The Secrets of Israel's 'Prisoner X2'

Israel has secretly jailed a member of its security services for a grave offence, a prominent Israeli lawyer said on Tuesday, describing the case as riveting and sensational.

The revelation emerged from a memorandum released by the Justice Ministry on Monday on a previous secret detainee, Australian Ben Zygier, an immigrant and disgraced Mossad spy who committed suicide in prison in 2010.

Avigdor Feldman, a lawyer who specialises in matters of national security and formerly advised Zygier - dubbed “Prisoner X” by the media - said in a radio interview that he knew of a second detainee, whom he described as “Prisoner X2”.

Feldman declined to elaborate on the second inmate other than to say he was male, Jewish, held Israeli citizenship and had worked for the government’s secret services.

Asked how the second detainee’s alleged offenses compared with Zygier’s, Feldman told Tel Aviv radio station 103 FM: “Without getting into details? Much more grave. Much more sensational. Much more amazing. Much more riveting.”

The Zygier case went public in February after it was reported in his native Australia, and the news of a second prisoner will expose the intelligence services to more, unwelcome press attention.

Israeli officials have not published the charges against Zygier, saying only that he had endangered national security and had been held in isolation, with his own agreement, to avoid exposing him to media scrutiny while he prepared his defence. One newspaper reported that he had faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Various other media reports speculated that Zygier had betrayed Mossad operations in Dubai or Lebanon, potentially leading to the capture of Israeli agents abroad.

Feldman, in another radio interview earlier this year, said that Zygier had denied the allegations against him but had been considering a plea bargain with a reduced punishment.

After Australia’s ABC television aired the Zygier affair, Israel imposed court gag orders on reporting it locally. The gags, which were enforced by military censors, have eased since.

The Justice Ministry on Monday published a previously redacted report on Zygier’s suicide, which included mention of the second, unidentified, detainee, held in another wing of the same prison. The ministry provided no further information.

http://forward.com/articles/180084/the-secrets-of-israels-prisoner-x/?utm_medium=jd.fo-other&utm_campaign=&utm_content=general-general&utm_source=t.co

Israel jails Mossad agent Prisoner X2: Report

Israel has imprisoned a Mossad agent in the same prison where the intelligence agent Ben Zygier known as Prisoner X was jailed and later found hanged, a newspaper report says.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz published a report on Tuesday revealing that the Mossad agent aka Prisoner X2 was being held at Ayalon prison in Ramle, situated in central Israel.

The report did not disclose why the unnamed man was jailed in the maximum security prison near Tel Aviv.

On February 12, reporter Trevor Bormann revealed on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the 34-year-old Zygier who had worked for Mossad for ten years was “found hanged in a cell with state-of-the-art surveillance systems” near Tel Aviv in December 2010.

Following the revelation, the Tel Aviv regime was forced to admit that Zygier had been jailed under a false identity “for security reasons” despite nearly two years of great efforts to cover up the secret.

A report by the New York Times quoting the Kuwaiti daily Al Jarida on February 14, said Zygier was among the 26 suspects in a murder plot in which Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas official, was tracked and killed in his hotel room hours after his arrival in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, in January 2010.

The assassins had reportedly used fake passports from Australia, Britain, Ireland, Germany and France, among other countries.

The report added that Prisoner X had provided the officials in Dubai with “names and pictures and accurate details” in exchange for protection.

However, the Israeli regime kidnapped him from his hideout and jailed him over treason nearly a month after the operation over the speculation that he had been on the verge of exposing Tel Aviv’s secrets about the passports.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/10/313189/israel-jails-mossad-agent-prisoner-x2/

Syria naval base blast points to Israeli raid

Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday - a disclosure that appeared to point to an Israeli raid.

Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, said a pre-dawn strike on Friday hit a Syrian navy barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. He said that the rebel forces' intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there.

"It was not the FSA that targeted this," Saadeddine told Reuters. "It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels.

"This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean," he said.

Rebels described huge blasts - the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern military like Israel's.

Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement. The Syrian government has not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a "series of explosions" at the site.

According to regional intelligence sources, the Israelis previously struck in Syria at least three times this year to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry from President Bashar al-Assad's army to Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

Such weaponry, Israeli officials have made clear, would include the long-range Yakhonts, which could help Hezbollah repel Israel's navy and endanger its offshore gas rigs. In May, Israel and its U.S. ally complained about Moscow sending the missiles to Syria. Israel said they would likely end up with Hezbollah. The Lebanese group has said it does not need them.

Asked about the Latakia blasts, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told reporters: "We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions - in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most."

A former senior Israeli security official, who declined to be named, told Reuters that the area of Latakia in question was known to have been used to store Yakhont missiles.

Technically at war with Syria, Israel spent decades in a stable standoff with Damascus while the Assad family ruled unchallenged. It has been reluctant to intervene openly in the two-year-old, Islamist-dominated insurgency rocking Syria.

But previous air strikes near Damascus, on January 30, May 3 and May 5, made little attempt to conceal Israel's involvement.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9680OZ20130709?irpc=932

September 11: Inside Job or Mossad Job?

 Israel’s role in the events of September 11, 2001—that shape the 21st century—is the subject of bitter controversy, or rather a real taboo even within the 9/11 Truth Movement, causing the ostracism of the man who dared to broach the subject, Thierry Meyssan. Most advocacy groups, mobilized behind the slogan "9/11 was an Inside Job," remain discreet regarding the evidence involving the secret services of the Jewish state. Laurent Guyénot focuses on certain compelling—though grossly under reported—facts and analyzes the mechanisms of denial.

While Israel’s role in the destabilization of the world post-September 11 is becoming increasingly clear, the idea that a faction of Likudniks, aided by their allies embedded in the U.S. State apparatus, are responsible for the false flag operation of September 11 is becoming more difficult to suppress, and some individuals have the courage to state so publicly. Francesco Cossiga, President of Italy between 1985 and 1992, declared on 30 November 2007 to the daily Corriere della Sera: “From areas around the Palazzo Chigi, nerve centre of direction of Italian intelligence, it is noted that the non-authenticity of the video is supported by the fact that Osama bin Laden in it ’confessed’ that Al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York. However, all of the democratic areas of America and of Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know full well that the disastrous attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world to falsely incriminate Arabic countries and to persuade the Western Powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan [1]." Alan Sabrosky, former professor at the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Military Academy, did not hesitate to proclaim his belief that September 11 is a "classical operation orchestrated by Mossad" carried out with accomplices within the United States government, and his voice has been forcefully echoed by some U.S. Army veterans sites who are disgusted by the vile war that they were forced to wage on behalf of the September 11 lie or that of the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein [2].

The arguments in favor of the Mossad hypothesis are not only related to the reputation of the world’s most powerful secret service, which a report by the U.S. Army School for Advanced Military Studies (quoted by the Washington Times on the eve of September 11th), described as "wildcat, ruthless and cunning. Able to carry out an attack on U.S. forces and disguise it as an act committed by Palestinians/Arabs [3]." The Mossad involvement, together with other Israeli elite units, is made evident by a number of little known facts.
The dancing Israelis

The eBook by Hicham Hamza, "Israel and September 11: The Great Taboo" (2013) brings together the case against Israel, with impeccable precision and all easily accessible sources.

How many of us know, for example, that the only people arrested on the same day in connection with the terrorist attacks of September 11 are Israelis [4]? This information was reported the very next day by journalist Paulo Lima in The Record, the newspaper of Bergen County in New Jersey, according to police sources. Immediately after the first impact on the North Tower, three individuals were seen by several witnesses on the roof of a van parked at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, "celebrating” and “jumping up and down,” and photographing themselves with the twin towers in the background. They then moved their van to another parking spot in Jersey City, where other witnesses saw them display the same ostentatious celebrations.

The police immediately issued a BOLO alert (be-on-the-look-out): "Vehicle possibly related to the terrorist attack in New York. 2000 white Chevrolet van with New Jersey plates and an ’Urban Moving Systems’ sign at the back, was seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into the World Trade Center. Three individuals with the van were seen celebrating after the initial impact and the explosion that followed [5]." The van was stopped by police a few hours later, with five young Israelis aboard: Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. Physically forced out of the vehicle and pinned to the ground, the driver, Sivan Kurzberg, launched this strange sentence:

"We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem [6].” Police sources who informed Paulo Lima were convinced of the involvement of the Israelis in the morning’s attacks: "There were maps of the city in the van with some of the points highlighted. It looked like they knew [...] they knew what would happen when they were at Liberty State Park [7].

Passports of various nationalities, nearly 6000 dollars in cash and open airline tickets to travel abroad were also found on them. The Kurzberg brothers were formally identified as Mossad agents. The five Israelis worked officially for a moving company named Urban Moving Systems, whose employees were mostly Israelis. "I was in tears. These guys were joking and that bothered me [8]," stated one of the few non-Israeli workers to The Record. On September14, after receiving a visit from the police, the business owner, Dominik Otto Suter, left the country for Tel Aviv.

 The information disclosed by The Record, confirmed by the police report, was taken on by investigative sites such as the Wayne Madsen Report (September 14, 2005) and Counterpunch (February 7, 2007). It was also reported in some main media as well but in a way that minimized its scope: the New York Times (November 21, 2001) failed to mention the nationality of the individuals, just like Fox News and the Associated Press. The Washington Post (November 23, 2001) said they were Israelis, but passed over in silence their apparent foreknowledge of the event. However, The Forward (March 15, 2002), a magazine of the New York Jewish community, revealed that, according to an anonymous U.S. intelligence source, Urban Moving Systems was a Mossad undercover unit (which did not prevent it from receiving a federal loan of 498,750 dollars, as shown by the tax records)] [9].

The FBI conducted an investigation contained in a 579 page report, partially declassified in 2005 (it will be completely declassified in 2035). Freelance journalist Hisham Hamza analyzed this in detail in his book Israel and September 11: The Great Taboo. It shows a number of damning elements. First, the photos taken by these young Israelis actually show them in attitudes of celebration before the North Tower on fire: "They smiled, they hugged and they gave each other high fives." To explain this, stakeholders said they were simply delighted "that the United States should now take steps to stop terrorism in the world" (although, at this point, a majority of people thought the crashes were an accident rather than an actd of terrorism).

Moreover, at least one witness saw them positioned at 8:00, before an aircraft struck the first tower, while others certify that they were already taking pictures five minutes later, which is confirmed by their photos. A former employee confirmed to the FBI, the fanatically pro-Israeli and anti-American atmosphere that reigned in the company, even attributing to its director, Dominik Otto Suter, these words: "Give us twenty years and we will seize and destroy your media and your country." The five arrested Israelis were in contact with another moving company called Classic International Movers, four employees of which were interviewed separately for their links with the nineteen suspected hijackers. One of them had called "an individual in South America with genuine links to Islamic militants in the Middle East." Finally, "a sniffer dog gave a positive result for the presence of traces of explosives in the vehicle [10]." Must Read

Satellite Photos suggest Saudis targeting Iran, Israel with ballistic missiles

Daily Telegraph says analysts who examined satellite images from surface-to-surface missile base deep in Saudi desert spotted two launch pads with markings pointing north-west towards Tel Aviv and north-east towards Tehran

Satellite images indicate that Saudi Arabia has deployed ballistic missiles that are pointed towards Israel and Iran, the Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday evening.

According to the report, images analyzed by experts at IHS Jane's Intelligence Review have revealed an undisclosed surface-to-surface missile base deep in the Saudi desert, with capabilities for hitting both countries.

The British daily said analysts who examined the photos spotted two launch pads with markings pointing north-west towards Tel Aviv and north-east towards Tehran. They are designed for Saudi Arabia's arsenal of lorry-launched DF 3 missiles, which have a range of 1,500-2,500 miles and can carry a two-ton payload, the experts said.

The report said the base believed to have been built within the last five years, gives an insight into Saudi strategic thinking at a time of heightened tensions in the Gulf.

The newspaper mentioned that while Saudi Arabia does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel, it has long maintained discreet back channel communications as part of attempts to promote stability in the region.

"The two countries also have a mutual enemy in Iran, though, which has long seen Saudi Arabia as a rival power in the Gulf. Experts fear that if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would seek to follow suit," the report said.

According to The Telegraph, analysts at IHS Jane's believe that the kingdom is currently in the process of upgrading its missiles, although even the DF3, which dates back to the 1980s, is itself potentially big enough to carry a nuclear device.

The report said the missile base, which is at al-Watah, around 125 miles south-west of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was discovered during a project by IHS Jane's to update their assessment of Saudi Arabia's military capabilities.

The missiles are stored in an underground silo built into a rocky hillside. To the north of the facility are two circle-shaped launch pads, both with compass-style markings showing the precise direction that the launchers should fire in, according to the report.

The Telegraph noted that the Chinese-made missiles, which date back to the 1980s, are not remotely-guided and therefore have to be positioned in the direction of their target before firing.

"One appears to be aligned on a bearing of approximately 301 degrees and suggesting a potential Israeli target, and the other is oriented along an azimuth (bearing) of approximately 10 degrees, ostensibly situated to target Iranian locations," said the IHS Jane's article cited in the report.

Robert Munks, deputy editor of IHS Jane's Intelligence Review, was quoted by The Telegraph as saying: "Our assessment suggests that this base is either partly or fully operational, with the launch pads pointing in the directions of Israel and Iran respectively. We cannot be certain that the missiles are pointed specifically at Tel Aviv and Tehran themselves, but if they were to be launched, you would expect them to be targeting major cities.

"We do not want to make too many inferences about the Saudi strategy, but clearly Saudi Arabia does not enjoy good relations with either Iran or Israel," he said.

David Butter, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, the London-based foreign affairs think-tank, said there was "little surprise" that the Saudis had the missiles in place.

"It would seem that they are looking towards some sort of deterrent capability, which is an obvious thing for them to be doing, given that Iran too is developing its own ballistic missiles," he said.

He added, though, that the Saudis would know that the site would come to the attention of foreign intelligence agencies, and that the missile pad pointed in the direction of Israel could be partly just for "for show."

"It would give the Iranians the impression that they were not being exclusively targeted, and would also allow the Saudis to suggest to the rest of the Arab world that they still consider Israel a threat," he said.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4403605,00.html

Why Did a Controversial Yeshiva Regain Israeli Government Approval?

Early Monday afternoon, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon announced the reinstatement of Yeshivat Har Bracha, the undergraduate-level religious seminary of the eponymous West Bank settlement, to the Hesder program. Hesder’s five-year track mixes army service with intense, academic Torah study. As government-sponsored schools, Hesder seminaries also receive public funding. Before losing its Hesder status in 2009, Har Bracha got around 20 percent of its budget from the government.

Yaalon’s decision to reinstate Har Bracha to Hesder is controversial because of the circumstances under which the Defense Ministry first revoked its membership. In 2009, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, the dean of Har Bracha, made statements supporting the right of religious IDF soldiers to refuse orders that contravene Jewish law. The IDF had not made consumption of pork and shellfish compulsory—it was, hypothetically, going to ask religious soldiers, like any IDF soldiers, to participate in evacuations of settlements from the West Bank.

As a prominent religious figure in the settlement movement, Rabbi Melamed’s words carried great weight. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister at the time, rightly worried about the potential of national-religious leaders like Rabbi Melamed to foment discord between the national-religious community and the IDF. To deter the prospect of civil war, he had Har Bracha removed from the Hesder network, making it the first Hesder yeshiva to receive such a punishment. It was an unmistakably clear message to other Hesder schools—indeed to the whole national-religious community—that they incite rebellion against IDF authority at their own peril.

Or was it? Since 2009, Melamed has not said anything, in public, to indicate that his views have changed on the issue of IDF orders and settlement evacuation; yet as of Monday, Har Bracha is once again a member of the Hesder network and, in turn, is an IDF-sponsored yeshiva. The reinstatement of Har Bracha makes it eligible for government benefits and all the privileges accorded to Hesder schools.

Unsurprisingly, right-wing politicians and the Hesder federation were quick to laud Yaalon’s decision, treating it as a vindication of Har Bracha’s refusenik stance against settlement evacuation.

What’s missing from this Hesder-Yaalon love fest is a satisfactory explanation of why Har Bracha was reinstated. Yaalon made only a weak attempt at offering one:

It became clear after discussions with the Rosh Yeshiva that there is absolute loyalty to IDF orders in the Yeshiva educational program. I have no tolerance for refusal to obey commands, and it is evident that Har Bracha agrees fully.

But it remains unclear to anyone who isn’t Moshe Yaalon how Rabbi Melamed’s position has changed: does he now believe that one should listen to IDF orders, even if it means removing settlers?

Yaalon, for his part, appears to be alluding to private conversations he’s had with Rabbi Melamed in answering that question. According to Israel Hayom, Yaalon’s office wouldn’t return calls inquiring about the specifics of those conversations. Essentially, Yaalon is asking the Israeli public, which pays to help keep Rabbi Melamed’s yeshiva open, to trust him that students of Har Bracha will comply with IDF orders, to believe him that their money isn’t going toward a school that will instigate a civil war at the first sign of withdrawal from the West Bank, to have faith that Rabbi Melamed isn’t saying one thing to the Defense Ministry and another to his students. Why? Because Rabbi Melamed told him so.

But let’s say that Yaalon is right: that Melamed is now fully committed to ensuring IDF soldiers obey orders, even if those orders contradict their political and/or religious beliefs. If so, it would behoove Yaalon, and Melamed, to reveal the details of their conversations.

Doing so could help Melamed win back the trust of the general Israeli public that now funds his institution, and against which he effectively threatened rebellion. And, assuming that Rabbi Melamed suddenly does believe in the integrity of the IDF’s orders regarding settlement evacuations, it would also help counter the belief among many in the national-religious community that it’s justified—even incumbent on them—to refuse such orders.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/10/why-did-a-controversial-yeshiva-regain-israeli-government-approval.html

Reading Israel's New U.S. Ambassador

Judging by the headlines—“Israel names Romney backer to be ambassador to Washington,” “Israel's next U.S. envoy: Right-wing neo-con with close ties to Bush family”—Ron Dermer’s greatest sin is that he didn’t support Barack Obama’s reelection. That’s silly. Israeli prime ministers and American presidents have been trying to unseat each other since Dermer was in graduate school. In 1996, two Democratic political consultants served as liaisons between Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres and President Bill Clinton in their coordinated bid to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu. In 1999, Clinton dispatched three consultants—Robert Shrum, Stanley Greenberg and James Carville—to make sure that this time Bibi actually lost. (You can read about in Martin Indyk’s Innocent Abroad). By historical standards, Dermer’s chaperoning of Mitt Romney to Israel last summer on behalf of Netanyahu, his boss, is no great offense.

The problem isn’t that Dermer supported Romney. It’s why he supported Romney. Like Romney, and like Netanyahu himself, Dermer can barely contain his contempt for Palestinians, those who empathize with them and those who believe they deserve citizenship in a viable state. For years now, Bibi’s American defenders have claimed that he’s undergone an ideological transformation, that he’s no longer the man who in the 1990s regularly compared Palestinian control of the West Bank to Nazi control of Europe. It’s a bit dispiriting, therefore, that in the midst of what may prove America’s last real push for two states, Netanyahu has put the U.S. portfolio in the hands of someone who’s espoused all his old views.

Between 2001 and 2003, Dermer wrote roughly 125 columns for the Jerusalem Post. A fraction deal primarily with American foreign policy, almost every one of which would have fit snugly into the pages of The Weekly Standard. (“Many around the world look at the people manning the [Bush administration’s] Pentagon and see hawks blinded by ideology,” wrote Dermer on January 3, 2003. “I see owls with a vision that pierces through the darkness.”) Other columns deal with Israeli party politics and the results of Dermer’s polls. But the largest number concern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in these, several themes emerge. (To read Dermer’s columns, you have to buy them from the Post.)

The first theme is Dermer’s disdain for Palestinians and his cartoonish view of their and Israel’s shared history. In a May 25, 2001, column, he bemoans the fact that on Nakba day, when Palestinians commemorate the flight of roughly 700,000 of their compatriots from their homes during Israel’s war of Independence, the Israeli “media was filled with tales of Palestinian anguish.” For Dermer, this “self-flagellating sympathy by the country’s Jewish population is a cause for serious concern.” Why? Because Israel bears no responsibility for the refugees’ plight since “nearly all of [them left of] their own free will.” Unfortunately for Dermer, few serious historians share his view. (By way of comparison, watch this account by Benny Morris, whose political views are now not that different from Dermer’s, but who has immersed himself in the historical archives.) Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the people who agrees with Dermer is Netanyahu himself, who in his 2000 book, A Durable Peace, declared that “most of the Arab refugees left voluntarily.”

Dermer revises history yet again on January 25, 2002. “How can it be,” he asks, “that Palestinian Arabs, long exposed to Israeli democracy, have never mounted a non-violent campaign to achieve their goals?” Put aside the issue of how much democratic exposure Palestinians get as non-voting, non-citizens living under military law in the West Bank. The problem with Dermer’s question, as Yousef Munayyer has documented, is that Palestinians have protested nonviolently since the early twentieth century. (As a Zionist, I don’t agree with the goals of many of those protests, but they’ve been conducted via boycotts and strikes, not only armed attacks.) But having stipulated that Palestinians don’t protest nonviolently, Dermer goes on to speculate that the reason is “a cultural tendency towards belligerency” that is “deeply imbedded in the culture of the Arab world and its foremost religion.” (Again, he’s on message with his boss, who in A Durable Peace says “violence is ubiquitous in the political life of all the Arab countries.”)

A defender of Dermer’s might object that he can’t be truly hostile to Palestinians or Arabs because, like Natan Sharansky, with whom he authored The Case for Democracy, he believes they yearn for freedom. But there’s a tension between this democratic optimism and Dermer’s disdain for Palestinian, Arab and Islamic cultures. It comes through clearly in a column he penned after 9/11 (“The View from Ground Zero”) in which he writes with unabashed enthusiasm that while “George Bush has called the enemy terrorism, bending over backwards not to besmirch Islam… [t]he American people are not convinced. They see Islamic fundamentalism, if not Islam itself, as the enemy. The prevailing mood I detected was best expressed not by the president’s call for Americans to pray in their ‘churches, synagogues and mosques’ but by the refusal of commuters on a Minneapolis flight to fly until three Arab passengers were removed from the plane.”

If Dermer can be contemptuous of Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims more generally, he’s equally scornful of those Israelis who identify with their plight. In a July 20, 2001, column, he compares Shimon Peres to Neville Chamberlain for helping broker the Oslo Accords, thus echoing an analogy made repeatedly by Netanyahu in the 1990s. On January 11, 2002, Dermer divides Israeli doves into two categories—“census takers” and “self-haters”—and then declares that a “recent article by David Grossman, a renowned Israeli author, placed him squarely with the self-haters.” (Someone snuck a free copy of this one online.)

It takes a certain moxie—when you’re barely thirty years old and recently arrived from the U.S.—to compare one of Israel’s most venerable statesman to history’s most notorious appeaser and to suggest that Israel’s most famous novelist is motivated by self-loathing. And as usual, Dermer levels his accusations with a torrent of intellectual self-regard and little actual evidence. Grossman, he declares, “displayed a level of historical ignorance not uncommon among Israel’s literary elite” and yet offers not a single fact to prove Grossman wrong. Anyone who has read Bibi will recognize the style. It would be nice, Netanyahu lectured the U.N. in 2011, to have a “press whose sense of history extends beyond breakfast.” (In a May 23, 2003, column, Dermer uses the exact same phrase.) But like Dermer, Netanyahu is not quite the historian he imagines himself to be. In a review of Netanyahu’s heftiest book, initially called A Place Among the Nations and later reissued as A Durable Peace, the University of Virginia’s William Quandt noted in Foreign Affairs that “the historical sections of the book” are “not well grounded in fact.”

Finally, Dermer’s columns heap abuse on every effort to birth a Palestinian state. The Oslo Accords are a “folly” (Jan 24, 2003) and a “ruse” (May 3, 2002). Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David is a “Herculean effort at appeasement.” The Bush administration’s Road Map for Peace is a “blatant reward for terror” (May 30, 2003). Dermer’s hostility to Palestinian statehood is relentless. “A Palestinian state will give the Palestinians powers that will endanger the very existence of the Jewish state,” he writes on May 16, 2002. But unfortunately, he worries on March 2 of that year, “Israelis may be foolish enough today to agree to one Palestinian state.”

These columns were written a decade ago, and it’s always possible that Dermer, like Netanyahu, has changed his mind. In June 2009, in a speech at Bar-Ilan University, Netanyahu endorsed Palestinian statehood after a career spent opposing it. A month before that, after being quoted as saying, “This idea of two states for two peoples is a stupid and childish solution to a very complex problem,” Dermer clarified that “when I say ‘childish’ I mean… the fixation with that idea rather than focusing on the fundamental issues. I don’t think that two-states for two peoples is a childish approach.”

The problem with believing that Dermer and his boss have undergone a sincere conversion—as opposed to a rhetorical one designed to relieve international pressure—is that although they now endorse something called a “Palestinian state,” they’ve rejected the parameters for creating one that have governed every serious negotiation in the past. Netanyahu and Dermer took office in the wake of talks between Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that both men have subsequently said could have produced a deal within months. According to published reports, Olmert and Abbas were both within the parameters laid out by Bill Clinton in December 2000: a Palestinian state in 94 percent or more of the West Bank (with land swaps from within Israel), a Palestinian capital in the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, international but not Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley, some return of Palestinian refugees but not enough to shift Israel’s demographic balance (Olmert reportedly suggested 5,000; Abbas countered with 150,000).

Netanyahu and Dermer refused to pick up where Olmert left off. Indeed, in a clear swipe at the recently departed prime minister, Dermer told AIPAC soon after Netanyahu took office, “The days of continuing down the same path of weakness and capitulation and concessions, hoping, hoping that somehow the Palestinians would respond in kind are over.” Even in the Bar-Ilan speech where he endorsed Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu laid out demands far beyond Olmert’s. Unlike Olmert, he made the demand that Palestinians not merely recognize Israel, but recognize it as a “Jewish state,” a core requirement for any deal. He ruled out dividing Jerusalem, something Olmert had already agreed to. And he said Israel needs “defensible borders,” a buzzword he’d used in the past to insist that Israel retain as much as half of the West Bank, and which several key former and current Netanyahu aides have argued is incompatible with the kind of Palestinian state envisioned by Clinton and Olmert. Indeed, after Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech, his own father told reporters, “He doesn’t support [a Palestinian state]. He supports the sorts of conditions that they [the Palestinians] will never accept.”

Since then, Netanyahu and Dermer have publicly rejected Barack Obama’s 2011 proposal that negotiations be based upon the 1967 lines plus land swaps, the basic parameters laid out by Clinton, and accepted by Olmert. Between 2009 and 2013, they oversaw a government that doubled funding for settlements. During his reelection bid this January, Netanyahu never made the two-state solution the official position of his Likud-Beiteinu ticket. And once reelected, he formed a coalition in which a majority of cabinet ministers, according to some estimates, oppose a Palestinian state.

This doesn’t mean Abbas bears no responsibility for the failure to launch serious negotiations over the last four years. It’s entirely possible that he’s now so weak and lethargic that he doesn’t want to put himself in a position where he’d have to make difficult compromises. But by remaining outside the basic two-state framework established more than a decade ago, Netanyahu and Dermer have never put him to the test.

In the wake of Dermer’s appointment, media speculation has focused on whether the Obama administration is annoyed by the pick. I understand the temptation. During the reporting for my book, one senior White House official told me that Dermer could “stand some self-reflection.” Another, on background, was even more salty. (Though, to be fair, another former administration type called him capable and effective.) But whether Team Obama likes Dermer’s personality and his partisan leanings is a distraction. The real question is whether they’re bothered by the fact that, as the window for a two-state solution closes, Netanyahu is sending to Washington a man with a history of trying to seal it shut. If that doesn’t bother the Obama White House, it means they’re probably already given up.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/10/reading-israel-s-new-u-s-ambassador.html

Israel strengthens Syria border with an eye on Hezbollah

Israel is bolstering its forces on the once-quiet frontier with Syria where it believes Lebanese Hezbollah militants are preparing for the day when they could fight Israel.

Syria's civil war has brought an end to decades of calm on the Golan Heights, a strip of land which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Battles between rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syrian villages nearby are being watched intensely by Israel's military.

Hezbollah, which is also backed by Iran, has sent thousands of its own fighters to combat Syrian rebels, according to Israeli and Western estimates.

Israel last fought Hezbollah in a 2006 Lebanon war and still closely monitors the Lebanese border. Israel says Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets in its south Lebanon stronghold.

The Jewish state is worried Hezbollah is making initial preparations for future confrontation with it on a new front with Syria and is accruing valuable combat experience on the Syrian battlefield.

An Israeli source said the group is gathering intelligence on Israel's deployment on the strategic Golan plateau.

"It is not at an alarming level now but we understand their intentions," said the source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the security and political situation in the area.

Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened in May to turn the Golan into a new front against Israel.

"Since Nasrallah's threat, more (Israeli) army companies have been sent up, more tanks," an Israeli military source at the Booster military outpost on the Golan.

"Hezbollah has an intelligence presence (in the Golan) that we know of."

HOT SPOT

Booster is about 2 km (1 mile) from a disengagement line set after Israel and Syria fought on the Golan in 1973 and Israeli tanks have just moved back into the position for the first time since then.

Daytime is peaceful on the rocky outcrop that gives a turret-top view of Syrian villages below, with birdsong echoing across sun-scorched fields. That changes at nightfall.

"Every night there is fighting (in the villages across the frontier), explosions and shooting all through the night. This is the hottest spot on the Golan Heights," Shilo said. "As far as we're concerned, any bullet that crosses over is intentional."

A U.N. observer force monitors the area of separation between Syrian and Israeli forces, a narrow strip of land running 70 km (45 miles) from Mount Hermon on the Lebanese border to the Yarmouk River frontier with Jordan.

The observers have been caught in the middle of fighting between Syrian troops and rebels. Stray shells and bullets have landed on the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan, and Israeli troops have fired into Syria in response.

The rebels have detained peacekeepers on several different occasions before releasing them. Japan and Croatia have withdrawn troops due to the violence as has Austria with the gap being filled by soldiers from Fiji.

Among the rebels fighting the Syrian army are jihadi and Qaeda-linked groups, which Israel says are also a future threat to the Jewish state.

"We know they are busy now but once it ends they will turn their guns on us," said the military source.

"We have learnt our lessons from Sinai," the source said, referring to the Egyptian peninsula where Islamist militants have launched attacks on Egyptian soldiers and across the border at Israel amid deepening turmoil in Egypt.

"We're not waiting for an attack (from Syria). We're building the border fence, we have sent up tanks, more regiments, field intelligence ... and increased observations."

SURVEILLANCE

Israel is particularly worried that Hezbollah will get hold of advanced weapon systems or chemical arms in Syria. Israel has struck inside Syria at least three times in the past few months against what it believed to be anti-aircraft and advanced ground missiles destined for the group.

Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday - a disclosure that appeared to point to an Israeli raid. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement.

The army has also deployed a high-tech surveillance system along the Syria front, which immediately zeroes in on any suspicious movements approaching Israeli-held territory.

"It is critical for us to know who is sitting there - if it's an Islamist jihadi or a rebel who just wants to defend his family," the military source said.

In June, the Syrian army and Hezbollah captured the strategic Syrian town Qusair from rebel forces.

Israel watched closely and last month held a military drill that simulated taking over a northern Israeli town of Safed in preparation for possible conflict.

Israeli military sources on the Israel-Lebanon border said that despite its deep involvement in Syria, Hezbollah has not loosened its grip on the border area in south Lebanon.

"Hezbollah's legitimacy in the Arab world is cracking over its involvement in Syria," said one source on the Lebanon border. "But on the other hand, if they come under a lot of pressure they could chose to ignite the border."

Israeli commanders have noticed that Hezbollah had taken down some of its flags, as well as those of Iran, that once hung proudly in the border villages, a sign it could be worried about its image.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/10/us-syria-crisis-israel-idUSBRE9690C920130710

U.S. Security Chief Sees Danger in Israel’s Cisco Digital Plan

Israel’s plan to allow Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) (CSCO) to turn the country digital with a super-fast fiber-optic network may compromise national security if precautions aren’t taken, a U.S. security chief said.

“There is national security and innovation and you have to find the right balance,” said Paul de Souza, chief executive officer of the Washington-headquartered Cyber Security Forum Initiative, a non-profit organization to assist the government, military and industry, said in an interview in Tel Aviv. “You can’t compromise national security just because you want the country to be extremely innovative.”

Cisco will make Israel the world’s first fully digital country with a fiber-optic network being built for Israel Electric Corp. to serve multiple requirements, showcasing technology that other nations may adopt, John Chambers, chief executive officer of the San Jose, California-based company, said last month.
 
Chambers said that Cisco was committed to securing the network and would train and attract “the best there is in security on a global basis.” The company also created a technology incubator in Israel for cyberdefense startups.

“The government of Israel and Cisco are still working on a plan that will give solutions for all needs that arise,” Cisco said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

Zombie Threat

Cisco (CSCO) should cooperate with local information security companies and integrate their technology to protect the new network, said De Souza, a former chief security engineer for AT&T Inc. with more than 14 years of experience in cyberdefense.

“At the end of the day, you want a network to have layers of security and a certain layer of complexity to make it harder for people to penetrate it,” he said.

Failure to do so could allow criminals or terrorists to “harvest millions of zombies,” he said, referring to computers that are compromised so they can be remotely controlled. “Imagine Israel with millions of zombies that have super capability and can bring down countries.”

“Not only can these computers attack Israel itself, but they can at the same time use Israel as a way to attack other countries in the whole false flag thing and put the blame on Israel,” De Souza said.

The new Israeli network will compete with Hot Telecommunication System Ltd (HOT). and Bezeq The Israeli Telecommunication Corp. (BEZQ) and will eventually serve as the backbone for electricity, television, health care and even education, Chambers said in June.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-10/u-s-security-chief-sees-danger-in-israel-s-cisco-digital-plan.html

Archaeologists discover sphinx in Israel

Archaeologists in northern Israel discovered an Egyptian sphinx thought to date back at least three millennia.

The sphinx was unearthed Tuesday, according to the French news agency AFP, and bears a dedication to the Egyptian ruler Mycerinus, who ruled circa 2500 BCE and built one of the three Pyramids at Giza. Researchers estimate that the sphinx arrived at its location in the town of Tel Hazor in around 1500 BCE as a gift from a later ruler.

“It’s possible the statue was sent by the Egyptian ruler to the king of Hazor, the most important ruler in this region,”Amnon Ben-Tor, the Hebrew University professor managing the dig, told AFP.

Archaeologists have found the forearms and paws of the sphinx and hope to find more pieces in the coming days.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/israel/article/archaeologists_discover_sphinx_in_israel

Netanyahu: I share Shamir's outlook on Middle East

Memorial ceremonies held at Mount Herzl and the Knesset to mark first anniversary of the death of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Shamir dedicated himself to building the country and ensuring its independence.

Memorial ceremonies were held at Mount Herzl and the Knesset on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of the death of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Shamir, a Likud politician who had two stints as prime minister, first from 1983-1984 and again from 1986-1992, passed away last year at the age of 96.

Speaking at Mount Herzl on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Thirty years ago, after the resignation of Menachem Begin, Shamir said that despite the relative calm, we must always remember that we live in a region that is still unstable and in great disarray. This is due to the nature of the regimes around us, the ongoing hatred toward Israel and the lack of acceptance of the fact of our existence in the region. This reality requires us to maintain excellent security capabilities and constant vigilance. The vicissitudes of the Middle East taking place before our very eyes [confirm] Yitzhak Shamir's sober and realistic vision for which he took much criticism during his time. I share the essence of his outlook."

Netanyahu said Shamir was a leader with deep sense of Jewish history.

"He dedicated himself to building [the country] and ensuring its independence, sovereignty and power," Netanyahu said.

At the Knesset ceremony, Shamir's son, Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir, read one of his father's last speeches, in which he said, "The State of Israel exists for the entire people of Israel. Zionism has not yet completed its role and there are challenges ahead. I hope I'll be remembered as a lover of the land of Israel."

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said Shamir "was a strong man with a warm heart. He was a proud Jew, a pleasant conversationalist and well-mannered."

Opposition Leader MK Shelly Yachimovich credited Shamir for Operation Solomon, in which 14,400 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel, and for the large-scale immigration to Israel of Jews from the former Soviet Union.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10597

Weiner Explains How “Am Yisruel Chei” Got him Into Trouble

Weiner, With Kipa on Head, Expects People Will Call him a Putz “There will be times that you will say [on me] ‘what a Putz! I cant believe he did that,’” Weiner told a crowd of Orthodox Jewish Donors in Flatbush Tuesday Night.

Israel’s Supreme Court orders IDF to reopen investigation to brain damaged U.S. citizen

Responding to a petition, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the Israel Defense Forces to reopen an investigation surrounding a head injury sustained by a U.S. citizen at a West Bank protest.

The protester, Tristan Anderson, in 2009 was observing a protest of Israel’s security fence in the West Bank city of Na’alin when a tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier struck him in the head, causing severe brain damage, according to Haaretz.

The IDF investigated whether the Border Police were at fault following the incident, but the petition claims the investigation was insufficient.

According to the petition, the army did not visit Na’alin and questioned only a few soldiers who were on the scene. It is unclear whether the army questioned the gunman who fired the canister.

http://www.jta.org/2013/07/10/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/relaunch-probe-of-protest-where-american-was-hurt-court-orders-israeli-army

“Israel launched Operation Cast Lead “from the heart of Cairo”

The liberals standing by the army's side to oust Morsi should think of those in Gaza about to live again under the blockade

When Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011, Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip joined the celebrations of millions of Egyptians. Mubarak, after all, was the enforcer of Israel's siege on Gaza and allowed Tzipi Livni, then Israeli foreign minister, to initiate "Operation Cast Lead" from the heart of Cairo.

Under the now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi, conditions in Gaza got slightly better: travel through the Rafah crossing became easier and less humiliating than under Mubarak, activists who had long been denied entry to the coastal enclave by Egyptian security forces were finally able to cross, and high-profile visits also became possible. These changes, however, were relative: Palestinians in Gaza still waited, without reason, for hours in order to be let into Egypt, and Mubarak's policies of destroying tunnels and restricting travel for men under 40 continued. These factors, in addition to the Palestinians' spontaneous allegiance with the Egyptian people's demands, explain why many Palestinians criticised Morsi and supported his ousting.

What no one considered were the implications of a military coup. This time the change does not seem to bode well for the Palestinians. The border with Egypt has already been closed by the armed forces, Palestinians landing in Cairo airport are being deported back to the countries they flew in from, tunnels have been demolished, and army-instigated anti-Palestinian propaganda is rampant across Cairo. The situation in Egypt has become an obsession and wherever one goes in the Strip, grim predictions are made about a return to a Mubarak-era blockade.

This scenario is made more likely by the fact that Egyptian liberals and secularists previously opposed to the blockade are now being fed news of Palestinian armed groups sent by Hamas to aid the Muslim Brotherhood and conduct "terrorist operations" against the Egyptian army. Interestingly, such news is often published citing anonymous sources and without evidence of the arms claimed to have been seized by the Egyptian police.

One liberal group that enjoys high credibility and facilitates the armed forces' efforts is the National Salvation Front. The NSF is spearheaded by Mohammed ElBaradei, who is widely respected and seen as a capable technocrat. The group made no secret of its support for the military coup and ElBaradei appeared with the armed forces' chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi as he delivered the speech that unseated Morsi. The NSF fig leaf gives plausibility to statements such as that made to the BBC by an army general claiming that Morsi's good relations with Hamas was a driving factor behind the coup.

Hamas is indeed in trouble. In a very short time, it has lost major regional allies. Iran, Syria and Hezbollah no longer support the group, because of its position on Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood, which lifted Hamas's years-long international isolation, is gone from electoral politics.

If a more secular government takes over, Hamas will be fought against and undermined: secularists and liberals already see Hamas as an enemy given the group's perceived support for and relations with the Brotherhood. But beyond these agendas they must recognise that close by sit 1.7 million people whose lives continue to be determined by political conflicts in which they have no hand.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/10/egypt-coup-palestinians-morsi-gaza

Homeland Security's gay rights Czar to be named White House Jewish liaison

The White House is set to name Matt Nosanchuk, a lawyer who has been prominent in advancing the Obama administration’s gay rights policies, as its new full-time Jewish liaison.

JTA learned Wednesday that Nosanchuk will replace Zach Kelly, who has held the job part time since the last full-time liaison to the Jewish community, Jarrod Bernstein, left for the private sector in January.

From 2009 to 2012, Nosanchuk was a top staffer in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, where he helped shape the Obama administration’s response to a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act. That challenge last month successfully nullified the act, extending federal rights to same-sex couples.

The administration at first refused to defend the act and ultimately submitted a brief arguing that it should be struck down.

Nosanchuk also oversaw implementation of the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act, passed in 2009, that expanded hate crimes to include those motivated by gender, gender identification and disability. Hate crimes generally mandate tougher sentences for crimes in which bias is part of the motivation.

Since 2012, Nosanchuk has worked at the Department of Homeland Security.

http://www.jta.org/2013/07/10/news-opinion/politics/matt-nosanchuk-to-be-named-white-house-jewish-liaison

Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Zones

Were it not for the razor wire, giant concrete blocks, steel gates, watchtower and standard-issue surly teenage soldier, it would be impossible to tell at what point the barren uplands of Israel’s eastern Negev give way to the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank.

The military checkpoint of Shani vaguely marks the formal demarcation between Israel and occupied Palestinian territory, but in practical terms the distinction is meaningless. On either side of the Green Line, Israel is in charge.

In recent weeks it has been intensifying a campaign to evict Palestinian farming communities summarily from their ancestral lands to replace them with Jewish newcomers.

Israeli human rights lawyers, tired of the international community’s formulaic criticisms, say it is time to be more forthright. They call these “ethnic cleansing” zones – intended to drive off Palestinians irrespective of the provisions of international law and whether or not the Palestinians in question hold Israeli citizenship.
In the occupied South Hebron Hills, a dozen traditional communities – long ago denied by Israel the right to enjoy modern amenities such as electricity and running water – are struggling to remain in the cave-homes that sheltered them for centuries.

Israel has reclassified much of their land as a military firing range and demands that they leave for their own safety. An appeal to the Israeli courts, the latest instalment in a 14-year saga to avoid eviction, is due in the next few days.

Israel’s concern for the villagers’ welfare might sound more convincing were it not encouraging Jews to live close by in illegal settlements.

Palestinians in other parts of the occupied territories coveted by Israel – such as villages next to Jerusalem and those in the fertile Jordan Valley, the territorial backbone of any future Palestinian state – are being squeezed too. Firing ranges, closed military zones and national parks are the pretexts for Israel to appropriate the farmland these rural communities need to survive.

As a result, Palestinian life is withering in the nearly two-thirds of the West Bank Israel was temporarily entrusted with – the so-called Area C – under the Oslo Accords. Endlessly harassed Palestinians have sought sanctuary in West Bank cities under Palestinian Authority control. Today the remnants in Area C, a population of about 100,000, are outnumbered three to one by Jewish settlers.

A discomfited European Union, normally mealy-mouthed on Israel’s occupation, has started to describe this as “forced transfer”. The term may sound ominous and reproving, but human rights groups say that, from a legal perspective, the terminology obscures rather than illuminates what is taking place.

“Forced transfer”, observes Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s minority of 1.5 million Palestinian citizens, usually describes uncoordinated and unofficial incidents of population displacement, often as an outcome of war.

Bishara and others argue that Israel is carrying out a systematic and intentional policy to drive Palestinians off their land to replace them with Jewish communities. This, they say, should be identified as “ethnic cleansing”, a term first given legal and moral weight in the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s.

As evidence, the lawyers point to recent developments inside Israel. The treatment of tens of thousands of Bedouin in the Negev, all of them Israeli citizens, is virtually identical to that of Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills.

The Bedouin too have faced a prolonged campaign to push them off their ancestral lands and into a series of “townships”, forcibly urbanising them in the country’s most deprived communities. In the disconcerting language of Israeli bureaucracy, the Bedouin need to be “concentrated”.

Israel has increased the pressure – as in the West Bank – by denying these Bedouin all public services, and demolishing any concrete homes they build. As with Palestinians under occupation, the Bedouin have found their communities reclassified as firing ranges, military zones or national forests.

The village of al-Araqib, near Beersheva, for example, has been demolished more than 50 times in recent years as Israel plants on its land – with a suitably sinister irony – the Ambassadors’ Forest, commemorating the help provided to Israel by the international community’s diplomatic corps.

Waiting in the wings are developers ready to build on the Bedouin’s land 10 new towns for Jews only. The rest of the territory is being eaten up by Jewish ranches, given swathes of land to create vineyards, offer camel rides and, in one case, provide a pet cemetery.

But, as in the West Bank, the Bedouin are refusing to budge, and pressing their historic land claims in the Israeli courts. Rather than wait for a verdict it may not like, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is rewriting the Bedouin’s citizenship rights.

The Prawer plan, which passed its first reading in parliament last month, will force 40,000 Bedouin off their land – the largest expulsions inside Israel for decades. Unlike Jewish citizens, they will have no say over where they live; they will be forcibly assigned to a township.

For the first time, Israeli citizens – the Bedouin – are to be deprived of any recourse to the courts as they are harried from their homes. Instead Israel will resort to administrative procedures more familiar from the occupied territories.

The policy is clear: Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line are to be treated like sheep, fenced into ever-smaller areas, while Jews will have unrestrained access to a Greater Israel envisioned by Mr Netanyahu.

The international community has long criticised Israel for the “discrimination” its Palestinian citizens face and for the “oppression” of Palestinians under occupation. This terminology needs overhauling too, say the human rights lawyers.

A system that treats one ethnic group as less human than another already has a legal name: it is called apartheid.

 http://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-ethnic-cleansing-zones/5342338

Did Israel Attack Syria?

In a recent report from investigative journalist Richard Silverstein at the Tikun Olam blog, confidential sources within the Israeli military establishment revealed to him that the alleged bombing of a weapons depot in the Syrian town of Latakia, – which sits beside the Russian controlled seaport at Tartous – was an Israeli operation, targeting advanced Russian-supplied defensive missile systems (S-300 or Yakhont), an operation that included the direct assistance of opposition militants inside Syria.

Silverstein’s Israeli source specifically states that members of the FSA coordinated with the IDF and engaged in a diversionary rocket attack at the time of the Israeli airstrike. The previous Israeli attack in Damascus; when rebels were on hand to film the event, bears similar hallmarks to the attack in Latakia, yet, contrary to the previous strike, there has been no footage to date of the explosion, and Syrian journalists I have contacted have confirmed that there are no Syrian media reports on recent large-scale explosions in Latakia. The anti-Assad activist the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” has reported briefly on the incident and claimed Syrian soldiers were killed, and the blast could be heard kilometres from the alleged strike-zone.

In this Reuters report, titled “Syrian Naval Base Blast Points to Israel”, Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s “Supreme Military Council”, states: (my emphasis)

“rebel forces’ intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there.It was not the FSA that targeted this,… It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels.”

Saadeddine goes on to state that the attack on the base  “was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean.”  Why would a “FSA” spokesmen disavow attacks on Syrian military installations? It seems anathema to what the various incarnations of “spokesmen” have been trying to achieve for two years; namely, fabricating attacks on military installations to bolster morale within the ranks of the rebels, and deplete the morale of the Syrian Army.  These accounts seem to tally with Silverstein’s Israeli source – yet the specific weapons that were the target seem to differ.

It is hard to believe that Israel would take such a risk for the Yakhonts alone, unless they have developed a superior stand-off missile system that radically reduces the risks involved; which may have been the reason in using “rebels” to gleefully advertise the “success” of Israel’s earlier airstrikes on Damascus. The S-300 system is a clear advantage for Syria, enabling superior mobile air-defense; the Yakhonts are built to target war-ships and while they offer deterrent for Syria’s Mediterranean coast, they are no use to Assad if a No-Fly Zone is enforced.

Furthermore, it must be noted that it has become widespread knowledge that Israel is, at the very least, liaising directly with “opposition” forces inside Syria. Silverstein also confirmed this to be the case, and in particular referenced the Golan Heights; this cooperation has also been reported in some avenues of mainstream media, although the reportage is usually set to a “humanitarian” tone.

In a Times of Israel report from the 1st July titled: “We Have No Beef With Israel, Syrian Islamist Group Says”, a spokesman for the rebel group “the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade” – a Salafist “rebel” group based in the Golan Heights/Quneitra/Daraa region with close links to Jabhat al Nusra, and the group responsible for several kidnappings of UN peacekeepers – goes as far as to thank Israel for its assistance along the border saying: “The medical help that the refugees got from Israel is a very good thing,”, and attempted to reassure Israelis that their fight is directed at the Assad regime and not them; not even in “ten years time”.   The report goes on to state: (my emphasis)

To date, Israel has admitted over two dozen Syrians into its hospitals for treatment, and the IDF has set up a field hospital on the border for treating relatively minor cases. During June 6 clashes between Syrian rebels and Assad forces at the Quneitra border crossing, the IDF treated 20 Syrian rebel combatants for injuries suffered during the gunfight, according to a recently published UN secretary-general’s report.

Moreover, Israel has also made overtures to the Druze community in and around the Quneitra/Golan Heights region, in attempts to shore-up its borders. This highlights the moral expediency and great lengths the Israeli military will go to uphold the status quo and its military dominance. The Israeli government has no concern for Syria or its people, it will happily pour fuel on the fire and enable warring factions to shed further needless blood to achieve its desired strategic objectives. As Jonathon Cook noted recently, the “optimal scenario” for the Israel military would be for the Syrian war to totally divide the state, resulting in a de-facto “balkanization”. It makes perfect sense that to achieve this, Israel are in the same position as the United States, they are looking to “level the playing field”.

Red Lines and Ambiguity.

When Reuters questioned Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon regarding the explosions in Latakia, his reply was reminiscent of official ambiguous statements regarding previous Israeli strikes in Syria. (and other various Muslim nations around the world): (my emphasis)

“We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions – in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most.”

Following recent statements from Russian diplomats vowing to honour advanced weapons contracts, along with claims from Assad that the shipments had begun to arrive in response to the previous Israeli airstrike upon Syria, – which targeted elite Syrian military divisions stationed in the Qassioun Mountains in Damascus – it appears Israel may have acted upon the threat of attacking Russian weapons that “tip the balance” in the region. In reality, the result of Syria acquiring such advanced systems will diminish Israel’s ability to violate its neighbours sovereign airspace at will, and in turn, commit acts of war unhindered.

The media silence surrounding this alleged attack is disconcerting on several levels. Firstly, if indeed Russian supplied advanced weapons (either the Yakhont Surface to Sea, or the S-300 Surface to Air systems) – that will undoubtedly be accompanied by Russian military personnel – have been attacked, why is Russia silent on the issue? Have Russia given the Israeli’s guarantees that retaliation will not be forthcoming? Aside from this theory, there is the distinct possibility that an emboldened Israeli military now feels it can strike targets within Syrian territory with impunity; particularly considering the half-hearted response from Russia (and the “International Community”) to Israel’s last act of war upon Syria.

Furthermore, if Israel has indeed carried out this strike and knowingly hit targets that Russian troops may be alongside, are Russia even willing or able to retaliate? Lets not forget, a war with Israel is almost a guaranteed war with the United States. Of course, to these powers this is a game of chess, and Israel like to play in the dark. Could Russia and Israel both be engaging in covert strikes against each other? Mysteriously, an Israeli F-16 “crashed during routine training” over the Mediterranean on Sunday, a mere two days after the alleged strike in Latakia; it is no secret Russia has been building a huge Naval presence in the Med.

In summary, if it is true that Israel has targeted Russian advanced systems, and all the implications that follow, Russia and Syria could be remaining silent for three reasons: firstly, out of embarrassment and an unwillingness to appear weak through lack of ability to retaliate; secondly, one of the parties is complicit; thirdly, they plan to retaliate in kind, ie: a covert operation. The only other explanation is that the strike in Latakia simply did not occur.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/did-israel-attack-syria/5342356

Apocalypse Watch: Israeli Cabinet Minister Calls For Third Temple

Walter Russell Mead

The MSM will miss the significance of this story as it misses a lot of stories having to do with religion, but tens of millions of American Christians were jolted this week by the news that a member of the Israeli cabinet has called for the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem on Temple Mount.

Political junkies saw this as a disturbing but not hugely significant development. Uri Ariel, the Israeli minister of Housing and Construction, is widely seen as an effective and charismatic figure on the fringe of Israeli politics. His inclusion in the Cabinet was a sign of just how far the balance has tilted in the current Knesset in favor of the settler movement. He’s a political provocateur who enjoys saying controversial things; he objected, for example, to having Chancellor Angela Merkel address the Knesset in German.

For people who follow Israeli politics, Ariel’s call to rebuild the ancient Jewish Temple on a site sacred to Muslims was a troubling indication that some taboos are crumbling as the settler movement moves into the political mainstream. It’s also a marker for any discussions on the future of Jerusalem should US Secretary of State John Kerry actually restart peace negotiations.

From a purely political point of view, then, this was a bad news story but not a big news story.

To the hundreds of millions of people around the world for whom Israel news is religious news as well as political news, it was something else. The Jewish Temple is not just another historical building, and any discussion about rebuilding it isn’t just another political story.

The Jewish Temple is unique in world religious history. It was a very different thing than the synagogues in which Jews pray today. In the Torah, God commanded the Hebrews to build a temple in the land he would give them; this command was carried out, the Bible tells us, by David’s son Solomon (who is revered as a prophet by Muslims). When built, the Temple was the only place where Jews could carry out the sacrifices required by Jewish law; it was the spiritual heart of Judaism in the way no church has ever been the central focus of Christianity, and its role can only be compared to that of Mecca in Islam.

The First Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem 587 years before the birth of Christ. The Second Temple was rebuilt on that site by Jews returning from exile and magnificently restored and embellished right around the time of Christ by Herod the Great. Under Greek and Roman rule, the Temple was the scene of great confrontations between the monotheistic Jews and their pagan overlords. The Second Temple was destroyed when the Romans crushed a Jewish revolt, and the site has since been occupied by a pagan temple, a Christian church and is now under the control of an Islamic religious foundation.  Muslims revere the site as the place where Abraham offered to sacrifice his son to God, as well as the place from which the Prophet Mohammed left the earth on the Night Journey.

Many Islamists will see Uri Ariel’s announcement as confirming a vision that links the behavior of the Jewish state with a religious and political crisis that will overcome humanity in the years leading up to the last battle between good and evil and the Last Judgement. Many Christians will agree, though of course the details of the two apocalyptic visions are not the same.

Since the 19th century, long before there was a Zionist movement among Jews, evangelical Protestants have been working out interpretations of the Biblical prophecies of the “End Times” based largely on the Book of Revelations at the end of the Christian Bible, and prophecies found in the Jewish scriptures in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel and some others. Roughly speaking, they concluded on the basis of their study of these books that the Jews would return to the Holy Land and establish a new Jewish state there. In time, though surrounded by hostile neighbors and threatened by powers like Russia, this state would rebuild the Temple. Once that was rebuilt, the real apocalyptic countdown would begin and a series of wars and tribulations would sweep the earth before Jesus triumphantly returns for the Last Judgement.

The degree to which the history has conformed to the early stages of these predictions was a powerful factor in the rise of evangelical religion in the United States during the twentieth century, and the impact grew after 1967 when the Israelis stunned the world by capturing the ancient city and Temple Mount from Jordanian forces.

Any sign that the Temple issue is moving to the fore in Israeli politics today will engage the attention of evangelical and Pentecostal Protestants around the world. In Africa, Brazil, the United States and many other places, this news, combined with the stories about unrest in the Arab world, will be read as a sign that the End Times are approaching and that God is at work.

A great many Muslims are also reading this week’s news and seeing signs that the End Times are coming. In Islam as in Christianity, many strains of apocalyptic thinking see the End Times as an era of apostasy and rebellion against God, of the forces of evil assembling themselves for one last battle against God and true religion. The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the bitter war between Sunnis and Shiites that now embraces the entire Fertile Crescent, and what will be seen by many as evidence that Israel is preparing to restore the Temple on a site holy to Islam: these developments will further strengthen apocalyptic, End Times thinking in the Muslim world.

This news will reverberate around the world. In places like Nigeria, where relations between Christians and Muslims (often exacerbated by tribal and economic competition) are poor, news like this helps drive the sense of conflict and nourishes the hotheads on both sides of the conflict.

As a piece of political news in Israel, Uri Ariel’s statement may not have been a big deal. But all over the world, people are pricking up their ears as word spreads. Like it or not, we in the 21st century live in an Age of Apocalypse, when hopes and fears connected to the end of the world play a growing role in world politics. Whether we are looking at greens who think that global warming will kill us off, others who fear nuclear apocalypse, Silicon Valley tech prophets predicting the Singularity, or old fashioned religious teachers predicting the Last Judgement and the End Times, we live in an era in which the end of human history as we know it is on the table.

For hundreds of millions of people all over the world, the end came a little closer this week. In our view, that’s news.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/06/apocalypse-watch-israeli-cabinet-minister-calls-for-third-temple/

No Questions Allowed Regarding New "Prisoner X"

Members of Knesset David Rotem (Yisrael Beitenu - Likud) forbade any questions regarding the allegations of a second "prisoner x" being held in an Israeli jail. MK Adi Kol (Yesh Atid) raised the issue during a session of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

In February, allegations surfaced stating that Israel was holding an unidentified man in a secret jail cell where not even the prison staff knew of his true identity. The prisoner died in 2010.

At Tuesday's session, when MK Kol raised the issue of another such prisoner, MK Rotem, the committee chairman refused any discussion on the matter.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/272021#.UdxZKaxiKHs

Lawmakers demand answers after second 'prisoner x' exposed

MK Gal-On accuses Minister Aharonovitch of giving 'false report' when he claimed 'no hidden prisoners in Israel'; MK Regev to convene Knesset's Internal Affairs Committee, MK Shai demands State comptroller probe matter

The government came under fire from lawmakers Tuesday following reports that another prisoner is held under similar conditions as "Prisoner X," an affair which exploded in February 2012.

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch gave a "false report" before the Knesset plenum when he said that "there are no hidden prisoners in the State of Israel," Meretz Chairwoman Zahava Gal-On claimed.

The exposure of the "Prisoner X" affair was advanced by Knesset members who used their parliamentary immunity to pierce the shroud of censorship before the Knesset plenum.

An official within the Public Security Ministry said in response: "The minister's statement should be read in full. From it, it can be understood that no hidden prisoners exist when there's judicial supervision."

At the time, Aharonovitch responded to the enquiring MKs before the plenum and claimed that "There are no hidden prisoners in the State of Israel. In Israel there's ample supervision and safeguarding, observance of rules and regulations, and yes, also a great concern for Israel's security, a concern which occasionally warrants great secrecy."

The minister listed the steps taken to handle the affair – including the appointment of an investigative judge who collected the material which revealed the new details on Tuesday.

The newly released investigation materials show that another prisoner is held under very similar conditions to those in Zygier's case.

"The investigation materials include specific procedures applied in the cases of Section 15's former (Yigal Amir) and that of another prisoner held in Section 13," Zygier's attorney said. Section 13 is a similar wing to Section 15, according to the attorney.

A terrifying thought

In light of Tuesday's reports, chairwoman of the Knesset's Internal Affairs Committee, MK Miri Regev (Likud), announced that she will summon members of the defense establishment and the Israeli Prison Service for a follow-up on how the lessons from the "Prisoner X" affair were implemented.


"We should all learn, especially defense elements, from the 'Prisoner X' affair, about the supervision of these sorts of prisoners – security prisoners – especially when it's an Israeli citizen," Regev said.

"As a former IDF chief censor, I can say that sometimes the attempt to hide can harm Israel's image and the management of the prison according to international standards."

Regev stressed that "the Prisoner X affair was a very clear warning sign."

MK Nachman Shai (Labor) claimed that "the news that another prisoner is held under the same conditions as 'Prisoner X' is further proof of the need for a comprehensive probe by the State comptroller.

"The Prisoner X affair raised many unanswered, painful question marks. The thought that more prisoners are held under these conditions is terrifying and chilling. Only the State comptroller has the tools to investigate this," MK Shai said.  

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4402751,00.html