, last August, presented credible evidence in support of its assertions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/world/middleeast/19lebanon.html?_r=1

http://www.yalibnan.com/2010/08/09/nasrallah-accuses-israel-of-killing-hariri/

Notably, in late October, Yadlin was quoted as saying by Iranian Press TV that Israel had benefited from Hariri’s death, after which it had managed to launch “more than one operation” inside Lebanon.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/148593.html

On Israeli intelligence activity in Sudan, Yadlin, in his November statements, also confessed to having played a major role in assisting south Sudanese “separatist movements” in an effort to foment civil strife in that country.

“We provided the southern separatists with weapons, trained many of them, and assisted them with logistics,” he is quoted as saying. “We have built networks in southern Sudan and in Darfur capable of continuing this work indefinitely.”

Early this month, Sudanese Ambassador to Iran Suleiman Abdel Towab accused both the US and Israel of fueling unrest in southern Sudan, where a weeklong referendum on secession from the northern Khartoum government is now wrapping up. “The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, is likely to be escalating the conflict,” Abdel Towab was quoted as saying on January 2.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/158359.html

Southern Sudan’s referendum, which ends on Saturday (January 15), has been accompanied by considerable violence, with scores killed in clashes between rival tribes in the country’s disputed Abyei region.

“Israel is known to have provided southern Sudan with weapons and military training to help in its conflict with the north,” said Mazloum. “The unfolding breakup of Sudan, which will pose an immediate challenge to Egypt’s national security, is being planned and directed by the US and Israel.”

South Sudanese leaders, for their part, have already hinted at a willingness to establish diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv — still a taboo in much of the Arab world — in the event of secession.

“There is a longstanding Zionist strategy, referred to in the writings of many Zionist pioneers, aimed at ensuring Israel’s regional hegemony by breaking major Arab countries into small and ineffective, ethnically-distinct statelets,” said Fahmi. “Just as Sudan will be divided between the Muslim north and Christian south, so Iraq will likely be broken up into three distinct Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions.”

Interestingly, deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, while on trial for war crimes in 2006, stated, “The Zionists are the only ones who will benefit from the differences among Iraqis,” in reference to the rapidly deteriorating sectarian situation at the time between the country’s Sunnis and Shiites.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3316173,00.html

Yadlin also reportedly admitted that Israeli intelligence activity extended into Iran. “We have assassinated several Iranian nuclear scientists and political leaders,” he is quoted as having said in November.

On January 10, Iran announced the arrest of several suspected Israeli spies who they said were responsible for the assassination last year of a top Iranian nuclear scientist. “The main elements behind this terrorist crime were arrested and a network of spies and terrorists linked to the Zionist regime was dismantled,” according to an Iranian Intelligence Ministry statement cited by Agence France-Presse.

http://www.france24.com/en/20110110-iran-holds-israel-linked-spies-over-nuclear-death

Payback for Spy Bust?

Notably, on December 19, less than two weeks before the church bombing, Egyptian authorities announced the discovery and arrest of an alleged Israeli spy network said to have included an Egyptian and two Israeli nationals. The Egyptian, 37-year-old Tarek Abdel Razzek, is expected to stand trial on espionage charges, while the two Israelis have been charged in absentia.

Confessions by Abdel Razzek have reportedly led to the discovery of additional Israeli spy networks in both Syria and Lebanon.

In light of the close timing, some observers posit that the Alexandria church attack may have come as payback for Egypt’s successful discovery/disruption of Israeli intelligence activity.

“Revelations gleaned from the spy’s confession allowed Egyptian counter-intelligence to expose additional Israeli spy networks in Syria and Lebanon, as well as further intelligence activity in a handful of Asian countries,” said Fahmi. “It was an enormous intelligence blow to Israel. It’s not out of the question that the Alexandria bombing constituted some kind of retaliation for this.”

“The church attack could have been an Israeli reply to Egypt’s detection of Israeli spy rings operating in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon,” agreed Mazloum.

Regardless of the possible motivations, said Fouad, many Egyptians remain convinced that Israel had a hand in the bombing. “Mainly because no Muslim, or Muslim organization, in Egypt could possibly benefit — in any way — from what happened,” he said.

Fouad bolstered the assertion by citing the following factors: “Yadlin’s frank admissions about fomenting sectarian strife in Egypt; that Israel has a major interest in keeping Egypt’s attention focused on internal problems while major Arab states of the region are broken up; and that the church attack immediately followed Egypt’s exposure of Mossad activity in several countries.”

Theories to this effect are hardly confined to political analysts.

“We all know Israel committed the massacre at the church,” said 27-year-old Cairo taxi driver Ezzedine Ahmed. “No believing Muslim would ever slaughter innocent Christians because, according to Islam, the murder of innocent people — of whatever faith — is absolutely haram (forbidden).’”

 

The above article can be found here: EGYPT: IN SHADOW OF FITNA

Study: More Jews in US than previously believed; Spanish ‘Crypto-Jews’ boost Israel’s image abroad (2009)

‘New study finds more Jews in the United States than previously thought’

The Jewish Daily Forward; December 22, 2010

There are more Jews in the United States than widely thought — 20 percent more.

That’s the major finding in a new study conducted by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University, which says that there are now 6.5 million Jews in America, 1 million more than the last time a major count was attempted.

The findings are a rebuke to the most recent National Jewish Population Survey, conducted in 2000-2001, which indicated a negative trend line for the Jewish population, with a loss of nearly 300,000 Jews during the previous decade.

Leonard Saxe, the Klutznick professor of contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis and the lead researcher of the recent study, had criticized the 2000-2001 survey, saying it failed to capture a true picture of Jewish demography due to a variety of methodological errors and that it served as what Saxe called a “self-fulfilling prophecy” for a community primed to believe that its numbers were in decline.

Saxe set out to offer what he believes is a more accurate picture. Because the Jewish Federations of North America had decided not to fund another large-scale National Jewish Population Survey for 2010, Saxe searched for cheaper alternatives that would not involve mounting a multi-million-dollar Jewish head count.

Saxe and his Brandeis researchers gathered more than 150 nationwide surveys conducted by government agencies and national polling organizations over the past decade that asked about religious identity, and then synthesized the data. After reconciling the various surveys so their findings could be grouped together, Saxe’s team drew on the responses of 400,000 people to arrive at his estimate for the Jewish population.

Saxe presented the findings at this year’s Association for Jewish Studies conference in Boston in mid-December.

“This is really a brilliant step forward,” said Bethamie Horowitz, a socio-psychologist and researcher at New York University. “No one study is the perfect measure but if you have many studies, you can get an increasingly accurate range in which the estimate falls.”

Horowitz also said that the study met with the approval of demographers outside the field of those studying Jewish population and was seen to be “scientifically on very solid ground.”

Another part of Saxe’s study tried to deal with the question of what constitutes Jewish identity. The shifting definition of what being Jewish means makes counting Jews difficult. While some see Jewishness as a religious identity, others see it as a cultural or ethnic designation and might, for example, not answer “Jewish” to a researcher inquiring about their religion.

Saxe hired a polling firm, Knowledge Network, which questioned a sample of 1,400 Jews. Using this data, researchers concluded that of their estimated 6.5 million Jews, 5.5 million see themselves as Jews “by religion,” while 1 million more call themselves Jews for other reasons.

Saxe’s results present a paradox. While the findings show a higher number of Jews than previously thought, Saxe found that engagement in Jewish life has decreased. Even among those who identify as Jewish “by religion,” he found a majority do not belong to synagogues, do not participate in Jewish life cycle events or have not visited Israel — all indicators, according to Saxe, of engagement in the Jewish community.

“It’s as if there are more people willing to call themselves Red Sox fans, but fewer people actually attending the games,” Saxe said.

Saxe believes the Jewish community can draw a lesson from the new research.

“We have to stop worrying about whether the community will exist,” Saxe said. “Instead we should worry about the content, about how we make communal life meaningful for the many Jews who are out there.”

The above article can be found here: http://www.forward.com/articles/134138/

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‘Crypto-Jews help boost Israel’s image abroad’

The Jewish Daily Forward; May 27, 2009

BARCELONA – On the top floor of this city’s Jewish community center, a group whose ancestors were cut off from the Jewish people more than 500 years ago are receiving tips and training to become pro-Israel advocates in the 21st century.

“We can use cyberspace to circumvent the traditional media,” Raanan Gissin, a former Israeli government spokesman, tells them.

His voice rises with excitement as he outlines the potential for coordinated pro-Israel messaging through blogs and Web sites.

Listening intently, scribbling notes and asking questions is a gathering of what might appear to be an unlikely band of foot soldiers for Israel advocacy: the descendants of Jews who converted in Spain and Portugal in the Middle Ages, during the Inquisition.

They have traveled from small towns and cities across the Iberian Peninsula to Barcelona for a three-day conference to learn more about their Jewish roots. Amid talks on Jewish history, theology and identity these people — known as Marranos or Anusim, Hebrew for “the forced” — also learned how they could be voices for Israel in their communities.

Anti-Israel sentiment runs particularly high in Spain, where the mass media tend toward highly critical reporting of Israel and public opinion surveys suggest hostile attitudes toward Jews and Israel. Several top Israeli military commanders are being charged by Spain’s high court for possible war crimes for their authorization of the bombing of a Gaza apartment bloc in 2002 that killed a top Hamas commander and 14 civilians.

“Spain is one of the most difficult countries in terms of Israel’s image, and the Anusim see and feel it on a daily basis,” said Michael Freund, chairman of Shavei Israel, which organized the seminar.

Shavei Yisrael reaches out to so-called “lost Jews” around the world who seek to know more about their heritage.

“Many of them have expressed a desire to do something about it, to speak out about it, to speak on Israel’s behalf,” Freund said.

“I think the potential is vast for Israel and the Jewish people because the Anusim — because of their personal background and historical connection with the Jewish people — feel an affinity towards Israel, and they are perfectly positioned as citizens of Spain and Portugal to serve as unofficial ambassadors,” he said. “I think it’s time for the State of Israel to realize that and to make use of the goodwill that exists here.”

Several of the 60 people attending the conference already have become involved. Some recounted fear facing anti-Israeli sentiment in their hometowns.

A middle-aged doctor from Barcelona who preferred not to have his name used said he was threatened by a local Muslim in response to articles he wrote under a pseudonym defending Israel.

“Israel is considered a criminal state, and people are always looking to see how they can further frame Israel,” he said. “I fear officials in Israel do not view Europe importantly enough and that’s a mistake. We have to change the mentality here.”

In recent years, Spain’s centuries-old anti-Semitism based on religious dogma has taken a new form in anti-Israeli sentiment, he said.

Einat Kranz-Nieger, the deputy chief of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Madrid, outlined some of the major themes Israel is trying to transmit internationally: Its commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort, improving Palestinians’ security and standard of living, and the global and regional threat posed by Iran.

[For the record, Israel has consistently derailed peace efforts with the Palestinians; deliberately destroyed Palestinian security and living standards; and assiduously lied about Iran's nuclear energy program -- 800]

In a tense moment in the discussion, several participants raised the potential risks they face in speaking out for Israel and asked whether Israel would assist them if needed. They did not receive a clear answer.

Seminar organizers said their comments underscore the sensitivity of those seeking some sort of return to Judaism, whether through official conversion or a connection with local Jews.

“People feel they live in a gray zone; they are not officially Jews,” said Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum of Shavei Yisrael. “But some are identifying themselves as Jews in very non-Jewish communities.”

Estimates for the number of people with Jewish roots in this region vary. Many Spanish and Portuguese have family names that indicate a Jewish past. Some at the conference spoke of families observing unexplained traditions such as lighting candles followed by a grandmother’s mumbling of unintelligible incantations and the washing and salting of meat.

According to a recent genetic study, about 20 percent of Portuguese and Spanish citizens have Jewish backgrounds.

Rafael Peretz, 47, is from the town of Saragossa, about 150 miles west of Barcelona, where only three Jewish families live. He recently started a Web site about Anusim, Kolisraelorg.net , which features a section on Israeli advocacy. There are links to several Spanish-language pro-Israel bloggers, and Peretz sends messages on online social networking sites and posts videos on the video-sharing site YouTube to help get out what he calls more balanced information on Israel.

“In Spain there is not much information about the reality of life in Israel,” said Peretz, who started investigating his Jewish roots several years ago.

As a child, his father had brought him to a synagogue and startled him with the announcement “We come from the Jewish people.”

At the seminar, Gissin said that one must think creatively in order to advocate for Israel successfully.

“You have to learn how to fight, how to speak: short sentences, use stories,” he said.

Gazing around the room, Gissin said, “You are a living testament to what we are talking about. Each of your stories is a living document to the eternity of the Jewish people.”

The above article can be found here: http://www.forward.com/articles/106654/

Kurdistan riddled with ‘Zionist spy agencies,’ says cleric; Saddam in ’06: ‘Iraqi division only benefits Zionists’

‘Al-Dhari: Israeli firms operate in Iraq’

Press TV (Iran); December 25, 2010

The head of an Iraqi clerical association, Harith al-Dhari, says companies affiliated with the Israeli spy agency Mossad are freely operating all over Iraq. Al-Dhari, the head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, says Israeli companies are particularly concentrated in the northern Kurdistan region.

“The companies are directly working with Zionist spy agencies,” said al-Dhari, Iraq’s most influential Sunni cleric and a prominent anti-American figure. “Israeli companies infiltrating Iraq work under Arabic, English and Turkish names,” he further explained.

Reports say at least 70 Israeli firms operate in war-ravaged Iraq, using proxy Arab or European companies.

Earlier this year, Syrian customs officials seized several trucks loaded with Israeli goods heading to Iraq.

In 2008, Iraq’s Yaqen News Agency unveiled that more than 55 Israeli companies were working in the country under assumed names.

The agency also added that the Zionist firms operate in a variety of fields, including infrastructure and marketing.

It also said that Israel exports more than $300 million in goods to Iraq annually.

The companies, the report said, won contracts for construction projects in Iraq, thanks to help from “the US Agency for International Development that oversees the allocation of building contracts in Iraq.”

The above article can be found here: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/157009.html

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Press TV interviews Israel Lobby critic James Morris:

December 25, 2010

Press TV: It was reported as early as 2003, that Mossad had a presence in northern Iraq. Could there be a link then made to the fact that that is the one region that has seen a lot less violence?

James Morris: Well, first of all, thank you for having me back on Press TV, and I’d like to wish all your Christian viewers around the world a very Merry Christmas or a happy Christmas as they say in England.

Yes, we know that the Mossad has actually been working with the Kurds or at least Israelis–and we can assume that those Israelis are Mossad operatives–in Kurdistan going back to Seymour Hersh’s article, titled ‘Plan B’ for the New Yorker.

[NOTE: Seymour Hersh is a professional liar for the Zionist establishment, whose bestselling books and widely-read articles contain copious lies. While he is touted as a hardnosed investigative reporter, a close reading of his work will reveal his complicity in the whitewash of both the JFK assassination and 9/11. For evidence of these assertions, see 'Seymour Hersh: Professional liar' here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20080813053842851 -- 800]

And we’ve seen the BBC story that aired [see below], as well, where you had Israeli Mossad operatives training the Kurds and developing an air strip according to the BBC report for potential attack on Iran in terms of any Israeli jets that attack Iran — to enable them to refuel on their way back.

What I really think is going on here — and you can go to my America-hijacked.co blog — the former (head of) Israeli Mossad, Danny Yatom, had actually met with Mustafa Barzani of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and this is all about destabilizing Iran.

This Mossad chief, Danny Yatom, had actually said that our plan is to cause ethnic strife in Iran and bring down the regime. And of course if you read my friend’s, Doctor Stephen Sniegoski’s, ‘The Transparent Cabal’ book — that fits with Israeli Likudnik (ideology) — Yotom’s plan of destabilizing Israel’s enemies in the Middle East. And that’s what the Iraq war is based on — possibly another Israeli invasion in Lebanon and Iran along with Syria …

It’s very, very concerning and we really have to address this and stop another war from Israel before it gets more Americans killed, more Brits and Iranians, Syrians and Lebanese, too.

Press TV: In 2003, it was reported a Mossad office in Kirkuk was attacked, but that US troops sealed off the area and implemented a news blackout. Did the US attack Iraq solely for Israel?

James Morris: Well of course, like I said, you can read James Bamford’s ‘Pretext for War’ book based on the clean break agenda.

You can go to tinyroll.com/cleanbreak — you have these neoconservatives with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and the Project for the New American Century, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wermser, who used to work in Dick Cheney’s office.

Dick Cheney was associated with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). You had Colin Powell that had said that the JINSA crowd was in control of the Pentagon.

Even David Wurmser had wanted Israel to attack Iran to draw Iranian retaliation against American troops in Iraq so we would go to war with Iran.

[For more information on how this den of neoconservative (i.e., Jewish-Zionist) vipers led the US into an immoral, illegal war on Iraq, see 'BBC reveals Zionist War Party behind Iraq invasion' here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20080914060717679 --800]

Fortunately, my friend Steve Clemons at The Washington Note found out about that and wrote about it and David Wurmser was removed from Cheney’s office. But he was the co-author of this Clean Break document.

So what I’m trying to say also is the war in Iraq, any war with Syria that can bring in Iran as Syria’s ally, it’s all for Israel. You’ve got these Likudnik neoconservatives in America who follow this Israeli Likudnik (ideology)…

Fortunately Israel Shahak is translated from Hebrew and lets us know about this, but the problem is the pro-Israel biased media in America is not reporting this and we have to get this as far as possible.

[For more on writer/historian Israel Shahak, see 'Israel Shahak: blowing the lid off the Talmud and Jewish Fundamentalism' here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20081030232126170 -- 800]

I really appreciate Press TV doing that before the Middle East blows up as a result of another war for Israel. Again, go to America-hijack.com and neoconzionistthreat.com, as well.

Press TV: It was hypothesized once that Israeli agents were killing US soldiers in Iraq in order to enrage US troops enough that the occupation persists. Is that theory sounding more like reality now?

James Morris: Well, we know from my experience with the head of prisons in Iraq, General Janis Karpinski — she had initially told me that she had met an Israeli working with US Delta Force interrogators near the Baghdad airport.

So we know that Israelis have been working with our US interrogators so that’s obvious, that’s why we see the Israeli torture tactics, such as hooding and the sexual humiliation like we saw in Abu Ghraib — those are tactics that came down right from Israel through the neoconservatives who have friends in Israel that incorporate these kind of tactics via former Shin-Bet operatives. And we never saw a mention of this in the American media.

[For more on the presence of Israeli torturers/interrogators in Iraq, see 'Israeli soldier gets thrills posing with bound captives; BBC: Israeli interrogators in Iraq (2004)' here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100819050109432 -- 800]

I tried to get CBS news to cover it. They refused; I tried to get BBC to cover it.

Google it! We know Mossad are really interrogators in Iraq. Israelis are operating there, we know, that are trying to use Kurdistan as a beachhead against Iran to carry out attacks by Kurdish separatists in Iran as well as MEK [Mujahideen-e-khalq,] perhaps.

It’s part of the plan that the former Mossad head had talked about, this Danny Yatom. He said we want to use ethnic strife and violence to bring down the Iranian regime and the main reason is in Stephen Sniegoski’s ‘Transparent Cabal’ book, because the Iranian regime provides resistance to Israel with Hezbollah and Hamas, and Israel wants to take down the Iranian regime because of it, bottom line.

The above transcript can be found here: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/157047.html

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‘Israel Wants Iraq for Greater Israel’PakAlert (Pakistan); January 31, 2009

By Wayne Madsen

Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical “Greater Israel.”

Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.

Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslims, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan after the US invasion in 2003, which is considered historical Jewish “property.”

The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish “properties” outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call “Judea and Samaria.”

Kurdish and Iraqi sources report that Israel’s Mossad is working hand-in-hand with Israeli companies and “tourists” to stake a claim to the Jewish “properties” of Israel in Iraq. The Mossad has already been heavily involved in training the Kurdish Peshamerga military forces.

Reportedly assisting the Israelis are foreign mercenaries paid for by US Christian evangelical circles that support the concept of “Christian Zionism.”

Iraqi nationalists charge that the Israeli expansion into Iraq is supported by both major Kurdish factions, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Iraq’s nominal President Jalal Talabani. Talabani’s son, Qubad Talabani, serves as the KRG’s representative in Washington, where he lives with his wife Sherri Kraham, who is Jewish.

Also supporting the Israeli land acquisition activities is the Kurdistan Democratic Party, headed by Massoud Barzani, the president of the KRG. One of Barzani’s five sons, Binjirfan Barzani, is reportedly heavily involved with the Israelis.

The Israelis and their Christian Zionist supporters enter Iraq not through Baghdad but through Turkey. In order to depopulate residents of lands the Israelis claim, Mossad operatives and Christian Zionist mercenaries are staging terrorist attacks against Chaldean Christians, particularly in Nineveh, Irbil, al-Hamdaniya, Bartalah, Talasqaf, Batnayah, Bashiqah, Elkosheven, Uqrah, and Mosul.

These attacks by the Israelis and their allies are usually reported as being the responsibility of “Al Qaeda” and other Islamic “jihadists.”

The ultimate aim of the Israelis is to depopulate the Christian population in and around Mosul and claim the land as biblical Jewish land that is part of “Greater Israel.” The Israeli/Christian Zionist operation is a replay of the depopulation of the Palestinians in the British mandate of Palestine after World War II.

In June 2003, a delegation of Israelis visited Mosul and said that it was Israel’s intention, with the assistance of Barzani, to establish Israeli control of the shrine of Jonah in Mosul and the shrine of Nahum in the Mosul plains. The Israelis said Israeli and Iranian Jewish pilgrims would travel via Turkey to the area of Mosul and take over lands where Iraqi Christians lived.

The above article can be found here: http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/here-we-go-israel-wants-iraq-for-greater-israel/

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‘Saddam: Kurds dividing Iraq for Israeli benefit’The Associated Press; October 17, 2006

Saddam Hussein on Tuesday attacked prosecution witnesses in his trial for genocide against the Kurds, accusing them of sowing division among Iraqis for the benefit of Israel.

The deposed leader addressed the court after two Kurds testified that during a military offensive in northern Iraq in 1988, they were detained in a camp where conditions were so bad that hundreds of prisoners died of malnutrition.

“This will only serve the separation,” Saddam said, referring to the deepening division among Iraqis as shown by the rising death toll in the insurgency and sectarian fighting.

“The Zionists are the only ones who will benefit from the differences among Iraqis,” Saddam added.

Earlier, another defendant testified that his lawyer wanted to break ranks with the three-week legal boycott of the trial, but when the judge summoned the attorney, he failed to appear.

And the chief defense lawyer for Saddam denied in an interview that any of the defense attorneys would end their boycott.

The back-and-forth was a continuation of the procedural difficulties that have plagued the trial in which Saddam and six members of his regime are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity during a military offensive against Iraq’s Kurdish population in 1987-88. Saddam and one other defendant are also charged with genocide.

The above article can be found here: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3316173,00.html

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‘Kurdish soldiers trained by Israelis’

BBC Newsnight; September 20, 2006

Newsnight has obtained the first pictures of Kurdish soldiers being trained by Israelis in Northern Iraq, as well as an interview with one of the former commandos who carried out the work.

When the former Israeli Special Forces soldiers were sent to Iraq in 2004 they were told they would be disowned if they were discovered.

Their role there was to train two groups of Kurdish troops.

One would act as a security force for the new Hawler International Airport (near Erbil) and the other, of more than 100 peshmerga or Kurdish fighters, would be trained for “special assignments”, according to one of Newsnight’s interviewees.

Contractors

An Israeli security consulting form called Interop acted as the main contractor for the Hawler airport project and set up two subsidiaries (Kudo and Colosium) to carry out work in Iraq.

Kudo and Colosium described themselves as Swiss-registered companies.

In addition to the training, Kudo provided quad bikes, communications equipment and security fencing.

One of the founders of Interop, and its Chairman until 2003, was Danny Yatom, a former Head of Mossad — the Israeli foreign intelligence service and now an MP.

He told Newsnight today: “I was not aware of what was done in 2004 and 2005 because I cut all contacts with the company when I entered the Israeli parliament in 2003.”

During 2004-5, Interop and Kudo were run by Shlomi Michaels, a former head of Israel’s counter-terrorist unit. Contacted by Newsnight, Mr. Michaels declined to comment.

Special assignments

Newsnight was told by the Israeli interviewee involved in the training that senior Kurdish officials were aware of their nationality, but not the troops being trained.

The sensitivities for the Kurdish authorities are serious, since their political enemies have long accused them of being in cahoots with Israel.

The Kurdish authorities have previously denied allowing any Israelis into northern Iraq.

The Israeli trainer says: “You know, day by day it’s a bit tense because you know where you are and you know who you are. And there’s always a chance that you’ll get revealed.

“My part of the contract was to train the Kurdish security people for a big airport project and for training, as well as the Peshmerga, and the actual soldiers, the army.

“We were training them in all kinds of anti-terror lessons, anti-terror, security airport, training them with long rifles, pistols; telling them, teaching them tactics like shooting behind doors, behind barricades, shooting from the left, shooting from the right, shooting from windows, how to shoot first, how to identify a terrorist in a crowd.

“That’s clearly special assignments. That’s only training that special units get for special assignments.

“We crossed the border from Turkey and one of the intelligence officers passed us by, through the border, without stamping our passports.

“So you reckon that if two guys from the intelligence service knew we were Israelis and they saw our passports as well, the leadership knew as well — I mean their bosses, that’s natural.”

‘The second Israel’

Khaled Salih, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, says: “These are not new allegations for us. Back in the sixties and seventies we were called ‘the second Israel’ in the region and we were supposed to be eliminated by Islamist nationalist and now Islamist groups.

“They look for internal enemies and we are the easiest to target. These kinds of speculations have been around in the region for more than 30 years.”

The Kurdistan region sits at a strategic crossroads. To the east is Iran, to the north-west Turkey. Both countries have significant Kurd minorities and are worried about a Kurdish state emerging in northern Iraq.

The authorities there have accepted that for now and that they must remain part of a federal Iraq.

As they develop their region, the Kurds have opened an international airport at Irbil (Hawler in Kurdish).

It now boasts dozens of international flights each week and it is at Hawler International that the Israelis began their work.

Strategic options

With Iran becoming Israel’s principal enemy, there have been reports of Israelis using Kurdish areas of Iraq to increase its strategic options.

One constraint facing the Israelis, should they ever want to hit Iran, is distance. Most Israeli jets are short range and they have few in-flight tankers. Some studies have suggested that Israel could make refueling stops at a modern airfield in Kurdistan.

If the Israelis ever planned to use Hawler airport as an emergency refueling stop, it has now been compromised by Israeli press reports.

After finishing their training, Kurds sang their national anthem while marching behind one of the Israelis.

Israeli Government spokesman, Mark Regev, told Newsnight that the Investigations Division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense had passed the details of this case to the Israeli police to see if there had been any violation of export laws.

He added: “We have not authorized anyone to do any defense work in Iraq… If information is brought and there’s clear evidence that people broke our law, of course I expect them to be prosecuted.”

The above article can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5363116.stm

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‘Israel helping train US forces to combat Iraqi insurgents’

Israel Insider; December 10, 2003

Israeli advisers are helping train US Special Forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, The Guardian reported yesterday [see below]. A former US intelligence agent told the paper that the IDF sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to help set up “assassination teams” that would target guerrilla leaders.

Officials at Fort Bragg, however, denied that Israeli advisers had come to the base to train Special Forces soldiers in counter-insurgency tactics including assassination, the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer reported today. “This command is not conducting any combined US or Israeli training at Fort Bragg,” said Lt. Col. Hans Bush, a spokesman for US Army Special Operations.

But according to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at Fort Bragg and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq, the New Yorker and other media sources reported.

“The Americans now realize their forces are in Iraq for the long haul, and are reorganizing accordingly,” a senior Israeli security source told Reuters. “Israel has been providing advice on how to shift from a reliance on heavy, armored occupation troops to mobile forces that are more effective in quelling urban resistance and cause less friction with the general populace,” he said.

US forces already have adopted IDF tactics

According to media reports, American forces in Iraq have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the Palestinian territories, including the sealing off centers of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.

Reuters reported that the American forces plan to adopt the IDF’s tactic of a “swarm assault,” such as was used by the Israeli army during its operations in Nablus in April 2002. The “swarm assault,” according to Reuters, constituted the “unleashing” of “roving covert infantry squads whose movements were coordinated using air surveillance.”

“The Americans are used to fighting either in force or with isolated commando teams, while the swarm tactic is a combination of both,” an Israeli military source said, quoted by Reuters. “It is ideal for hitting terrorists concentrated in civilian populations.”

US officials noted the similarity of their tactics in Iraq with those employed by the IDF, but denied that they are modeled on them, Reuters reported.

Israelis go to Iraq, US officers come to Israel

The Guardian reported that Israeli security officials went to Iraq to advise American troops there. “Some Israelis went to Iraq as well, not to do training, but for providing consultations,” an American intelligence source told the newspaper.

Brigadier-General Michael Vane, deputy chief of staff at the US Army’s training and doctrine command, mentioned the cooperation with Israel in a letter to Army magazine in July. “We recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counter-terrorist operations in urban areas,” he wrote.

Yediot Aharonot reported that the American military officials were in Israel for a few days and visited the IDF command center, focusing on ways to deal with Iraqi insurgency.

“They were interested in things in which we have a lot of experience,” a senior Israeli security official told Yediot Aharonot. “They learned about explosive charges, and how to neutralize them, … intelligence gathering, the use of dogs to locate charges. They were completely unfamiliar with the use of dogs, and this greatly interested them,” the official said.

According to Reuters, the US Special Forces have so far been slow in adopting one IDF tactic — having commandos dressed as civilians swoop in to capture or kill fugitive insurgents. “In consultations, the Americans have made it clear that they see the need for undercover work to flush out wanted terrorists. But they lack personnel qualified in Arabic and the basic cultural knowledge needed to blend in,” an Israeli military source said.

The Guardian reported that Israeli “consultants” were helping train US Special Forces in ways to “neutralize” guerrilla leaders. “This is basically an assassination program. That is what is being conceptualized here. This is a hunter-killer team,” a former senior US intelligence official told the newspaper.

The above article does not appear to exist in its original location, but can still be found here: http://brussellstribunal.org/IsraelDeathSquadsIraq.htm

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‘Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq’The Guardian (UK); December 9, 2003

Israeli advisers are helping train US Special Forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US Special Forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military “consultants” have also visited Iraq.

US forces in Iraq’s Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centers of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.

But the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope of suppressing the Ba’athist-led insurgency ahead of next November’s presidential elections.

US Special Forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the “neutralization” of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.

“This is basically an assassination program. That is what is being conceptualized here. This is a hunter-killer team,” said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.

“It is bonkers, insane. Here we are — we’re already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we’ve just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams.”

“They are being trained by Israelis in Fort Bragg,” a well-informed intelligence source in Washington said.

“Some Israelis went to Iraq as well, not to do training, but for providing consultations.”

The consultants’ visit to Iraq was confirmed by another US source who was in contact with American officials there.

The Pentagon did not return calls seeking comment, but a military planner, Brigadier General Michael Vane, mentioned the cooperation with Israel in a letter to Army magazine in July about the Iraq counter-insurgency campaign.

“We recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas,” wrote General Vane, deputy chief of staff at the army’s training and doctrine command.

An Israeli official said the IDF regularly shared its experience in the West Bank and Gaza with the US armed forces, but said he could not comment about cooperation in Iraq.

“When we do activities, the US military attaches in Tel Aviv are interested. I assume it’s the same as the British. That’s the way allies work. The special forces come to our people and say, do debrief on an operation we have done,” the official said.

“Does it affect Iraq? It’s not in our interest or the American interest or in anyone’s interest to go into that. It would just fit in with jihadist prejudices.”

Colonel Ralph Peters, a former army intelligence officer and a critic of Pentagon policy in Iraq, said yesterday there was nothing wrong with learning lessons wherever possible.

“When we turn to anyone for insights, it doesn’t mean we blindly accept it,” Col Peters said. “But I think what you’re seeing is a new realism. The American tendency is to try to win all the hearts and minds. In Iraq, there are just some hearts and minds you can’t win. Within the bounds of human rights, if you do make an example of certain villages it gets the attention of the others, and attacks have gone down in the area.”

The new counter-insurgency unit made up of elite troops being put together in the Pentagon is called Task Force 121, New Yorker magazine reported in yesterday’s edition.

One of the planners behind the offensive is a highly controversial figure, whose role is likely to inflame Muslim opinion: Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin.

In October, there were calls for his resignation after he told a church congregation in Oregon that the US was at war with Satan, who “wants to destroy us as a Christian army”.

“He’s been promoted a rank above his abilities,” he said. “Some generals are pretty good on battlefield but are disastrous nearer the source of power.”

The above article can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/dec/09/iraq.israel

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Also see ‘The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK): A Zionist proxy?’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100708133928209

Also see ‘Arabic-language press: Former Zionist intel chief boasts of Israeli infiltration of Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=2010110414300857

Also see ‘Israel benefited from 2005 Hariri assassination, ex-intel chief admits; Saad Hariri absolves Syria of blame for father’s murder’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101031155101184Also see ‘Israel takes control of Lebanon’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100829215407380

Also see ‘Yemen Islamists linked to Israeli intelligence’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100909230732878

Also see ‘Is Israel running the Taliban?’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100905023041292

And for an even more exhaustive list of articles on Israel’s covert activities inside Iraq, see: http://brussellstribunal.org/IsraelDeathSquadsIraq.htm

 

Arabic-language press: Egypt uncovers Israeli spy network that eavesdropped on govt officials

‘Authorities arrest members of alleged Egypt-based Israeli spy ring’

Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt); December 19, 2010

Egyptian security forces have arrested several people suspected of belonging to an Israeli spy network operating in Egypt. The alleged network reportedly consists of two fugitive Israeli officers and four Egyptian nationals.

The State Security apparatus is currently conducting a highly secretive investigation of the suspects.

Investigations have so far revealed that network members had succeeded in establishing two communications offices, one in Cairo and one in the UK, through which they recorded telephone calls made by prominent Egyptian government officials. The calls were then allegedly transferred to a communications office in Israel.

Investigations have further revealed that one of the Israeli officers had managed to recruit a female Egyptian public relations director working at a tourism company to supply him with information, in return for money, about places frequented by certain groups of tourists — including those from China and Japan — near the border region of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

After being provided with the information, the Israeli officer was then able to kidnap a number of tourists who were allegedly taken to Israel. After several days, kidnapped tourists were then reportedly returned to the place from which they had been abducted. The operation’s apparent objective was to destabilize security in the Sinai Peninsula.

Confessions by the defendants have revealed that the two officers had recruited a former female basketball player and her friend to rent a communications office in Cairo, which was run by a third person who has also been arrested. This office was reportedly linked to a communications office in the UK.

The defendants were thus able to monitor and record telephone calls made from certain landlines in Egypt — as specified by the two officers — which were then transferred to the UK office before being re-transmitted to a communications office in Israel.

Egyptian security forces have arrested and detained the Egyptian suspects pending investigation, while public prosecutors have charged them with conducting espionage for a foreign country, recording telephone calls without permission, and forming a “terrorist cell” aimed at disrupting public order.

Interpol, meanwhile, has been asked to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli suspects.

Al-Masry Al-Youm has learned that the case file contains more than 15 telephone calls involving high-ranking government officials that were successfully recorded by the suspected spies.

Translated from the Arabic Edition.

The above article can be found here: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/authorities-arrest-members-alleged-egypt-based-israeli-spy-ring

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Also see ‘Arabic-language press: Former Zionist intel chief boasts of Israeli infiltration of Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=2010110414300857

Also see ‘Israel Takes Control of Lebanon’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100829215407380

Also see ‘In Egypt, 9/11 questions linger (not least about the role of Israel)’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100924133934344

Also see ‘Israel applauds Egyptian regime’s suppression of Muslim opposition in rigged parliamentary elections’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101213015150152

Also see ‘ABC News: Still active in US, Israeli art student spies case NSA data center’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=201010032328315

Also see ‘Mossad in America’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101103141619639

 

ZIONIST CRIME LOG: Book by ex-soldiers presents further testimony to Israeli barbarity

‘Our lives became something we’d never dreamt’: The former Israeli soldiers who have testified against army abusesThe Independent (UK); December 12, 2010

For anyone who has covered Israel, the West Bank and Gaza over the past few years, reading Occupation of the Territories, the new book from the Israeli ex-soldiers organization Breaking the Silence, can be an eerily evocative experience.

A conscript from the Givati Brigade, for example, describes how troops in the company operating next to his inside Gaza during 2008 had talked about an event earlier in the day. After knocking on the door of a Palestinian house and receiving no immediate answer, they had placed a “fox” — military slang for explosives used to break through doors and walls — outside the front door.

At that very moment, the woman of the house had reached the door to open it. “Her limbs were smeared on the wall and it wasn’t on purpose,” the soldier recalls. “And then her kids came and saw her. I heard it during dinner after the operation, someone said it was funny, and they cracked up from the situation that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall…”

[Note: Just because some former soldiers have chosen to testify against army abuses does not make them "good Israeli Jews," because "good Israeli Jews" do not exist. If an Israeli Jew would like to be "good," i.e., do "the right thing" as it were, he/she should relinquish his/her Israeli citizenship and, as Helen Thomas put it, "get the hell out of Palestine" to make room for the land's rightful owners -- at which point he/she would no longer be Israeli. Ergo, there is no such thing as a "good Israeli Jew" -- 800]

A second-hand story, of course; one without names, dates or supporting detail. Except that it stirred a memory I had of reporting the death of a Palestinian UN schoolteacher east of Khan Younis. Wafer Shaker al-Daghma was killed when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) commandeered her house during an incursion in May 2008. Her husband had been out at the time.

When we came to the house five days later, another incursion was under way and we could hear, uncomfortably close, the gunfire from Israeli armored military vehicles while Majdi al-Daghma described his wife’s death at the age of 34. When she realized troops were nearby, she’d ordered ‘ the children, Samira, 13, Roba, four, and Qusay, two, into the bedroom, put on a headscarf and prepared to open the door. “Samira heard a loud explosion and there was a lot of smoke,” he explained. “She looked for her mother but couldn’t see her.”

It was surely the same incident. You have to assume that the laughter alluded to by the conscript was a nervous reaction, a manifestation of delayed shock from the soldiers. They had, after all, had the presence of mind to cover Mrs. al-Daghma’s mutilated body with a carpet, and to keep the children confined to the bedroom for the five hours they had remained in the house.

[Why the writer feels the need to make excuses for the soldiers' barbaric behavior is a mystery. Examples of Israeli soldiers laughing while abusing innocent Palestinians, or even smiling for photos with dead children or bound captives, are manifold -- 800]

Samira said she had asked one of them, “Where is my mother?” but had not understood his reply in Hebrew. She explained how, when the soldiers finally left after nightfall, “There were still tanks outside our house… I tried to call my father on my mother’s Jawwal [mobile phone] but there was no line. I lifted the carpet and saw a bit of my mother’s clothes. She was not moving. I did not see her head.”

The point of this is not just that the soldier’s story is shocking, but that it is so apparently corroborated. Especially given that the conscript’s short account — unlike many others in the book, some every bit as disquieting — is based on hearsay, it is powerfully suggestive of the testimonies’ authenticity as a portrait of a 43-year-old occupation. These testimonies, checked and cross-checked, of young Israeli men and women struggling to come to terms, sometimes years after the event, with their military service in the West Bank and Gaza, add up to an unprecedented inside account, as the book’s introduction puts it, of “the principles and consequences of Israeli policy in the [Palestinian] territories”.

Breaking the Silence is a unique organization. No other country — including those with recent and problematic military histories, such as the US and Britain — has anything comparable. [Is the writer suggesting here that Israel should be admired for maintaining an occupation so brutal that soldiers themselves are moved to condemn it? -- 800]

Since it began in 2004, it has collected 700 testimonies from conscripts and reservists, spanning the decade since the beginning of the second intifada. In July last year, it made its greatest impact by publishing accounts from around 30 combat soldiers involved in the onslaught on Hamas-controlled Gaza only six months earlier, challenging the military’s assertion that it had done “the utmost to avoid harming uninvolved civilians”.

Breaking the Silence has since taken two more decisive steps. The Israeli military has long complained about the anonymity of its witnesses. In July, the IDF even questioned whether all the testimonies were genuine. Anonymity was understandable; the soldiers risked alienation and heavy criticism from their own communities as well as from the state itself, not to mention the possibility of proceedings brought by the military. Now, for the first time, 27 of those who had testified have allowed the Jerusalem-based photographer Quique Kierszenbaum to take their portraits, and use their names, along with summaries of why and what they testified.

The second step change, having in the past let the testimonies speak for themselves, is that Breaking the Silence has been emboldened by the sheer number of them to offer a broader analysis of what it believes they expose: in part that, while Israeli forces have indeed had to deal with “concrete threats in the past decade, including terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens”, their operations, especially in the West Bank, extend beyond the solely defensive and “systematically” lead to the “de facto annexation” of occupied territory “through the dispossession of Palestinian residents”.

In arguing that Israel exercises a measure of control over Palestinians that extends beyond its own security needs, the book (published in Hebrew on 21 December, with an English version to follow in the new year), takes four technical terms in frequent use by the Israeli military and tries to show in its introductions to the testimonies what Breaking the Silence sees as their real, as opposed to ostensible, meaning.

The first of these terms is “Prevention” [sikkul in Hebrew] which, it argues, has become a “code word” that allows almost every form of military action, offensive as well as defensive, to be classified as “prevention of terrorist activity”. It says the principle, first enunciated by the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon of “searing it into the consciousness” of Palestinians that violence does not pay, translates into “intimidation… and indiscriminate punishment of the Palestinian population”.

The examples given include: sending a military truck into the village of Tubas at 3am in 2003 “with stun grenades and just throwing them in the street, for no reason, waking people up [to say] ‘We are here. The IDF is here.’”; shooting ‘ a visibly unarmed man walking on a roof in Nablus in 2002 (“The company commander declared him a lookout, meaning that he understood there was no threat from the guy, and he gave the order to kill him”); and halting stone-throwing in Tekoa by using a “moving human shield” — a Palestinian man tied to the front of a vehicle — before driving round the village.

The second term is “Separation” [hafradah], meaning the separation of Palestinians not only from Israelis but from other Palestinians (within the West Bank and between Gaza and the West Bank) and their own land by using checkpoints, separation barriers, Israeli-only roads used by West Bank settlers, and a strict permit regime enforcing “isolation” of many communities. While much of this “separation” — including loss of land — is permanent, in the past two years, post-intifada, some obstacles have eased. But Breaking the Silence insists the “paradigm” is unchanged. “It’s obvious Israel relaxes its grip when things are easier,” says the organization’s Mikhael Manekin. “But it always has the grip. It can relax or tighten it as it chooses.”

There was the “separation” of Nablus in 2003 from the surrounding villages: “You have to understand the proportionality. A person between the ages of 16 and 35, who lives in Nablus has not left Nablus in the past four years, even to go to a village next to Nablus.” Another example was the Qalqilya area in 2002: “Someone whose fig grove they uprooted came in tears, and he said to me: ‘I worked for 30 years to buy the land, I worked this grove for 10 years, I waited 10 years for it to bear fruit, I enjoyed it for one year and they [the IDF] are uprooting it.’”

Next is “Fabric of life” [mirkam hayyim], the term used by the IDF to underline that it does its best to ensure as normal a life as possible for Palestinians — a proposition strongly contested in the book. It claims that Israel controls the passage of civilians and goods into Israel and within the West Bank, the opening of private businesses, transport of school-children, university students and medical cases. “[Property] can all be taken at the discretion of a regional commander or a soldier in the field… troops will burst into the house in the dead of night and arrest one of the inhabitants, only to release him later — all in order to practice arrest procedures.”

Among the examples is the story of a Palestinian truck driver trying to bring milk containers into Hebron from Yatta during a curfew in 2002, who was detained, handcuffed and blindfolded on a hot summer morning. He had some 2,000 liters of milk — all of which spoiled as he sat all day, restrained. “When I look at it [now],” says a former soldier, “I feel embarrassed… Did it contribute to the security of the state? No.”

Another example concerns illegal workers and their families trying to get into the Wadi Ara of northern Israel from the West Bank. One former soldier recalls “Pouring out the kids’ bags and playing with their toys… They cried and were afraid.” The adults cried, too? “Of course. One of the goals was always: I got him to cry in front of his kids, I got him to crap in his pants… from being beaten for the most part.”

Finally, in examining the term “Law enforcement” [akhifat hak], the book highlights the dual legal regime in the West Bank, whereby Palestinians are subject to military rule and courts while Israeli settlers are answerable to civilian courts. At the same time, it argues, Israeli settlers are effectively allies of the military — and they have a common enemy.

The book’s stark — and inevitably highly political — conclusion is contrary to the view that “Israel is withdrawing from the Palestinian Territories slowly and with the appropriate caution and security”. The IDF soldiers quoted “describe an indefatigable attempt to tighten Israel’s hold on the territories, as well as on the Palestinian population“.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Manekin acknowledges that those who have — as he deliberately puts it — “come out of the closet”, by allowing themselves to be named and photographed, are among the more activist of the 500 individuals who have testified to the organization. It is no coincidence that this parallel project has happened at a time when Breaking the Silence has decided to promote its own analysis of the past decade of occupation. Manekin says it wasn’t easy to be photographed. “We didn’t do this to be heroes,” he says. “Really, the political significance is the only reason for doing it.”

The above article can be found here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/our-lives-became-something-wed-never-dreamt-the-former-israeli-soldiers-who-have-testified-against-army-abuses-2154663.html

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Also see ‘ZIONIST CRIME LOG: Olive trees uprooted; children targeted; airspace violated’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101117180604907

Also see ‘ZIONIST CRIME LOG: Mosques torched; cemeteries desecrated; Qurans burnt; murderers praised’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101031230040725

Also see ‘OTHER PEOPLE’S LAND: Zionist state to build another 1300 Jewish-only housing units in occupied W. Bank’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101113221900526

Also see ‘GAZA’S BLOOD IS ON OUR HANDS (for ignoring the truth of 9/11)’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20090120221515652

Also see ‘THIS IS A WAR’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=2009032515312985

 

Israeli rabbis line up to endorse ban on renting/selling property to non-Jews

Support grows for Israeli rabbis’ ‘racist letter’

Agence France Presse (AFP); December 10, 2010

JERUSALEM — Scores more Israeli rabbis have added their names to a document calling on Jews to avoid renting or selling property to non-Jews, despite an outpouring of criticism, media reported on Thursday.

Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported that some 300 religious figures had signed the public statement, which warns that “it is forbidden in the Torah [read 'Talmud' -- 800] to sell a house or a field in the land of Israel to a foreigner.”

The document first emerged on Tuesday, and was swiftly condemned by figures across Israeli society, from rabbinical groups and rights organizations to politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The statement calls for those who rent or sell property to non-Jews to be ostracized by the larger community.

“After someone sells or rents just one flat, the value of all the neighboring flats drops … He who sells or rents (to non-Jews) causes his neighbors a big loss and his sin is great,” it says.

“Anyone who sells (property to a non-Jew) must be cut off!!”

The manifesto quotes extensively from Jewish writings, including from the Bible. It cites Exodus 23:33 [entirely out of context, of course -- 800], which reads: “Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”

The document initially garnered the signatures of some 50 rabbis, most of them employed by the state and minister to Jewish communities across Israel.

By Thursday, that number had reportedly grown to more than 300, prompting widespread condemnation and calls for Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to take action against the signatories on grounds of incitement to racism.

Weinstein’s office promised to look into the allegations.

“The attorney general has instructed the relevant bodies in our office to examine whether there exist criminal or disciplinary aspects to the document attributed to the rabbis,” Weinstein’s assistant wrote in reply to an opposition MP, in a letter made public by the justice ministry.

[And, of course, no mainstream media report touching on the issue of racism would be complete without the following dose of Jewish suffering and obligatory comparison with the 'Holocaust' -- 800]

Noah Flug, head of the International Association of Holocaust Survivors, told Ynet he was shocked by the content of the letter, saying it reminded him of when the Nazis banned Jews from living near them.

“I remember the German Nazis throwing Jews out of their apartments and city centers in order to create ghettos,” he told the news website.

“I remember how they wrote on benches that no Jews were allowed, and of course it was prohibited to sell or rent to Jews. We thought that in our country this wouldn’t happen.”

The [oxymoronically named] Association for Civil Rights in Israel has called on Netanyahu to discipline state-employed rabbis who signed the letter, and Arab-Israeli lawmaker Mohammed Barakeh called for a legal investigation.

On Wednesday, around 150 demonstrators gathered to condemn the letter in a protest outside Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue.

Speaking to Haaretz newspaper, parliamentary speaker Reuven Rivlin described the public statement “as an embarrassment to the Jewish people, and another nail in the coffin of Israeli democracy.”

Despite the condemnation, Menachem Friedman, a specialist on the Jewish world at Bar Ilan University, said there was widespread support for the views in the letter.

“They are expressing the fears of the whole population, particularly those in the poorest sectors of society,” he told AFP.

“The threats that Israel faces comes from Islamism, and the hostile positions the state takes towards the Arab minority contributes to fear and creates a ghetto mentality among the Jews, even though they are the majority in Israel.”

Historian Ilan Greilsammer agreed, saying the sentiments expressed in the letter were merely a reflection of what people were actually thinking.

“The rabbis are saying above what the people are thinking below. What’s new is that they are expressing it publicly.”

Israel has 1.3 million Arab citizens — Palestinians who remained in the country following the [illegitimate] creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and their descendants.

The above article can be found here: http://www.france24.com/en/20101209-support-grows-israeli-rabbis-racist-letter?quicktabs_1=1

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‘Don’t rent to non-Jews, Israeli rabbis warn’

Agence France Presse (AFP); December 7, 2010

JERUSALEM — Fifty Israeli rabbis have signed an open letter warning Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews, saying those who do should be “ostracized,” a copy of the letter showed on Tuesday.

“In answer to the many questions, we say that it is forbidden in the Torah [Talmud] to sell a house or a field in the land of Israel to a foreigner,” says the letter, [ostensibly] referring to the Pentateuch — the first five books of the Bible.

The letter, which was signed mostly by state-employed rabbis, warns that “he who sells or rents them a flat in an area where Jews live causes great harm to his neighbors.”

“After someone sells or rents just one flat, the value of all the neighboring flats drops… He who sells or rents (to non-Jews) causes his neighbors a big loss and his sin is great,” the letter said, in what was largely understood to refer to Israel’s Arab minority.

“Anyone who sells (property to a non-Jew) must be cut off!!”

According to the Israeli news website Ynet, the letter is to be published in religious newspapers and distributed in synagogues across the country later this week.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel slammed the letter as “racist” and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to condemn “the incitement expressed by the rabbis.”

“Rabbis who are civil servants have an obligation to the entire public, including Israel’s Arab citizens. It is unthinkable that they would use their public status to promote racism and incitement,” the group said in a statement.

The organization called on Netanyahu to take disciplinary action against state-employed rabbis who signed the document.

Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab-Israeli member of parliament, called the letter “supremely racist.”

“It seems that the signatories realize that the Israeli establishment is complicit in the crimes of incitement to racial hatred, so they are acting without fear,” he said in a statement.

“We call on the government’s legal adviser to undertake an inquiry into this gang and bring them to justice.”

The letter appeared as tensions grow between religious Jewish and Arab-Israeli residents of the northern town of Safed, where local rabbi Shmuel Eliahu has called on Jews to avoid renting or selling property to Arabs.

Safed’s college attracts Arab-Israeli students from the surrounding area, many of whom seek accommodation in the town while studying.

In October, a group of Jewish youths attacked several Arab-Israeli students at the college, shouting “death to Arabs” in an incident police had to break up.

A November poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 46 percent of Jewish Israelis preferred not to live next door to Arabs, while two-thirds — or 67 percent — of Arabs preferred not to live next to ultra-Orthodox Jews.

It also found that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis backed government incentives for Arabs to emigrate.

Israel has 1.3 million Arab citizens — Palestinians who remained in the country after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and their descendants.

Arab citizens, who make up 20 percent of the population, have long complained of systematic discrimination in resources and opportunities.

The above article can be found here: http://www.france24.com/en/20101207-dont-rent-non-jews-israeli-rabbis-warn

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Also see ‘Leading Israeli rabbi: Gentiles exist to serve Jews’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101027135103140

Also see ‘Israeli rabbi says Palestinians should perish from this earth’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101113223927431

Also see ‘Israelis told to fight holy war in Gaza’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20090505012410389

Also see ‘Israel’s war effort gains religious imperative’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20090601005812598

Also see ‘Book about killing gentile children becomes bestseller in Israel’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100630061612374

Israeli economy continues to surge amid worsening global depression

‘Israel turns in 6th straight quarter of growth’

YNetNews (Israel); November 20, 2010

Israel’s economy grew for a sixth straight quarter in the July-September period, but falling exports stemming from weak US and European economies slowed the rate and are expected to dampen growth into 2011.

Gross domestic product grew an annualized 3.8% in the third quarter, the Central Bureau of Statistics said in an initial estimate on Tuesday. A Reuters survey of nine analysts had forecast a 3.2% increase.

Growth slowed from a 4.5% pace in the second quarter but the economy has expanded at least 3.6% in every three-month period since the third quarter of 2009, as Israel rebounds from a brief recession in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The Bank of Israel forecasts 4% growth in 2010, easing to 3.8% in 2011. The economy grew 0.8% to NIS 768 billion (about $210 billion) in 2009.

“The economy is very robust. We are seeing a rapid growth rate and other drivers are making up for the drop in exports, so the total economy is in pretty good shape,” said HSBC economist Jonathan Katz. “Because of the soft global environment, growth may come down a notch to 3.4%.”

Some analysts believe the data support another short-term interest rate increase later this month. Strong growth and high inflation expectations have already led to six quarter-point rate increases to 2% since August 2009.

Exports

Israel’s two main growth drivers — exports and consumer spending — were weak in the third quarter and resulted in a slowdown from the previous quarter. However, a jump in government spending and in investments softened the blow.

“The composition of growth was disappointing. Private consumption was very weak, exports and imports declined sharply and most of the contribution to growth came from public consumption, from investment in residential construction and from the activity of start-up companies,” said Michael Sarel, head of economic research at Harel Finance.

Consumer spending slowed to a growth rate of 1.3%, mainly due to a large decline in spending on durable goods, while exports fell 9.6%.

Exports — which comprise more than 40% of Israel’s economic activity — grew sharply in the prior four quarters but slipped in the third quarter due to weak US and European economies, which account for some 70% of Israeli exports.

Imports dipped 4.6% for the first decline since the first quarter of 2009.

Government spending rose 10.2% after marginal gains in the prior two quarters and investment in fixed assets increased 9.7% to continue strong gains this year following a weak 2009.

“The composition of the data shows the start of a process moving to growth based on domestic demand compared with early stages of exiting the recession that was based on higher exports,” said Rafi Gozlan, an economist at Leader Capital Markets.

Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer believes the country needs to base its economy more on domestic activity than exports. He has urged exporters to expand sales to faster growing markets in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Excluding state spending, Israel‘s economy grew 3.9% in the third quarter, slower than a 5.1% pace in the second quarter.

Second-quarter GDP growth was unrevised at 4.5%.

The above article can be found here: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3986968,00.html

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Also see ‘Israel depositors won’t be harmed by crisis’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20081013090734694

Analyst: Iran nuclear weapons allegations fabricated by Israel

‘Evidence of Iran nuclear weapons program may be fraudulent’

Truthout; November 18, 2010

By Garth Porter

Since 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — with the support of the United States, Israel and European allies UK, France and Germany — has been demanding that Iran explain a set of purported internal documents portraying a covert Iranian military program of research and development of nuclear weapons.

The “laptop documents,” supposedly obtained from a stolen Iranian computer by an unknown source and given to US intelligence in 2004, include a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle that appears to be an effort to accommodate a nuclear weapon, as well as reports on high explosives testing for what appeared to be a detonator for a nuclear weapon.

In one report after another, the IAEA has suggested that Iran has failed to cooperate with its inquiry into that alleged research, and that the agency, therefore, cannot verify that it has not diverted nuclear material to military purposes.

That issue remains central to US policy toward Iran. The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had a covert nuclear weapons program.

That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are [Israeli] fabrications.

The drawings of the Iranian missile warhead that were said by the IAEA to show an intent to accommodate a nuclear weapon actually depict a missile design that Iran is now known to have already abandoned in favor of an improved model by the time the technical drawings were allegedly made. And one of the major components of the purported Iranian military research program allegedly included a project labeled with a number that turns out to have been assigned by Iran’s civilian nuclear authority years before the covert program is said to have been initiated.

The former head of the agency’s safeguards department, Olli Heinonen, who shaped its approach to the issue of the intelligence documents from 2005 and 2010, has offered no real explanation for these anomalies in recent interviews with Truthout.

These telltale indicators of fraud bring into question the central pillar of the case against Iran and raise more fundamental questions about the handling of the Iranian nuclear issue by the IAEA, the United States and its key European allies.

Drawings of the wrong missile warhead

In mid-July 2005, in an effort to get the IAEA fully behind the Bush administration’s effort to refer the Iranian nuclear dossier to the United Nations Security Council, Robert Joseph, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, made a formal presentation on the purported Iranian nuclear weapons program documents to the agency’s leading officials in Vienna. Joseph flashed excerpts from the documents on the screen, giving special attention to the series of technical drawings or “schematics” showing 18 different ways of fitting an unidentified payload into the re-entry vehicle or “warhead” of Iran’s medium-range ballistic missile, the Shahab-3.

When IAEA analysts were allowed to study the documents, however, they discovered that those schematics were based on a re-entry vehicle that the analysts knew had already been abandoned by the Iranian military in favor of a new, improved design. The warhead shown in the schematics had the familiar “dunce cap” shape of the original North Korean No Dong missile, which Iran had acquired in the mid-1990s, as former IAEA Safeguards Department Chief Olli Heinonen confirmed to this writer in an interview on November 5. But when Iran had flight tested a new missile in mid-2004, it did not have that dunce cap warhead, but a new “triconic” or “baby bottle” shape, which was more aerodynamic than the one on the original Iranian missile.

The laptop documents had depicted the wrong re-entry vehicle being redesigned.

When I asked Heinonen, now a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, why Iran’s purported secret nuclear weapons research program would redesign the warhead of a missile that the Iranian military had already decided to replace with an improved model, he suggested that the group that had done the schematics had no relationship with the Iranian missile program. “It looks from that information that this group was working with this individual,” said Heinonen, referring to Dr. Mohsen Fakrizadeh, the man named in the documents as heading the research program. “It was not working with the missile program.”

Heinonen’s claim that the covert nuclear weapon program had no link to the regular missile program is not supported by the intelligence documents themselves. The IAEA describes what is purported to be a one-page letter from Fakrizadeh to the Shahid Hemat Industrial Group dated March 3, 2003, “seeking assistance with the prompt transfer of data” for the work on redesigning the re-entry vehicle.

Shahid Hemat, which is part of the Iranian military’s Defense Industries Organization, was involved in testing the engine for the Shahab-3 and, in particular, in working on aerodynamic properties and control systems for Iranian missiles, all of which were reported in the US news media. “Project 11″ was the code name given to the purported re-entry vehicle project.

Heinonen also suggested that the program’s engineers could have been ordered to redesign the older Shahab-3 model before the decision was made by the missile program to switch to a newer model and that it couldn’t change its work plan once it was decided.

However, according to Mike Elleman, lead author of the most authoritative study of the Iranian missile program thus far, published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) last May, Iran introduced the major innovations in the design of the medium-range missile, including a longer, lighter airframe and the new warhead shape, over a period of two to five years. Elleman, told me in an interview that the redesign of the re-entry vehicle must have begun in 2002 at the latest.

The schematics on the laptop documents’ redesigned warhead were dated March-April 2003, according to the IAEA report of May 2008.

Heinonen’s explanation assumes that the Iranian military ordered an engineer to organize a project to redesign the warhead on its intermediate-range ballistic missile to accommodate a nuclear payload, but kept the project in the dark about its plans to replace the Shahab-3 with a completely new and improved model.

That assumption appears wholly implausible, because the reason for the shift to the new missile, according to the IISS study, was that the Shahab-3, purchased from North Korea in the early to mid-1990s, had a range of only 800 to 1,000 km, depending on the weight of the payload. Thus, it was incapable of reaching Israel. The new missile, later named the Ghadr-1, could carry a payload of conventional high-explosives 1,500 to 1,600 kilometers, bringing Israel within the reach of an Iranian missile for the first time.

The missile warhead anomaly is a particularly telling sign of fraud, because someone intending to fabricate such technical drawings of a re-entry vehicle could not have known that Iran had abandoned the Shahab-3 in favor of the more advanced Ghadr-1 until after mid-August 2004. As the IISS study points out, the August 11, 2004, test launch was the first indication to the outside world that a new missile with a triconic warhead had been developed. Before that test, Elleman told me, “No information was available that they were modifying the warhead.”

After that test, however, it would have been too late to redo the re-entry vehicle studies, which would have the biggest impact on news media coverage and political opinion.

Iranian statements about the Shahab-3 missile would have been misleading for anyone attempting to fabricate these schematics. The IISS study recalls that Iran had said in early 2001 that the Shahab-3 had entered “serial production” and declared in July 2003 that it was “operational.” The IISS study observes, however, that the announcement came only after the US invasion of Iraq, when Iran felt an urgent need to claim an operational missile capability. The study says it is “very dubious” that the missile was ever produced in significant numbers.

Skepticism and resistance at the IAEA

A second inconsistency between the laptop documents and the established facts emerged only in 2008. At a briefing for IAEA member states in February 2008, Heinonen displayed an organization chart of the purported research program, showing a “Project 5″ with two sub-projects: “Project 5/13″ for uranium conversion and “Project 5/15″ for uranium ore processing. Kimia Maadan, a private Iranian firm, is shown to be running “Project 5.”

One of the key documents in the collection, a one-page flow sheet for a uranium-conversion process, dated May 2003, with Kimia Maadan’s name on it, is marked “Project 5/13.”

Bush administration hardliners and the IAEA safeguard department had been convinced in the 2004-2005 period that Kimia Maadan was a front for the Iranian military. In a 2005 report, the IAEA questioned how that company, with such “limited experience in ore processing,” could have established an ore processing plant at Gchine in such a short time from 2000 to mid-2001 on its own.

But in January 2008, Iran provided documents to the IAEA showing that Kimia Maadan had actually been created by the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) in 2000 solely to carry out a contract to design, build and put into operation an ore-processing facility. The documents also established that the firm’s core staff consisted entirely of experts who had previously worked for AEOI’s Ore Processing Center and that the conceptual design and other technical information had been provided to Kimia Maadan by AEOI.

But the most explosive new evidence provided by Iran showed that the code number of “Project 5/15″ on ore processing, supposedly assigned by the Iranian military’s secret nuclear weapon research program, had actually been assigned by the AEOI more than two years before the purported nuclear weapons program had been started. In the context of the documents on Kimia Maadan’s relationship with AEOI, the IAEA report of February 2008 acknowledged, “A decision to construct a UOC [uranium ore concentration] plant at Gchine, known as ‘project 5/15,’ was made August 25, 1999.”

An unpublished paper by the IAEA safeguards department, leaked to the media and the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in 2009, identified early 2002 as the formal beginning of what it called the Iranian military’s “warhead development program.”

Asked about this contradiction, Heinonen told me he couldn’t answer the question, because he did not recall the specific dates involved.

After the IAEA had acquired that new evidence of fraud in January 2008, an IAEA official familiar with the internal debate inside the agency told me that some IAEA officials had demanded that the agency distance itself publicly from the intelligence documents. But IAEA reports made no concession to those demands. Instead, beginning with the May 2008 report, the agency began to use language implying that the documents were considered reliable.

Behind the scenes, a conflict was about to boil over between Heinonen and then IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei, who was skeptical about the authenticity of the laptop documents and refused to give them any official IAEA endorsement. In late 2008, Heinonen began pushing ElBaradei to approve publication of his department’s favorable assessment of the intelligence documents, which concluded that Iran had done research and development on nuclear weapons components and speculated that it was continuing to do so.

But ElBaradei refused to do so, and in August 2009, diplomats from the UK, France and Germany, who were supporting Heinonen’s view of the documents, leaked to Reuters and The Associated Press that, for nearly a year, ElBaradei had been suppressing “credible” evidence of Iran’s covert work on nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei responded to those political pressures to publish the safeguards department speculative study in an interview with The Hindu on October 1, 2009, in which he declared, “The IAEA is not making any judgment at all whether Iran even had weaponisation studies before because there is a major question of authenticity of the documents.”

Evidence of Israel’s role

The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to “go nuclear.” By 2003-2004, Mossad’s reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran’s nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service.

In the summer of 2003, Israel’s international intelligence agency, Mossad, had established an aggressive program aimed at exerting influence on the Iran nuclear issue by leaking alleged intelligence to governments and the news media, as Israeli officials acknowledged to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. According to the book, “The Nuclear Jihadist,” as part of the program, Mossad sometimes passed on purported Iranian documents supposedly obtained by Israeli spies inside Iran.

German sources have suggested that the intelligence documents were conveyed to the US government, directly or indirectly, by a group that had been collaborating closely with Mossad. Soon after Secretary of State Colin Powell made the existence of the laptop documents public in November 2004, Karsten Voight, the coordinator of German-American cooperation in the German Foreign Ministry, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that they had been transferred by an Iranian “dissident group.” A second German source familiar with the case was even more explicit. “I can assure you,” the source told me in 2007, “that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization.” That was a reference to the Mujahideen-E-Khalq (MEK), also known as the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, the armed Iranian exile group designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the MEK, was generally credited by the news media with having revealed the existence of the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak in an August 2002 press conference in Washington, DC. Later, however, IAEA, Israeli and Iranian dissident sources all said that the NCRI had gotten the intelligence on the sites from Mossad.

An IAEA official told Seymour Hersh that the Israelis were behind the revelation of the sites and two journalists from Der Spiegel reported the same thing. So did an adviser to an Iranian monarchist group, speaking to a writer for The New Yorker. That episode was not isolated, but was part of a broader pattern of Israeli cooperation with the MEK in providing intelligence intended to influence the CIA and the IAEA. Israeli authors Melman and Javadanfar, who claimed to have good sources in Mossad, wrote in their 2007 book that Israeli intelligence had “laundered” intelligence to the IAEA by providing it to Iranian opposition groups, especially the NCRI.

[Despite his news reports purporting to expose Israeli covert activities, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is not to be trusted. See 'Seymour Hersh, professional liar' here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20080813053842851 -- 800]

Israeli officials also went to extraordinary lengths to publicize the story of covert Iranian experiments on a key component of a nuclear weapon, which was one of the messages the intelligence documents conveyed. As a result of satellite intelligence brought to the attention of the IAEA in 2004 by Undersecretary of State John Bolton, the IAEA requested two separate investigations at the main Iran military research center at Parchin. The investigations, in January 2005 and November 2005, were aimed at examining the charge that Iran was using facilities at Parchin to test high explosives used in the detonation of a nuclear weapon. In each investigation, the IAEA investigators were allowed complete freedom to search and take environmental samples at any five buildings in the complex and their surroundings. But they failed to find any evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons-related experiments.

At that point, Israeli intelligence came up with a new story. Hersh reported that, earlier in 2006, Mossad had given the CIA an intelligence report — purportedly from one of its agents inside Iran — claiming that the Iranian military had been “testing trigger mechanisms” for a nuclear weapon. The experiment supposedly involved simulating a nuclear explosion without using any nuclear material, so that it could not be detected by the IAEA. But there were no specifics on which to base an IAEA investigation — no test site specified and no diagrams — and CIA officials told Hersh they could not learn anything more about the identity of the alleged Israeli agent.

The CIA evidently did not regard the Israeli claim as credible, because the intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in late 2007, which said that Iran had ended all work on nuclear weapons in 2003 and had not restarted it. Israel expressed dismay at the US intelligence estimate, but Israeli officials admitted that the official position that Iran was still working actively on a nuclear weapon was based on an assumption rather than any hard evidence.

Israel encountered yet another problem in its effort to promote the covert Iranian nuclear weapon narrative. The IAEA analysts doubted that Iran would be able to develop a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into the missile it had tested in 2004 without foreign assistance, as David Albright, former IAEA contract officer and director of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote in a letter to The New York Times in November 2005.

Sometime between February and May, however, yet another purported Iranian document conveniently materialized that addressed the problem of the US NIE and the “small bomb” issue noted by Albright. The document was a long, Farsi-language report purporting to be about the testing of a system to detonate high explosives in hemispherical arrangement. Based on the new document, the IAEA safeguard department concluded that the “implosion system” on which it assumed Iran was working “could be contained within a payload container believed to be small enough to fit into the re-entry body chamber of the Shahab-3 missile.”

The document was given to the IAEA by a “Member State,” which was not identified in the leaked excerpts from an unpublished IAEA report describing it. But Albright, who knows Heinonen well, told me in a September 2008 interview, that the state in question was “probably Israel.”

The day before the Reuters and Associated Press stories attacking ElBaradei over his refusal to publish the report appeared in August 2009, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Israel “has been striving to pressure the IAEA through friendly nations and have it release the censored annex.” The operation was being handled by the director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and the Foreign Ministry, according to the report. The Israeli objective, Haaretz reported, was to “prove that the Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons is continuing, contrary to the claims that Tehran stopped its nuclear program in 2003.”

Rethinking the case against Iran

Once the intelligence documents that have been used to indict Iran as plotting to build nuclear weapons are discounted as fabrications likely perpetrated by a self-interested party, there is no solid basis for the US policy of trying to coerce Iran into ending all uranium enrichment. And there is no reason for insisting that Iran must explain the allegations in those documents to the IAEA as a condition for any future US-Iran negotiations.

News coverage of the purported intelligence documents over the past few years has created yet another false narrative that distorts public discourse on the subject. Almost entirely ignored is the possibility that the real aim of Iran’s nuclear program is to maintain a bargaining chip with the United States, and to have a breakout capability to serve as a deterrent to a US or Israeli attack on Iran.

The evidence that documents at the center of the case for a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program are fraudulent suggests the need for a strategic reset on Iran policy. It raises both the possibility and the need for serious exploration of a diplomatic solution for the full range of issues dividing the two countries, which is the only sensible strategy for ensuring that Iran stays a non-nuclear state.

The above article can be found here: http://www.truth-out.org/the-iaea-and-fraudulent-iranian-nuclear-documents65241

 

Obama offers Israel free stealth fighters, UNSC vetoes, Jordan Valley for 90-day settlement freeze

‘Obama’s embarrassing gift to Israel’

Foreign Policy; November 15, 2010

A legendary story from our early history has it that Thomas Jefferson so hated John Jay that he ordered Pierre L’Enfant — the civil engineer who designed our capital city — to excise any reference to Jay (including “J Street”) from his plans. The story is apocryphal, but the history behind it isn’t. For Jefferson, Jay was an arch-appeaser: his 1795 treaty with Britain provided concessions to a nation we had defeated in our revolution.

Jefferson wasn’t the only one who hated the treaty. While Jay’s agreement was ratified by the Congress, he was burned in effigy by New York and Philadelphia mobs and the treaty so stained his reputation that he was never considered for the presidency. Jefferson didn’t make the same mistake. When the Pasha of Barbary demanded ransom for US ships he had seized, Jefferson sent a US naval squadron to punish him. The resulting victory is now celebrated with a half-verse in the Marine Corps hymn (which celebrates the triumph on “the shores of Tripoli”) and a knock-out political slogan that energized a nation: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”

If only Jefferson could see us now. This weekend, the Obama administration promised to turn over $3 billion in stealth fighters to Israel (supplementing the 20 F-35s it will buy with the $2.75 billion in “grants” it gets from Washington) and veto any UN resolution that questions Israel’s legitimacy — all in exchange for Israel’s pledge to extend a ten-month partial settlement moratorium for another 90 days.

This is a bad idea. And it’s dangerous. There are differences, of course, between the events of the last 24 hours and the crisis that Jefferson faced in 1804. Then, we protested that we were “paying tribute,” now we are “providing incentives.” Then too, Israel is not making any “demands,” they are simply (in Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s words) “insisting.” Oh — and let’s not forget — the pirates of Barbary were America’s “enemy.” That’s a lot different than now; Israel is our “friend.”

 

This administration’s decision would be shocking were it not so predictable. Back on October 20, State Department spokesman Andrew Shapiro reassured the press that a $60 billion US arms transfer to Saudi Arabia would go forward because “Israel does not object…” Shapiro’s statement passed with nary an eye blink in L’Enfant’s city, where Israel‘s approval is apparently required for America to do anything in the Middle East.

But Shapiro’s tone-deafness is hardly limited to dime-a-dozen spokespersons. In the wake of General Petreaus’ controversial March testimony that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “foments anti-American sentiment” (stop the presses), Hillary Clinton went out of her way to reassure Israelis that “we are committed to Israel’s security,” a soothing word-for-word mantra repeated by Barack Obama (July 6), Joe Biden (November 7) and any old American official behind a microphone (P.J. Crowley, August 4). The administration doesn’t get it: the question is not whether we are committed to Israel’s security, but whether they’re committed to ours.

The tone-deafness evidenced by Andrew Shapiro is now an all-consuming part of public policy, extending to every part of the American government — and beyond. When Elena Kagan testified during her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, she cited Israel jurist Aharon Barak as her model, because he was the “John Marshall of the State of Israel.” Kagan might well be a brilliant justice, but I would have thought she would cite Marshall as her model.

Reminded that Barak was a judicial activist (and therefore not necessarily acceptable for some committee members), Kagan gave a ready explanation: “Israel means a lot to me,” she explained. Enough said.

When David Petreaus was criticized by Israel advocates for his March testimony, he backtracked, asking neo-conservative Max Boot (in an email he carelessly sent to a blogger) whether it would help “if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?”

Petreaus is our nation’s most influential military officer since Eisenhower. Guess what? He’s afraid of Israel’s lobby. And when Angela Merkel addressed the US Congress in November of 2009, she didn’t talk about American security, but Israeli security. “Security for the state of Israel is, for me, non-negotiable,” she said. “Whoever threatens Israel also threatens us.”

Even senior aides to the otherwise pro-Israel Congress were puzzled. “Maybe she thought she was talking to the Knesset,” one of them said. Finally, Republican Eric Cantor recently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the new Republican majority would serve as “a check on the administration” in any dispute with Israel — a statement so astonishing that one pro-Israel journalist viewed it as not only unprecedented, but “extraordinary.”

None of this has been lost on the administration, which is apparently intent on proving to Cantor (and the new Republican majority) that it’s as committed to Israel as they are. Or more. On October 25, Dennis Ross, the White House point person on the Middle East, told a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that not only is America committed “to Israel’s security”, but that the US commitment “has also been demonstrated in our work to defeat efforts in international organizations to single out or delegitimize Israel.”

This is new, but undoubtedly welcome to Israel’s supporters: the US will not only defend Israel, it will silence its critics. The Ross pledge was ostensibly made to bar a UN move for Palestinian statehood which, under the agreement, would be vetoed by the US.

But the administration’s new promise has far reaching consequences. It pledges US opposition to Israeli compliance with international agreements on nuclear weapons (explicitly mentioned by Ross), the criticisms issued by Judge Goldstone in his report of Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, and any UN action condemning Israel for its May boarding of a ship on which 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, an American citizen, was killed. That investigation, which the US insisted be “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent,” is now (at America’s urging) in the hands of an investigation run by the Israelis.

The Ross message to AIPAC was repeated by Vice President Biden during a meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans, just two weeks later. The Biden speech included the administration’s mantra — “we are absolutely, unequivocally committed to Israel’s security” — and then focused on the administration’s new effort to fight any questioning of Israel’s actions, extending to the international community the view now required of every American: that Israel not only be defended, but viewed as above criticism.

Biden bragged about his role in defending Israeli actions during the flotilla episode in his New Orleans speech. “That’s why, at the direction of President Obama…I spent hour after hour in the aftermath of the flotilla incident, trying to put it in its proper focus and ensure that Israel had its right to conduct its own independent investigation.”

Breathtaking: people weren’t opposed to Israel’s right to “conduct its own independent investigation” (who cares?), they simply believed that any Israeli inquiry would be a Moscow show trial in reverse: instead of being automatically condemned, the accused would be automatically acquitted. The message to American citizens is clear: if a Muslim kills you it’s because he’s a terrorist, if an Israeli kills you, it’s because you’re a terrorist.

The Obama Administration’s newest promise to Israel is abject, embarrassing and gutless. Our country — our president — is rewarding a foreign leader who openly boasts that America “is something that can easily be moved,” who urges a waiting game with the US because he knows that Israel’s friends in the Congress will defy a president who opposes him, who tells his cabinet that he will outfox Barack Obama.

We are paying Israel to do something that is in their own interests — and very much not in ours. That’s extortion. The Obama Administration has this dangerously wrong. F-35s? This is not a defensive weapon. The jet is the most advanced air system in the world, with a round-trip capability that puts Tehran in range of Tel Aviv. The message, intended or not, will be heard by Iran: we’re not interested in allowing Israel to defend itself, we’re interested in having it attack others.

The administration has not made Israel stronger, they’ve made America more vulnerable. We are purposely escalating the regional sprint to acquire weapons that will eventually, and inevitably, kill American soldiers. We have lost our way. It is not Israel’s legitimacy that needs defending, but ours.

This is not the first time this has happened. During his second administration, George Washington faced a similar test and finally, if reluctantly, agreed to pay ransom to the Barbary extortionists. He had little choice: the US had no navy and little international leverage. Then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson opposed paying of the tribute, but acceded to Washington decision.

It was a terrible mistake: in 1795, the US paid $1 million in cash and turned over valuable naval stores to keep the peace in North Africa. It didn’t work. The Pashas of Barbary demanded more. George Washington, the father of our country, was a very great man. But in this one case he was wrong; and Thomas Jefferson was right: “Paying tribute,” he said, “will merely invite more demands.”

The above article can be found here: http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/15/not_one_cent_for_tribute_obamas_embarrassing_gift_to_israel

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‘Obama has made Netanyahu an offer he can’t refuse’

Haaretz (Israel); November 15, 2010 The list of defense-related and other gifts the US administration is willing to offer to Israel in exchange for three months of construction freeze in the settlements raises suspicions that someone has gone mad.

An additional extension of the freeze, which he has previously rejected out of hand, may spell a political and ideological headache for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — but the offer by US President Barack Obama is very enticing. The addition of 20 F-35s to the package discussed two months ago tips the balance very clearly. From Israel’s point of view, it is an offer that cannot be refused.

Since Obama entered the White House two years ago, he has not given the impression — at least in terms of foreign relations — of being a particularly tough negotiator. Nonetheless, this time the administration appears to have gone overboard, even though in Washington they know full well that the freeze is a highly symbolic gesture, which the settlers have already managed to avoid in the past.

This, of course, raises suspicions that there are much broader and substantive issues at hand, and not merely a few housing units in Samaria or Gush Etzion. Not only may there be a genuine Israeli willingness to move forward in a substantive way in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, but perhaps some sort of deal on the Iranian question is afoot.

Could it be — and this is only conjecture — that Obama is trying to persuade Israel to commit to desisting from any independent action against the nuclear installations of Iran, in exchange for a substantial future reinforcement of the Israel Air Force?

The F-35 deal signed last month was controversial in both defense establishment and political circles. The debate did not stem from the quality of the stealth aircraft, but from the price tag accompanying it: Generals and minister believed that when the price per unit is more than $130 million, there are better ways to make use of the US military aid package.

But, according to the prime minister, the US is now generously offering to double the number of aircraft without the funding for them being taken from the future military aid package.

This is an enormous gift, which nearly makes the debate on the need for the F-35 redundant. According to reports, there will also be significant benefits elsewhere in the gift list for Israel.

In spite a great deal of bad mouthing about him, the US president has proven no less committed to Israel’s security than his predecessor. To date the security package has included emergency stores that are available to the Israel Defense Forces, a $205-million grant to purchase Iron Dome systems, and a significant stepping-up of joint missile defense training programs. The list of items to come, at least on paper, is impressive.

“The Americans have put forth an excellent proposal. It will be a big mistake not to take it,” a senior defense source told Haaretz last night, adding that “the prime minister has made impressive gains. If we do not implement this deal, we will suffer in terms of defense.”

Obama is essentially spotlighting a debate that has been going on since the settlements began — namely, whether they contribute to or undermine Israel’s security. The US president is now asking: What benefits Israeli security more — a few more trailers on some hilltops or doubling the number of advanced fighters in its inventory?

The above article can be found here: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/mess-report-obama-has-made-netanyahu-an-offer-he-can-t-refuse-1.324687

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‘Israel mulls F-35s for peace-talks offer’

Aviation Week (US); November 22, 2010

Besides an additional 20 Lockheed Martin F-35s, at a cost of around $3 billion, if Israel makes more movement for peace with Palestinians, the US also has pledged to provide Israel with more technologies and capabilities to counter threats from Iran and to veto any anti-Israeli resolution in the UN or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Further, the US has proposed signing a new defense treaty with Israel if a peace accord with the Palestinians can be achieved.

Western defense sources tell Aviation Week that the offer was initially presented to Israel in September, at the time when the previous 10-month moratorium on settlements was about to expire, but was rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The offer was renewed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a seven-hour meeting with Netanyahu in New York on Nov. 11.

It is assumed that Clinton demanded, in addition to the moratorium, that Israel will accept the US guidelines for the negotiations with the Palestinians and will remove some of the objections that have stalled the peace process so far.

As part of its efforts to revitalize stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the US government is widely reported to be suggesting it may provide Tel Aviv 20 additional F-35s if it halts new building construction in the West Bank.

Palestinians cite the construction efforts as the main barrier to resuming negotiations.

While the US State Department has refused to comment on the matter this week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that such an offer was made by the US. “In the past, we wanted to procure 40 F-35s, but due to budget constraints we could only afford 20,” he said. “Now the US is offering to give us the additional 20 in exchange for a 90-day freeze on settlements.”

But apparently Netanyahu has asked to receive the US offer in a presidential letter that he would put before the Israeli cabinet, a move that stirred opposition from his own party and other coalition partners. “Twenty fighters are much more important in the long term than the current political friction between Netanyahu and his party members,” says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, frequently a political rival to Netanyahu.

Without commenting directly on the US offer, Israel air force commander, Maj. Gen. Ido Nachoshtan, notes that “the F-35s will provide us a significant strategic capability. They have a key role in the building of Israel’s air force in the face of a developing arena.”

In October, Israel signed a $2.75 billion contract to buy a first squadron of 20 F-35As, to be financed through US foreign military aid funds. The aircraft are due to be delivered in 2015-17.

“The US offer to provide additional fighters for free is an offer we cannot refuse,” a senior defense source told Aviation Week. However, if Israel will accept the offer, the new fighters will be delivered only by the end of the decade, and will be irrelevant to any imminent conflict with Iran.

As of mid-November, the US presidential letter of commitment had yet to be received in Israel.

The above article can be found here: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awx/2010/11/19/awx_11_19_2010_p0-270734.xml&channel=defense

 

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‘Washington rolls over’

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt); November 25, 2010

The [Zionist-run] Palestinian Authority (PA) reacted indignantly but helplessly to the reported package of incentives the Obama administration has offered Israel in exchange for agreeing to “freeze” settlement construction in the West Bank for 90 days.

PA officials said the incentives would embolden Israel even further and make any real progress in the peace process less likely.

“With these huge amounts of weapons, with these comprehensive diplomatic guarantees, why would Israel even think of giving concessions or make peace?” asked Ghassan Al-Khatib, head of the Government Information Office in Ramallah.

Another Palestinian official said the incentives amounted to “a total surrender of American political will to Israel”.

According to written assurances, Israel would receive far-reaching offers and guarantees that no other US administration agreed to cede to Israel. This includes offering Israel 20 F-35 fighters, Israel’s control of the entire Jordan Valley for an unspecific period of time after a final border is established, and a guarantee that the US will veto any anti-Israeli resolution at the UN Security Council.

The incentives deal, which has not been finalized, is still vague with regards to freezing settlement building in East Jerusalem. Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, insisted that Jerusalem was not included in the deal. “Jerusalem is not a settlement, and Israel won’t stop building in the capital,” Netanyahu has said.

However, diplomatic sources in Ramallah have pointed out that Israel might agree to take some “symbolic measures” in East Jerusalem to persuade the Palestinians to rejoin the talks.

Meanwhile, Israel is trying to take advantage of the incentives by insisting on the inclusion of a clause that would make the US refrain from asking Israel, once again, to initiate another settlement freeze, regardless of the situation on the ground.

The effective bribe being offered to Israel has raised eyebrows, even among Israel’s most rightwing political currents, who deemed the move “a golden deal that Israel can’t reject,” and that “such a deal must never be missed.”

Some Israeli leaders affiliated with Netanyahu’s Likud Party were quoted as saying that Israel should accept the deal and at the same time stick to its settlement policy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The inference was that Israel could always circumvent any promises given to the Americans vis-à-vis a settlement freeze, and that in any case the Obama administration is in no position to pressure Israel given its “insecure domestic standing” especially in light of the outcome of the recent midterm congressional elections.

The main reason for Israel’s embrace of the incentives deal is the inclusion of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (FSJ). Considered the best in US military technology, the FSJ is part of a joint multinational acquisition program for the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps as well as eight international partners.

By allowing Israel to acquire these state-of-the-art fighters, Israel effectively joins the US and the other eight countries as members of a Western alliance working together on the largest military aircraft procurement ever made.

According to one American strategic analyst, Israel is not just receiving a gift of 20 F-35s, it is also becoming part of a procurement program designed to run through 2026 and possibly longer. According to the Global Security report, the F-35 fleet “may well stay in service until 2060 or longer”.

It is not clear what prompted the Obama administration to offer Israel the package of incentives in return for so little and with such uncertainty.

Some say the package is partially intended to benefit the US military industrial complex; others suggest that the Obama administration has been effectively demoralized, having seen Israeli leaders circumvent, outmaneuver and beat the administration on its own turf. Still others interpret the unprecedented offering by citing growing desperation in Washington for any diplomatic achievement that would warrant and justify the Nobel Peace Prize Obama won last year, especially in light of his most modest achievements and many failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is little doubt that Israel will be able to score a double hit in its current standoff with Washington: get the package of incentives and also have its way in the West Bank. Israel would receive the best and utmost America military technology in return for strategically insignificant promises that Israel won’t likely keep.

Underscoring its ill-will towards a just and dignified peace with neighboring Arab states, the Israeli Knesset this week passed a bill that obliges the government not to agree to withdraw from the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem without the approval of an absolute majority in the Knesset followed by a referendum in which a majority of the people would have to support any withdrawal.

Israel annexed both East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in violation of international law in 1967. Israel has also built extensive Jewish colonies in both areas, which makes it difficult to return to the status quo ante before the occupation in 1967.

Another Israeli provocation has been the approval by the Israeli government for changing the timeless features of Al-Aqsa Mosque’s Buraq Wall, known to Jews as the Western Wall or Wailing Wall. The scheme appears aimed at erasing Islamic history at the site, ruled as wholly Islamic by the League of Nations during the British Mandate era.

The Israeli government allocated a budget of $25 million to expand and develop the site as well as fund archaeological excavations. The Israeli plan would be the most extensive alteration of the features of Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) since 1967.

Meanwhile, the PA, weak and helpless, is considering appealing to the United Nations General Assembly for recognition of a Palestinian state in light of Israel’s unilateral steps in the occupied territories and also US unwillingness — or inability — to force Israel to end its occupation of Arab land.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas met this week in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two are believed to have agreed that the Palestinians would go the UN as a last resort, if current US efforts fail.

However, even receiving a positive resolution from the UN General Assembly would not radically alter the situation on the ground, as without the intercession of the UN Security Council there would be no means available of enforcing the consensus of the General Assembly which for decades has supported, in majority, the rights of the Palestinians.

The circle is squared when the US includes in its incentive package to continue wielding its Security Council veto in Israel’s favor.

The above article can be found here: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2010/1024/re4.htm

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US Dept. of State daily press briefing

November 15, 2010

QUESTION: Just regarding US assurances of Israel’s security, the proposal that you guys have made to Israel reportedly includes 20 F-35s.  And I know you’re going to say, “We’re not going to comment on the details,” but I’m –

STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN PHILIP CROWLEY: I’m not going to comment on the details.  (Laughter)

QUESTION: I want to finish so you’ll understand why I think you should.  The agreement is for 20 planes.  Israel has already committed to buying 20 of these planes from Lockheed at a cost of $7 billion.  So my question is:  If — is this the same 20 planes and, if so, what kind of incentive is that?  I mean, they’ve already committed to buying.  If it’s not, are you actually spending $7 billion to get them to extend the talks, extend freeze — the freeze for 90 days?

MR. CROWLEY: I’m –

QUESTION: Because that’s the way it looks.

MR. CROWLEY: Again, I’m not going to comment on details.  Our policy with regard to Israel’s security is well known. We are –

QUESTION: But $7 billion?

MR. CROWLEY: We are — look, we are committed to maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge in the region and– but beyond that, I’m not going to comment.

QUESTION: That was actually my question as well.  (Inaudible)

QUESTION: Well, wait a second.

MR. CROWLEY: All right, hold –

QUESTION: Let’s stay — staying on the planes.  Is this something that they would have to buy or are you going to give them these?

MR. CROWLEY: Again, I’m not going to comment on any specific discussions.  I would just always caution that any time you have reports about specific things, some details may be right, some details may be wrong.

QUESTION: All right.  Well, let’s — then let’s just ask this:  Can you — can this Administration afford to give Israel another $3 billion worth of military equipment?

MR. CROWLEY: Again, we are committed to support Israel –

QUESTION: Well, regardless of whether you’re committed to preserving their qualitative military edge, can you –

MR. CROWLEY: Again, I — you’re –

QUESTION: Can this Administration, which is broke, afford –

MR. CROWLEY: — leaping –

QUESTION: – afford another $3 billion?

MR. CROWLEY: You’re leaping to a conclusion — to conclusions that I’m not prepared to address here.

QUESTION: But Israeli officials have told reporters over there this.  Are they misleading the reporters?

MR. CROWLEY: Again, I’m just not going to get into any details of ideas that may or may not be under discussion between the United States and Israel.

The above excerpt can be found here: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/11/150914.htm

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Also see ‘Zionist state to build another 1300 Jewish-only housing units in occupied W. Bank’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101113221900526

Also see ‘Zionist-run PA (along with Arab League and OIC) keeps UN Goldstone Report, flotilla probe in bureaucratic limbo’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101102133320707

Also see ‘Jewish general to pilot evangelical-friendly air force (2008)’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20101006022753162

Also see ‘While Washington plays peacemaker, US Treasury supports illegal Israeli settlement drive’ here: http://800pg.co.cc/geeklog//article.php?story=20100809143242274