Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Helen Thomas receiving Arab "courage" award tonight in Washington

The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee is honoring an anti-semite tonight for her "courage":

Protests are expected today in Washington, D.C., when an Arab-American group honors Helen Thomas, the Detroit-raised journalist whose long career ended this year when she made inflammatory remarks about Israel.

Thomas, 90, is set to receive a "courage in journalism" award today by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

She resigned in May from Hearst News Service after telling an interviewer that Jews should "get the hell out" of the Palestinian territories and go to Germany, Poland or the United States.

"By honoring Helen Thomas, who is clearly an anti-Jewish bigot, that makes a mockery of the ADC's ludicrous claim that the ADC fights discrimination," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, a New York group organizing the protests.

Of course, Thomas didn't say that Jews should get out of the territories, she said they should get the hell out of Palestine, which obviously includes Israel in her mind (she didn't say they should go to "Israel" - to her, Israel is part of Palestine populated by Polish colonizers.)

More interesting is exactly when she was slated to receive this award. There was a Mehdi award winner in 2009 - Ray Hanania - but the one before that was in 2002. I could find no news of a nomination process for the 2010 award as there was in 2009.

It seems clear that her award, and probably the idea of offering the award altogether for 2010, was decided after her anti-semitic remarks, not before. Certainly the people who decide on the award didn't feel that Thomas was deserving of such an award for "courage" in the years 2003-2008 when they decided to forgo the awards altogether.

Her "courage in journalism" award seems to be for a single act of "courage:" telling the world that she wants all Jews to be driven out of Israel.

The ADC says:

ADC National Board Chair, Dr. Safa Rifka, states, "It is befitting to have this award presented at the Gala celebrating the achievements and courage of Helen Thomas. Like Dr. Mehdi, Ms. Thomas is a courageous pioneer who is proud of her heritage and pursues the truth."

ADC President, Sara Najjar-Wilson, stated that, "No one deserves the Courage in Journalism award more than Helen Thomas. Helen's unwavering dedication to her work, love for her country, and courage in asking the tough questions that no other person dared ask, are a source of pride to all Americans."

It appears that mainstream Arabs - ironically, especially the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee - are not the least bit embarrassed by Thomas' bigotry, and in fact they are celebrating it under the rubric of suddenly calling her "courageous."

12 acres of West Bank land burned - by "peace activists"

From YNet:

Twelve anarchists – five Israelis and seven foreign nationals – were arrested by security forces Thursday morning on suspicion that they had set fire to a field owned by Jewish settlers.

The fire consumed some 50 dunams (about 12 acres) of land near the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin.

The incident began at around 8 am when a group of 30 anarchists, accompanied by a number of photographers from the Al-Jazeera television network, arrived at the site. The anarchists set the field on fire and planted olive trees in the torched soil.

According to the settlers, the method is commonly used to take over land. "When the olive trees grow the Civil Administration has a difficult time determining who the land belongs to," one of them said.

The grove has been set on fire three times over the past few weeks by anarchists.

The disputed land is located some 100 meters (330 feet) from Bat Ayin. "These lands have been under Jewish ownership since 1934," said Yaki Morag, the head of security at the settlement. "However, we have no claims to these fields and we do not plan on cultivating them or settling on them. So we don’t understand what the frenzy is about or why they repeatedly target us.

"This has been going on for a year and a half now, on an almost weekly basis," he said. "Yesterday and the day before anarchists burned 90-year-old trees on land that belongs to the Jewish National Fund near Kfar Etzion."

In a related story, the "peace activists" denied earlier reports that they were setting fires in state lands in order to blame Jews. Instead, they said they have video showing that they are setting fires to clear land for Arabs to plant.

But they didn't deny that the fields did not belong to Arabs or that they use this as a land-grab.

Now, especially during a drought, what happens when one of those "controlled fires" gets out of control? The same people call the media and blame the Jews!

In that earlier story, Ma'an posts a bizarre video meant to support allegations of Jewish arson - but the video shows a few Jews doing absolutely nothing. If you want to waste 79 seconds of your life, check out Ma'an's evil settlers:

(h/t EoL)

Morning links

WaPo: [t]he Obama administration's efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks are less evocative of true grit than of desperate improvisation.
Toameh: Why Many Palestinian Arabs don't miss Arafat
YNet: A small victory against an anti-Israeli boycott
Middle East Forum: Islamists' twin assaults on free speech
The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

My Right Word in a new series of photos from pre-state Israel. Here are the British engaging in some collective punishment.
And, if you have a few hours to spend, you can read the 162-page October issue of Strategic Assessment, from Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. It looks really good.

PMW: PalArab kids on TV saying "The Jews killed Arafat"

(h/t Silke, Israel Matzav, JCPA's Daily Alert)

New EoZ video: The horrors of refugee camps

Special thanks to Richard Falk (yes, that Richard Falk) for providing the narration.

No comment

I had missed this picture:

A Palestinian child points his toy gun at a mural daubed with red paint giving the impression of the character being shot in the heart, at an amusement park on the outskirts of Gaza City, on the second day of the Eid al-Fitr, as Muslim families continue to celebrate the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, on September 11, 2010.

Nice shooting

From Ma'an:

Israeli aircraft targeted Gaza's most populous city Wednesday, killing two Palestinian men.

Witnesses said a drone strike targeted a white Subaru just off central Gaza City's Al-Wehda street, leaving a hole in the ground.

The car was ripped in half, the back blown 10 meters from the front with other pieces littering the street. Power lines were damaged in the blast. Black stains from smoke and fire could be seen on an adjacent building.

The strike came at sundown on the second night of the Eid Al Adha holiday, in a busy section of the city.

Awful! Terrible! Israel targeting random brothers just going for a drive, and in a busy section of the city!

But...did anyone else even get injured? Apparently not.

And were they just innocent civilians? Apparently not, as Ma'an reluctantly goes on to say:

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the assassination, which was the second in two weeks.

She said "a senior operative belonging to the terrorist group Army of Islam was targeted" because the group, a radical Islamist organization, was plotting to attack Israeli citizens in the Sinai.

Medics also said the two casualties were likely members of the Army of Islam.

Last week Egypt arrested some 25 members of the same group in the Sinai, not only because of threats to Israelis but also threats to US peacekeeping troops in the Sinai.

Juxtaposition

Salam Fayyad - the most moderate Palestinian leader ever, untainted by terror - gave a speech on the twin occasions of Eid al Adha and the 22nd anniversary of the PLO's declaration of a Palestinian Arab state in 1988.

He gave a brief history of the "struggle", and in Ma'an's words:

Fayyad stressed that the Declaration of Independence came as a message of Palestinian peace addressed to the whole world, saying that in Palestine, people want to live in peace and security on the territory of an independent state. This was a historic and painful concession for self-determination, with the return of its refugees to their homes from which they were displaced, and the establishment of an independent state on the borders of June 1967 with its capital Jerusalem, a state of all the Palestinians to develop a national identity and cultural rights, and enjoy full equality of rights and duties, maintained by religious and political beliefs and human dignity, in a democratic system based on freedom of opinion, freedom to form political parties.

Before Fayyad juxtaposed the concepts, I had never before put together the "historic concession" of recognizing Israel and the insistence of the "right to return" as starkly as Fayyad did. In reality, they are intertwined.

In 1988, when the PLO said it supported a two-state solution, not too many people spoke about the "right of return" in the West. Even though people were very skeptical about Arafat and the PLO, it was assumed that the idea of millions of Arabs moving to Israel is simply rhetoric and that if one day peace would be at hand, that issue would easily be resolved.

To Arafat, though, the concept of "return" was the Trojan horse that allowed him to make his "historic concession."

It is now 22 years later. Arafat is dead and a supposedly new "moderate" leadership has taken over the West Bank. In those 22 years, the number of "refugees" has more than doubled. Yet for about two-thirds of those 22 years, the Palestinian Arabs have had some measure of autonomy to be able to not only mainstream the "refugees" in their territory but also to champion the idea that the Palestinian Arabs living in camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should want to move to their state. The so-called "moderates" have not publicly moderated their daily public calls for their brethren to move back to their nonexistent homes that they never lived in.

For 22 years, they have not been trying to solve that problem - they have been trying, and succeeding, to exacerbate it.

And even if a state is erected in the West Bank, and even if agreements are signed for a symbolic number of people to "return" and the rest get compensated, these same moderate leaders will not object one bit when their more radical brethren insist that the agreement is null and void and a new campaign of terror must be initiated against Israel to correct that injustice. (Very possibly that campaign will start from within Israel.) The playbook that has worked for them once will be tried again - a couple of decades of terror followed by more world pressure on the terrorized.

If you ask even the most moderate Palestinian Arabs their true feelings, most will tell you that Israel is a temporary blip of history, something that will come and go like the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades. They regard their eventual takeover of the land as inevitable, and their supposed rights to that land as inviolable. They might sign a paper to temporarily set aside that right as a stepping stone to obtaining it in full, but they will never, ever give it up.

When Fayyad or Abbas talk about the influx of millions of people to Israel, they are not posturing. They really mean it. And it is not necessarily a conscious implementation of Arafat's "stages" plan to destroy Israel; they regard it as a historic tsunami that will eventually result in Jews in what they regard as their natural state - being chased from country to country, begging for dhimmi status in exchange for their lives.

The 1988 Time article I linked to above has a section that is bitterly humorous:

If the Palestinians reject an offer reasonable people can identify as forthcoming and courageous -- as they have rejected every attempt at compromise for almost a century -- no one could fault Israel for then saying, "Shalom. Come to talk to us again when you've grown up."

As Abbas proudly pointed out last week, the so-called "moderates" have not moved one inch in their positions since the mass murderer Arafat first made his "historic concessions" in 1988. The extreme positions on "return," Jerusalem and 1949 armistice lines are identical. Yet by dint of repetition, they are still considered "moderate."

Meanwhile, Israel has done exactly what Time recommended, multiple times. And the result is the exact opposite of Time's assumption. Everyone faults Israel for not being forthcoming and courageous enough, and no one faults the Palestinian Arabs for their intransigence.

So what has changed since 1988?

DVD coming out in 2011: "Iranium"

Trailers:

British scientists resign from "anti-semitic" union

From the Washington Post education blog:

Denis Noble is an Oxford University biologist with a global reputation in the scientific community. He resigned from England’s University and College Union, saying the organization was either anti-Semitic or tolerated it.

Noble held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University from 1984-2004 and is now professor emeritus and co-director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960. Here is Noble’s open resignation letter, addressed to Sally Hunt, general secretary of the union, and published in the Oxford magazine:

Dear Sally

I joined the AUT nearly 50 years ago as a young assistant lecturer at University College London. When I retired from my Oxford professorship in 2004 I chose to retain my membership – although I no longer stood to gain from the union’s negotiating any improvements in salary or conditions of service – because I believe in trade unions and thought that by remaining a member I would, in some small measure, help colleagues. But the behaviour of UCU over the past several years has made it impossible for me to continue, and I now resign my membership.

In a letter I wrote to you over a year ago, which has remained unanswered and unacknowledged, I said that UCU’s repeated conference decisions to discriminate against certain colleagues (Israelis) on the grounds of their nationality were unacceptable. Such discrimination is contrary to the universally recognised norms of academic practice, as set out (for example) in the Statutes of the International Council of Science (ICSU). I also sent a letter as President of IUPS, which adheres to ICSU. Nobody in the world of learning can take seriously a professional organisation that purports to represent academic staff but which entertains proposals to discriminate whether it be on grounds of sex, race, national origin or other characteristics that are irrelevant to academic excellence. Nonetheless our union has voted repeatedly in favour of such discrimination, and those who have been discriminated against are always Israelis. The wording of the discriminatory resolutions has sometimes been contorted for legal reasons, but the intention has been transparent: to hold Israeli colleagues responsible for, and punish them for, the actions of their government via a type of reasoning (guilt by association) that is never applied to the academics of any other country. Of course, I accept that the Israeli government is guilty of human-rights violations, and I accept that the union is entitled to criticise it. But many other governments in the world are also guilty of human-rights violations, often far more egregious than those committed by Israel, and yet Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) have never been endorsed by the Annual Congress of UCU against any other country.

It is instructive to compare the motion about China adopted by Congress at its 2010 meeting with one of those about Israel. (I choose these examples because both countries have been in occupation of the territories of a different ethnic group for many years and both have encouraged their citizens to settle in the territories thus occupied). The motion on China, while asserting that UCU “will continue to condemn abuses of human rights of trade unionists and others”, recognised “the need to encourage collegial dialogue” with Chinese institutions. By contrast, a motion on Israel approved in the same session of Congress reaffirmed its support for BDS, sought to establish an annual international conference on BDS and a BDS website, and severed all relations with the Histadrut, the Israeli counterpart to the TUC. There are many countries in the world whose governments are guilty of atrocities: there is no other country in the world whose national trade union organisation is boycotted by UCU.

I find it impossible not to ask myself why UCU exhibits this obsession with Israel. The obvious explanation – that the union is institutionally anti-semitic – is so unpleasant that I have till recently been unwilling to accept it, but I changed my mind after witnessing the fate at the 2010 Congress of the motion of my local branch (University of Oxford) about Bongani Masuku. As you know, Masuku was invited to a meeting on BDS hosted by the union in London last December. Some months earlier, he had made a speech during a rally at the University of the Witwatersrand. This speech has been described by the South African Human Rights Commission (the body set up by the Constitution to promote inter-racial harmony after the end of apartheid) as including “numerous anti-semitic remarks which were seen to have incited violence and hatred”. The Oxford motion debated at Congress did not allege that the union invited Masuku despite knowing his views; instead it merely invited Congress to dissociate itself from Masuku’s views. This was the minimum that UCU could be expected to do to reassure members like me that we still belong. That this motion was rejected by a large majority makes it clear to me that the union either regards anti-semitic views as acceptable or, at least, has no objection to their being expressed in public by the national official of a fraternal trade union organisation. I do not wish to remain a member of such a union.

Yours sincerely

Denis Noble CBE, FRS

Michael Yudkin and David Smith, also Oxford scientists with global reputations, have joined their colleague in resignation, with a letter in the Oxford magazine:

Sir – Like Denis Noble, we have been a member of UCU and its predecessor AUT, for more than 40 years. Like him, we remained a member after retiring a few years ago from our University posts.

The facts set out in Denis’s letter to Sally Hunt show beyond dispute that UCU is now institutionally anti-semitic. We too have resigned our membership of the union.

Yours Sincerely
Michael Yudkin, Kellogg College
David Smith, Department of Pharmacology

Another earlier speech to the UCU, by David Hirsh, spells out in great detail many, many examples of institutional anti-Israel and anti-semitic actions and words by the UCU as well as excerpts from others who have resigned because of its policies.

(h/t Callie)

Gabriel Latner's speech goes viral

From JPost:

When Cambridge University’s prestigious student debating society hosted a debate last month on the motion “Israel is a rogue state,” Israel’s supporters bleakly anticipated another hostile, demonizing and divisive event, and braced, too, for acceptance of the motion in the final vote.

But the motion was surprisingly and firmly defeated, with 74 percent of the votes opposing it.

At the root of that thoroughly unexpected result was the extraordinary content of the speech delivered by one of the proposers of the motion – content that subsequently prompted students unsympathetic to Israel to protest the result and demand an apology from the Cambridge Union Society.

For Gabriel Latner, a 19-year-old, second-year law student from Toronto, advanced an argument in support of the motion that “Israel is a rogue state” that would have made any Israeli diplomat proud.

Since that remarkable October 21 night at the Cambridge Union Society, Latner has been celebrated by the pro- Israel camp, and vilified by the not so pro-Israel camp. His performance has been discussed heatedly on Facebook and on a range of blogs; he’s become a figure of interest on campuses; and he has been the focus on ongoing interest at the Union, which initially banned him for life for allegedly swearing at Booth at the event, then reinstated him after he apologized.

The young man himself says he has been somewhat shocked at the attention.

“The fact that a rough draft of my speech went viral surprised me, I really didn’t think anyone would care,” he told The Jerusalem Post this week. “I’ve been getting on average 15+ emails and Facebook messages a day since the debate – some positive, some not.
So how did Latner, arguing that evening for the motion that “Israel is rogue state,” become a new hero for supporters of Israel, and a villain for the detractors? He had applied to the Cambridge Union Society, which had circulated a request for student volunteers to participate in the debate, with the offer to speak for either side, and was – rather to his surprise – invited to appear for the proposers of the motion.

He was not required to submit any of his content ahead of the event.

Latner, who said he comes from a Reconstructionist Jewish background and has been to Israel several times, including reportedly as an IDF volunteer, said he was galvanized by a strong desire to win – even though, as it turned out, “winning” on behalf of Israel meant his side losing the debate.

Describing himself as a “classical civil libertarian,” Latner set out his argument to show that Israel is indeed a “rogue state” – but in the very best sense of the term. And he did so, in a 10-minute address before the approximately 800-strong audience, by highlighting the anomalous nature of Israel.

Speaking to the Post this week, Latner stressed that “My speech wasn’t motivated by ‘pro-Israel’ or ‘anti-Palestinian’ sentiment.

I’m not an Islamophobe, even though some Islamophobes who read my speech think I am. I’m not a neo-conservative, even though critics of my speech think I am, as do some of my supporters. I’m all about freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom in general. I’m a civil libertarian, and a fan of democracy,” he said.

“The philosophical underpinning of my support for Israel, and for the Palestinians for that matter, isn’t based on my Jewishness or any historical arguments: I believe that each person has an innate right to self-determination, and national, cultural, regional or political groups have the right to exercise that personal autonomy as a collective.

"Zionism, as well as Palestinian national aspirations, is simply an expression of the underlying philosophical maxim that people are born free and that each of us has the right to plot our individual course through life,” he added.

In the aftermath of the debate, a group of student union societies – which included the Palestinian, Socialist Workers, Arab, Islam, Pakistan and Turkish societies – sent a letter of protest to Cambridge Union Society President James Counsell.

“How can the Union justify inviting a speaker who clearly lacks any credibility to speak on behalf of the proposition?” they asked in the letter. “Who was responsible for selecting Latner to be on the program? Undermining the fairness of debate in such a fashion can only have negative consequences for the reputation and credibility of the Union itself.”

Calling for an investigation, the signatories said: “Our issue is not with the outcome of the debate, but with the unprofessional manner in which the debate itself took place. The events which transpired undermined its credibility, and also that of the Union. As such a prestigious and renowned society, we are perturbed by the fact that the basic values that the Union stands for were not upheld. It shows a great deal of disrespect to Union members and the other speakers involved in this debacle.”

The signatories also called for “a full and unreserved public apology for the offence caused by sanctioning a debate that lacked the basic and necessary prerequisites of balance and fairness, and for the lack of respect that entails to the members of the Cambridge Union... In addition, we would like assurances that for future events an equal opportunity is given to the relevant societies in suggesting speakers that best represent their cause.”

But the Cambridge Union itself said it had received “no letters from any groups regarding the phrasing of the motion prior to the debate.”

It noted: “The Cambridge Union tries to spark interest amongst its membership by producing pithy motions, as is evident from other debates this term such as ‘Is Islam a Threat to the West,’ and ‘This House Hates Human Rights.’ However, the caliber of our guest speakers should dispel any notion that we seek to simplify extremely complex contemporary issues.”

This was one of the first blogs to mention the story, and the first one to format his speech in proper paragraphs. Even though that was two weeks ago, my post on the speech is still the most popular post every day, and the most popular post I have ever written since Google started keeping stats in July - over 7000 direct hits and counting.

Because of that, Latner will be one of many examples to be analyzed in my Hasbara talk at YU next month.

JVP: Almost too stupid for satire

From Rebel Pundit:

On Sunday November 14th, 2010, Jewish Voice for Peace a left wing activist group lead a protest in downtown Chicago against Israel and the United States. Some members of the organized protest did not even know how to explain the message of their signs, one of whom simply resorting to calling me a racist. Others accuse Israel of falsifying the video footage of weapons aboard the supposed humanitarian Gaza Flotila. One member of the group even voices a strong opposition to Israel’s right to exist and uses profane sexual slurs against Mrs. Netanyahu the wife of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli PM. After further investigation into the group’s activities, they are also organizing an event to support another activist group known as Anarchists Against the Wall, and Socialist activist Noam Chomsky is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace’s Advisory Board.

Now that you see what the Jewish Voice for Peace is really about, you can look at the nonsensical statement from their new initiative, called "Young, Jewish and Proud."It starts this way:

I. we exist.

We exist. We are everywhere. We speak and love and dream in every language. We pray three times a day or only during the high holidays or when we feel like we really need to or not at all. We are punks and students and parents and janitors and Rabbis and freedom fighters. We are your children, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren. We embrace diaspora, even when it causes us a great deal of pain. We are the rubble of tangled fear, the deliverance of values. We are human. We are born perfect. We assimilate, or we do not. We are not apathetic. We know and name persecution when we see it. Occupation has constricted our throats and fattened our tongues. We are feeding each other new words. We have family, we build family, we are family. We re-negotiate. We atone. We re-draw the map every single day. We travel between worlds. This is not our birthright, it is our necessity.

I think "we have no clear ideas except for the fact that we hate Israel" would sum it up a little better, but Divest This has a masterful parody of their statement. Like all good parodies, it contains more truth than what it is making fun of:

I. we interrupt.

We shout, we yell, we interrupt when other people are speaking. Publically. We wear necklaces made of olives and have slightly creepy smiles. One of our grandparents was Jewish. Or not. You must take us seriously. We are. We be. We do. Do-be-do-be-do. We post photos of ourselves misbehaving on our Facebook pages. And thus, we exist. We are everywhere. And nowhere. Although we are mostly in Northern California, with about a dozen of us in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Including that doofus who tried picking me up at the last Jewish Voice for Peace square dance (yuck!). We speak in sentence fragments and mix our metaphors, fattening our tongues on the rubble of your nephews. We must do what we do. For if we didn’t tweet after we act naughty in front of grown ups, we would cease to be.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t My Right Word and Barry via emails)

The parliamentarian who wants to destroy her own state

The Islamo-Nazism blog notices an amazing interview translated by MEMRI (video here):

Following are excerpts from an interview with Israeli Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi, which aired on Al-Hiwar TV on October 9, 2010:

Hanin Zoabi: The national plan of our party, the National Democratic Assembly, consists of a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, and a non-Zionist “state of all its citizens” within the 1948 borders. Note this. In Israel they say to us: “Your solution is more dangerous than the one-state solution, because you want a state and a half.” In Israel they say that we want another Palestinian state. This is the plan of the Assembly Party: a fully sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, and a non-Zionist, non-Jewish state within the 1948 borders...

Interviewer: To which the refugees will return. That is an important condition.

Hanin Zoabi: This is a basic condition. Of course it includes the return of the refugees.

Interviewer: In other words, you oppose the so-called two-state solution.
Hanin Zoabi: Ultimately, there will be two states, but not like Livni and Netanyahu want.

Interviewer: Nor the two-state solution of the PA...

Hanin Zoabi: No. Definitely not. Our solution is fundamentally different with regard to the 1948 borders.

[...

Our solution will open up the possibility for other solutions, which may later be imposed by the reality, like the solution of one binational state.

[...]

Interviewer: I would like to know how you, within the 1948 borders, view the PA. I would like an honest answer. Do you, Hanin Zoabi, say “President Shimon Peres” or “President Mahmoud Abbas”? Who would you describe more as your president?

Hanin Zoabi: Shimon Peres is not my president. There is no room for comparison. Despite all the political disagreements [with Mahmoud Abbas]...

Sometimes it seems that Israel takes the concept of democracy a bit too far. No other nation would tolerate a member of their parliament actively, and admittedly, trying to destroy it.

It staggers the imagination. Zoabi should be in prison, not Knesset.

Strong indications that Stuxnet targeted Iranian nuclear plants

Wired magazine reports:

New and important evidence found in the sophisticated “Stuxnet” malware targeting industrial control systems provides strong hints that the code was designed to sabotage nuclear plants, and that it employs a subtle sabotage strategy that involves briefly speeding up and slowing down physical machinery at a plant over a span of weeks.

“It indicates that [Stuxnet's creators] wanted to get on the system and not be discovered and stay there for a long time and change the process subtly, but not break it,” says Liam O Murchu, researcher with Symantec Security Response, which published the new information in an updated paper on Friday.

The Stuxnet worm was discovered in June in Iran, and has infected more than 100,000 computer systems worldwide. At first blush, it appeared to be a standard, if unusually sophisticated, Windows virus designed to steal data, but experts quickly determined it contained targeted code designed to attack Siemens Simatic WinCC SCADA systems. SCADA systems, short for “supervisory control and data acquisition,” are control systems that manage pipelines, nuclear plants and various utility and manufacturing equipment.

Researchers determined that Stuxnet was designed to intercept commands sent from the SCADA system to control a certain function at a facility, but until Symantec’s latest research, it was not known what function was being targeted for sabotage. Symantec still has not determined what specific facility or type of facility Stuxnet targeted, but the new information lends weight to speculation that Stuxnet was targeting the Bushehr or Natanz nuclear facilities in Iran as a means to sabotage Iran’s nascent nuclear program.

According to Symantec, Stuxnet targets specific frequency-converter drives — power supplies used to control the speed of a device, such as a motor. The malware intercepts commands sent to the drives from the Siemens SCADA software, and replaces them with malicious commands to control the speed of a device, varying it wildly, but intermittently.

The malware, however, doesn’t sabotage just any frequency converter. It inventories a plant’s network and only springs to life if the plant has at least 33 frequency converter drives made by Fararo Paya in Teheran, Iran, or by the Finland-based Vacon.

Even more specifically, Stuxnet targets only frequency drives from these two companies that are running at high speeds — between 807 Hz and 1210 Hz. Such high speeds are used only for select applications. Symantec is careful not to say definitively that Stuxnet was targeting a nuclear facility, but notes that “frequency converter drives that output over 600 Hz are regulated for export in the United States by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as they can be used for uranium enrichment.”

“There’s only a limited number of circumstances where you would want something to spin that quickly -– such as in uranium enrichment,” said O Murchu. “I imagine there are not too many countries outside of Iran that are using an Iranian device. I can’t imagine any facility in the U.S. using an Iranian device,” he added.

The malware appears to have begun infecting systems in January 2009. In July of that year, the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks posted an announcement saying that an anonymous source had disclosed that a “serious” nuclear incident had recently occurred at Natanz. Information published by the Federation of American Scientists in the United States indicates that something may indeed have occurred to Iran’s nuclear program. Statistics from 2009 show that the number of enriched centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4,700 to about 3,900 around the time the nuclear incident WikiLeaks mentioned would have occurred.

Researchers who have spent months reverse-engineering the Stuxnet code say its level of sophistication suggests that a well-resourced nation-state is behind the attack. It was initially speculated that Stuxnet could cause a real-world explosion at a plant, but Symantec’s latest report makes it appear that the code was designed for subtle sabotage. Additionally, the worm’s pinpoint targeting indicates the malware writers had a specific facility or facilities in mind for their attack, and have extensive knowledge of the system they were targeting.

Stuxnet is very specific about what it does once it finds its target facility. If the number of drives from the Iranian firm exceeds the number from the Finnish firm, Stuxnet unleashes one sequence of events. If the Finnish drives outnumber the Iranian ones, a different sequence is initiated.

Once Stuxnet determines it has infected the targeted system or systems, it begins intercepting commands to the frequency drives, altering their operation.

“Stuxnet changes the output frequency for short periods of time to 1410Hz and then to 2Hz and then to 1064Hz,” writes Symantec’s Eric Chien on the company’s blog. “Modification of the output frequency essentially sabotages the automation system from operating properly. Other parameter changes may also cause unexpected effects.”

“That’s another indicator that the amount of applications where this would be applicable are very limited,” O Murchu says. “You would need a process running continuously for more than a month for this code to be able to get the desired effect. Using nuclear enrichment as an example, the centrifuges need to spin at a precise speed for long periods of time in order to extract the pure uranium. If those centrifuges stop to spin at that high speed, then it can disrupt the process of isolating the heavier isotopes in those centrifuges … and the final grade of uranium you would get out would be a lower quality.”

O Murchu said that there is a long wait time between different stages of malicious processes initiated by the code — in some cases more than three weeks — indicating that the attackers were interested in sticking around undetected on the target system, rather than blowing something up in a manner that would attract notice.

Nice.

Let's hope that there are other specifically targeted Stuxnets out there that haven't been discovered yet.

NATO destroying thousands of homes. NYT applauds.

You know how when Israel destroys or damages houses in the course of war, it is considered a war crime? And groups like HRW cannot for the life of them find any justification for such behavior?

Apparently, when NATO performs wholesale destruction of civilian houses on a huge scale, it is obviously to save lives.

From the New York Times:

To Save Lives, NATO Is Razing Booby-Trapped Afghan Homes

In the newly won districts around this southern city, American forces are encountering empty homes and farm buildings left so heavily booby-trapped by Taliban insurgents that the Americans have been systematically destroying hundreds of them, according to local Afghan authorities.

The campaign, a major departure from NATO practice in past military operations, is intended to reduce civilian and military casualties by removing the threat of booby traps and denying Taliban insurgents hiding places and fighting positions, American military officials said.

While it has widespread support among Afghan officials and even some residents, and has been accompanied by an equally determined effort to hand out cash compensation to homeowners, other local people have complained that the demolitions have gone far beyond what is necessary.

...In recent weeks, using armored bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and even airstrikes, American troops have taken to destroying hundreds of them, by a conservative estimate, with some estimates running into the thousands.

“We don’t know the accurate number of homes destroyed, but it’s huge,” said Zalmai Ayubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa.

The Times goes on to approvingly mention that the military has to create their own roads, often bulldozing houses and farms, to avoid mines.

They even have a picture of soldiers blowing up trees to improve their line of fire.

When Israel does anything remotely like this, on a much smaller scale, the NYT first quotes sympathetic Arabs who have lost their homes, then frightening statistics about the scale of the wanton destruction, and then in paragraph 9 a statement by the IDF that the homes had explosives or were booby trapped. But here, the people who protest their homes being destroyed are the ones who get the Paragraph 9 treatment. Or, in this case, paragraphs 25 and 26, the very last paragraphs of the article:

Abdul Rahim Khan, 50, a tribal elder from Spirwan in Panjwai District, claimed that in many cases the American troops had been destroying empty homes, even when there were not any explosives inside. However, military officers pointed out, searching empty homes was often too dangerous.

“People are not happy with the compensation,” said a tribal elder in Zhare, who said he was afraid to give his name for publication. “Compensation is just kicking dirt in our eyes.”

As Meryl Yourish says, it is Israeli Double Standard Time!

(h/t Zach)

Anti-semitic Saudi sheikh spouts off in front of 300,000 in Mecca

From Arab News:

Imam and Khatib at the Grand Mosque Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais warned Muslims against drifting away from the noble values of Islamic culture.

"A people achieve glory by holding fast to the noble values of their culture. In the absence of such values, deviant ideologies threatening global peace and stability emerge," Al-Sudais said while addressing hundreds of thousands of worshippers that filled the Grand Mosque and its squares for the Eid Al-Adha congregation and the millions watching around the world Tuesday morning.

The imam also warned against being the victims of the global media controlled by Zionist extremists.

He cited the strategy of the global media, which is under the influence of the Zionist lobbies, to downplay or ignore the suffering of the Palestinians worsened day after day by occupation forces that deny them food and medicine, raze their homes and Judaize the features of Islam and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

A captive audience of hundreds of thousands of Muslims listening to anti-semitic stereotypes - and not one thought he was out of line.

This was tame for al-Sudais. From the BBC in 2005:

Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, Imam, Ka'ba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia: The history of Islam is the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony. Muslims must exemplify the true image of Islam in their interaction with other communities.

John Ware: Sheikh Sudais is a leading Imam from the great mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.

He had one voice for his Western audience - another for his followers in Saudi.

Sheikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais: The worst ... of the enemies of Islam are those... whom he... made monkeys and pigs, the aggressive Jews and oppressive Zionists and those that follow them: the callers of the trinity and the cross worshippers... those influenced by the rottenness of their ideas, and the poison of their cultures the followers of secularism... How can we talk sweetly when the Hindus and the idol worshippers indulge in their overwhelming hatred against our brothers... in Muslim Kashmir...

'Eid in the Holy Mosque. Peace, love, brotherhood, forgiveness, and incitement.

Sudais' statement about "Zionist" control of the media, and Israel denying Palestinian Arabs food and medicine has been completely ignored by every Western media outlet. The Saudi Gazette details his speech and specifically leaves out the part about Jews and Israel.

One possible reason: no non-Muslim reporter is allowed anywhere nearby. So we have a bit of self-censorship as well by Muslim reporters who want to downplay or ignore the rantings of the sheikh.