Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Terrorist Killed While Preparing a Bomb

(IsraelNN.com) PA sources reported during the night that terrorist Majdi Salah was killed in a village in the Ramallah area during the night when a bomb he was preparing exploded. According to the report, his parents were critically injured in the explosion."

Tom Lantos slams Egypt - in Egypt

US congressman Lantos criticizes Egypt on Palestinian weapons smuggling:

"CAIRO (AFP) - United States Congressman Tom Lantos accused Egypt of not doing enough to halt the smuggling of weapons by Palestinian militants across the Egyptian border.

'I do not believe that the Egyptian government has done enough historically,' Lantos, the high-ranking Democratic Party member on the House International Relations Committee, told a news conference in Cairo.

Israel has repeatedly accused the Palestinians of using tunnels dug under the Rafah border crossing to smuggle weapons from Egypt for attacks against Israel.

'I believe Egypt has the capacity to shut down these tunnels,' said Lantos but added: 'I am totally opposed to terrorists obtaining weapons whether through tunnels or through some other means.'

Lantos held a series of meetings in Egypt with the Egyptian leadership, including President Hosni Mubarak, intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman, presidential advisor Osama al-Baz and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.

He said much of the discussions 'related to our joint efforts...to terminate this murderous activity through the tunnels at the Gaza border'.

He added: 'I am strongly and irrevocably opposed to arming terrorists,' referring to Palestinian militant groups.

Lantos' visit to Egypt coincided with a harsh campaign against him in the semi-official press that accused him of being unfriendly and biased towards Egypt.

The press took particular issue with the congressman's recent proposal for a reduction in US military aid to Egypt, 'which represents only less than half of what Israel gets', according to an editorial in the semi-official al-Akhbar daily that described Lantos as being 'shameless.'

Lantos had proposed directing some of the military assistance Egypt receives annually from the US for economic and other purposes.

'The world is changing, the demands and requirements of Egyptian society are changing,' he argued. 'It is clearly in the interests of the people of Egypt, whose prime needs at the moment are in the educational and medical fields and not in additional high-tech weaponary,' Lantos added.

The US Congressman's visit to Egypt was the second leg of a regional tour. He arrived in Egypt Monday from Libya and was scheduled to travel to Syria, Jordan and Israel.

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Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials

More evidence that WMD may have gone to Syria. The pieces are fitting together, slowly.
Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials
Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.
The recent discovery by the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam's system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.
The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.
"If you leave it to border guards, then the border guards could stop the trucks and extract their 10 percent, just like the mob would do," said a Pentagon official who asked not to be named. "Saddam's family was controlling the black market, and it was a good opportunity for them to make money."
Sources said Saddam and his family grew rich from this black market and personally dispatched his dreaded intelligence service to the border to make sure the shipments got through.
The ISG is a 1,400-member team organized by the Pentagon and CIA to hunt for Saddam's suspected stockpiles of WMD, such as chemical and biological agents. So far, the search has failed to find such stockpiles, which were the main reason for President Bush ordering the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam.
But there is evidence of unusually heavy truck traffic into Syria in the days before the attack, and with it, speculation that some of the trucks contained the banned weapons.
"Of course, it's always suspicious," the Pentagon official said.
The source said the ISG has confirmed the practice of IIS agents going to the border. Investigators also have heard from Iraqi sources that this maneuver was done days before the war at a time of brisk cross-border movements.

Sleeping With the Saudi Enemy

Sleeping With the Saudi Enemy

Can't copy and paste it but a very disturbing article on how close we are with a very big potential enemy.

South Africa selling uranium to Iran

South Africa, Iran discuss defense cooperation

South Africa's Defense Minister Patrick "Terror" Lekota and his Iranian counterpart Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani met on Monday to discuss an expansion of mutual cooperation between the two countries, especially in the domain of defense, the Islamic Republic's news agency (IRNA) reported.

At the conclusion of the meeting the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding on bilateral cooperation, which included an arrangement for South Africa to sell uranium to Iran, Channel 1 TV reported.

A South African spokesman for the Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the claim.

SA Defense Minister Lekota stressed that making peaceful use of nuclear energy "is the legitimate right of the Islamic Republic," the IRNA reported on Tuesday.

US learning urban warfare tactics from IDF

"IDF teaches US soldiers guerilla response"

In order to improve their skills and learn firsthand tactics adopted by the IDF in urban and guerilla warfare in the West Bank and Gaza, US Army units are undergoing training in the special anti-terror school located in the Adam base near Modi'in.

After completing their training, the units will return to Iraq. The IDF Spokesman said, "The army does not comment on cooperation with foreign armies," but did not deny US forces were currently training in Israel.

In November last year, US generals visited Israel to study tactics adopted by the IDF in its ongoing war against terror. A report in the New York Times claimed US military officials were studying the tactics and strategy used by IDF forces operating in the West Bank and Gaza within densely populated Palestinian areas.

US Army officials later adopted the IDF's policy of demolishing houses belonging to terrorists suspected of attacking US troops in Iraq, set up checkpoints similar to those in the West Bank, deployed sniffer dogs to seek out explosives, and in a number of cases arrested relatives of terror suspects to glean information.

Last year, a senior OC Ground Forces officer told The Jerusalem Post the IDF will rent out the new urban warfare training center located at Tze'elim in the Negev to foreign armies in an attempt to revive the slashed defense budget. Since then, a number of countries, including Germany, have sent units to the center.

The center, expected to be completely operational within two years, is considered the largest of its kind in the world and boasts a digital battlefield. Even while it is under construction entire divisions, infantry, and armored units will be able to train without using their vehicles.

5 Palestinians killed in IAF missile strike on Hamas house

Five Palestinians were killed shortly after midnight Wednesday when IAF helicopters fired a missile at the Gaza City house of a Hamas member.

Hospital officials said seven people were wounded, four critically. Palestinians said the house is in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, a stronghold of Islamic militants, and belonged to Hamas member Ahmed Jabari. Residents said several men were in the first floor apartment at the time of the explosion.

Hospital officials said all the dead were adults. Two were Hamas members and another was with Islamic Jihad. The others were not immediately identified.

Dozens of Hamas members gathered at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded were taken.

Many al-Qaeda camp graduates live freely in Canada

"A lot" of Canadians trained at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and some still live freely in Canada, Abdurahman Khadr testified at a court hearing at which he revealed chilling new details about Canadian terror suspects and his father's ties to Osama bin Laden's training camps.

Mr. Khadr, a 21-year-old Toronto man who underwent weapons and explosives training at four camps in Afghanistan, said in testimony made public yesterday that he had given CIA agents the names of several Canadians who trained at camps such as Khalden.

"I know a lot of people that are living in the West and are living in Canada, and that live their everyday life now and are not under arrest or anything, that have been to Khalden," Mr. Khadr testified at a July 13 hearing in Montreal.

"I had a lot of friends that were Canadians that came to Afghanistan and went to training," Mr. Khadr said. "Some of them are dead now and some of them are back in Canada and some of them are under arrest."

His contention that graduates of the Afghan camps are living normal lives in Canada comes as U.S. officials are concerned that al-Qaeda might try to use Canada as a staging ground for a terrorist strike some time before November's presidential election.

How PLO suppresses the news (Jeff Jacoby)

How PLO suppresses the news
TWO DAYS after the liberation of Baghdad, a senior news executive at CNN disclosed that his network had for years been sanitizing its reports from Iraq. In an op-ed column titled "The news we kept to ourselves," Jordan Eason confessed that CNN routinely chose not to report on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's regime. To have revealed the truth, he wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

Suppressing news by threatening reporters with violence or death is one of the dirty little secrets of Middle East journalism. In his 1989 memoir "From Beirut to Jerusalem," Thomas Friedman wrote that "physical intimidation" was a major impediment to honest reporting from Beirut during the years when southern Lebanon was in the grip of Yasser Arafat's PLO.

Arafat's "security forces have made more than 30 arrests of journalists and editors," the Columbia Journalism Review noted in 1996.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Americans were shocked by footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets to celebrate the terrorist attacks on the United States. But those scenes disappeared from the airwaves soon after -- not because they weren't newsworthy, but because the Palestinian Authority gave orders to suppress them.

An Associated Press cameraman was summoned to a PA security office and warned not to release the material he had filmed. A top aide to Arafat told the AP's Jerusalem bureau that if the footage were aired, "we cannot guarantee the life" of the cameraman. Other news outlets were likewise ordered not to use any images of the 9/11 revelry. Most of them caved, and the images dried up.

In June, Abu Toameh reported in The Jerusalem Post that the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, an armed wing of the PLO's Fatah faction, admitted responsibility for a beating that left an Agence France Press photographer with two broken arms. In July, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate -- an Arafat front group -- warned that any reporter caught covering clashes between rival groups in Gaza would be punished severely. Just last week, armed gunmen threatened to attack journalists working for Arab satellite stations unless they stopped covering the turmoil in the Palestinian Authority.

Israel develops Web scanner that can detect terror content

Engineering faculty researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev reported yesterday that they have developed a system that can identify 95 percent of Internet pages with terrorism-related content.
The experimental system, which is being developed to detect information regarding terror activity automatically, was designed by Dr. Mark Last of the Department of Systems Information Engineering at BGU, and Prof. Abraham Kandel of the National Institute for Systems Test and Productivity, in the United States.

The system is based on the recognition of patterns in texts with terror content, based on examples from existing Internet sites. It uses these patterns to identify 'hits' by surfers on other sites with similar characteristics, in order to locate users affiliated with terror organizations and new sites set up by terrorist elements, among other things.

According to Last, the development has great importance in view of the considerable use of the Internet in coordinating and orchestrating terror acts.

'The lack of ability to enforce limitations on Internet users allows terror organizations to set up Internet sites that spread incitement, raise money in support of terror and find new supporters for their causes,' Last said."

Arab states, Israel to attend UN forum on nuclear-free zone

The UN nuclear agency will next year host a conference, including Israel and Arab states, to discuss steps to make the Middle East into a zone free of nuclear weapons, the head of the UN watchdog said Sunday.
As Israel is the only Middle Eastern country believed to have nuclear weapons, the talks would effectively boil down to what the Israeli government would require to abandon the nuclear option. Israel has never confirmed nor denied having the nuclear bomb.

Speaking after talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the conference would be held in January and representatives of regional states and the UN Security Council would attend.

'The agency will hold a forum, in which Israel, Arab countries and Middle Eastern countries, will participate,' ElBaradei told reporters. 'This would be the first opportunity to start a dialogue about the conditions and steps that should be needed to establish a nuclear free zone in the Middle East.'

ElBaradei said that during his visit to Israel last month, the Israeli government repeatedly raised concerns about Iran's own nuclear program.
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Israeli court expels ISM pro-terror activist

The Tel Aviv District Court ordered a pro-Palestinian American activist deported from the country Monday, the latest move against a foreign group opposing Israeli military activity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

A Tel Aviv District Court judge ordered Adam Wilson, a 28-year-old union organizer from New Orleans, Louisiana, to leave Israel by Tuesday.

Wilson is affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-sponsored group in the forefront of protests against IDF military operations and the security fence Israel is building.

ISM activists have sometimes disrupted IDF operations by placing themselves between soldiers and Palestinians.