Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
JEWISH CONSPIRACIES IN THE PENTAGON?
Somebody sold CBS News, NBC, and the Washington Post a grand conspiracy theory of sinister Zionist influence in the Pentagon based on … well on what really? The theory alleges that
a) Two years ago, some Pentagon planners wrote a draft memo suggesting that the US adopt a tougher policy toward Iran;
b) One of those planners then supposedly informed a friend at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee about the memo – who in turn informed the Israeli embassy.
Can we pause to consider what an amazing non-story all of this is?
The memo in question - a draft of a proposed presidential policy directive for Iran - was essentially rejected. The Bush administration has opted since 2001 for a policy of engagement and attempted compromise with Iran. For all practical purposes, the memo was an expression of something close to a purely personal opinion.
And even if the memo had been adopted, it involved no spycraft, no technical secrets. It simply offered a vision of what US policy toward Iran ought to be: a series of policy options.
Discussing policy options with knowledgeable people – and even with allied governments – is not “espionage.”
Which is why, after 18 months of investigation, the investigators were about to drop the matter. It looks as if whoever leaked the story of the investigation leaked it precisely because he or she was annoyed that the investigators were concluding that the whole thing was much ado about nothing.
But by cleverly shopping it to journalists who were eager to strike a blow at the Bush administration, a fizzle of a story was (at least temporarily) transformed into a one-day wonder.
Who shopped it? Presumably somebody at the FBI – an agency that has alas showed nothing like so much vigilance in cases in which life and limb were actually at risk. Along the way, however, the story got “sexed up,” to borrow a phrase.
Here are some steamy extracts from CBS’ report:
“CBS News has learned that the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology – ‘roll up’ someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. …
“This put the Israelis, according to one source, ‘inside the decision-making loop’ so they could ‘try to influence the outcome.’
“The case raises another concern among investigators: Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?
“With ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the analyst was assigned to a unit within the Defense Department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon's Iraq policy.”
Notice a couple of things in the CBS report: The story is written in such a way as to suggest that it was the FBI investigators who described the Israelis as “inside the loop.” And yet if you look carefully, you will see that this is not so. The allegation is attributed only to a “source” who might or might not even be a government employee – who is in fact very likely one of the small number of former government employees to whom journalists turn when they want some heavy breathing about the role of Israel.
Notice too the gratuitous and unsourced insinuation that Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith might somehow be implicated in the leak.
What seems to be going on here is this: People in the Pentagon broadly discussed proposed American policy toward one of America’s severest Middle Eastern problems – Iran, its terrorism and its nuclear ambitions. In the course of those discussions, they talked to knowledgeable people in many places. Possibly they talked as well to knowledgeable people in the governments of US allies, including Israel.
But there are figures inside the US government who want to see Israel treated, not as the ally it is by law and treaty (Israel like Japan, Australia, and New Zealand is designated a “major non-NATO ally” for intelligence- and technology-sharing purposes) but as the source of all the trouble in the Middle East and the world. They have injected their own hysterical agenda into the reporting of what would otherwise be a story of an FBI investigation that found nothing much.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
Hours after a Palestinian woman blew herself up early Wednesday at the Erez crossing terminal, killing four Israelis, Palestinian Foriegn Minister Nabil Sha'ath said that the Palestinian Authority was capable of stopping such terror attacks, but that Israel must first halt its attacks on the Palestinians, Israel Radio reported.
Speaking from Copenhagen, Sha'ath said that last August the Palestinians unilaterally halted attacks, but this collapsed because Israel failed to abide by this as well.
Can you imagine the chutzpah it takes tomake such a statement when have been daily attempts to kills Jews during this "unilateral cease fire"?
First Hamas female suicide bomber
Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, jointly claimed responsibility for the blast, which also wounded 12 people.
Hamas, vowing to escalate attacks, said it used a woman suicide bomber for the first time, in order to counter Israeli security precautions.
"For the first time [Hamas] used a female fighter and not a male fighter and that was a new development in resistance against the enemy," Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin told Reuters. "Resistance will esclate against this enemy [Israel] until they leave our land and homeland."
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia declined to condemn the attack, saying that continued Israeli attacks and restrictions on the Palestinians are leading "to more escalation on both sides."
The explosion ripped through a recently dedicated facility where laborers and foreigners cross over the boundary. There were few Palestinian workers in the area at the time, Israeli officials said. Most workers had crossed hours before the mid-morning explosion.
Hamas later identified the bomber as the 22-year-old mother of two children.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
Israel Defense Forces soldiers foiled a suicide attack Tuesday, when they prevented a Palestinian man carrying an explosive device in his trousers from passing through the Erez Crossing from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
The belt was different than any the IDF has dealt with before in that 'it was sewn to resemble a pair of underpants,' the spokeswoman said.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
On May 28, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that an Iranian intelligence unit had established "The Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening."
In a speech by Hassan Abbassi, a Revolutionary Guards intelligence theoretician who teaches at Al-Hussein University, he spoke of Teheran's secret plans, which include
"a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization."
"There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites, and we know how we are going to attack them," Abbassi explained.
Over the past few months, Iranian leader Ali Khamenei has been vocal about the impending "destruction of the U.S." In May he told the Iranian paper Jomhouri-Ye Eslami that "the world will witness the annihilation of this arrogant regime."
Speaking on Iranian TV channel Jaam-E-Jam 2 on July 27, Iranian MP Hamid-Reza Katoziyan warned: "The whole group of people belonging to the Arab community and Muslims living in the U.S. are currently, in my opinion, in a special situation."
"Perhaps they do not walk the streets with weapons in their hands or attach bombs to themselves in order to carry out a suicide operation, but the thought is there."
In a speech by Hassan Abbassi, a Revolutionary Guards intelligence theoretician who teaches at Al-Hussein University, he spoke of Teheran's secret plans, which include
"a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization."
"There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites, and we know how we are going to attack them," Abbassi explained.
Over the past few months, Iranian leader Ali Khamenei has been vocal about the impending "destruction of the U.S." In May he told the Iranian paper Jomhouri-Ye Eslami that "the world will witness the annihilation of this arrogant regime."
Speaking on Iranian TV channel Jaam-E-Jam 2 on July 27, Iranian MP Hamid-Reza Katoziyan warned: "The whole group of people belonging to the Arab community and Muslims living in the U.S. are currently, in my opinion, in a special situation."
"Perhaps they do not walk the streets with weapons in their hands or attach bombs to themselves in order to carry out a suicide operation, but the thought is there."
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
Israel Military Industries (IMI) has developed an invisible flare for use by its Flight Guard protection system for civilian aircraft. The Flight Guard system, developed jointly by IMI and Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), will soon be installed on six El Al Israel Airlines passenger aircraft, making El Al the world's first airline to operate aircraft equipped with a defence system against shoulder-launched missiles.
Flight Guard is undergoing a series of flight tests, where the system is checked against the infrared seekers of several surface-to-air missiles. The tests will be concluded in August and the first system is scheduled to be installed in an El Al aircraft in September.
Since the use of Flight Guard has not been approved by US and European aviation authorities, it will first be installed on aircraft serving Africa and Asia, where the level of threat is considered higher. However, IMI and IAI are expecting the new invisible flare to improve the chances of Flight Guard receiving Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensing, as the flare is designed to reduce public fright when activated over an airport.
Flight Guard is adapted from a military system used by the Israel Air Force's fixed-wing and rotorcraft. It comprises a variant of IAI subsidiary Elta's EL/M-2160 pulse-Doppler radar, which detects surface-to-air shoulder-launched missiles. The radar activates IMI's countermeasures dispensing system (CMDS), which jams heat-seeking missiles and sends them off course by creating a signature close to that of the aircraft's engine. "
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in France has soared by hundreds of percent since the beginning of the year and the law enforcement authorities are having difficulty coping with them.
Justice Minister Dominique Perben issued figures last Thursday showing a tripling of anti-Semitic attacks this year, with 298 so far, compared to 108 in all of 2003.
Perben's figures were broken down by their targets, showing there were 67 attacks on Jewish people, 162 on property and 69 cases of anti-Semitic writings.
Some 80 percent of this year's cases have not yet been solved, Perben said after meeting with France's Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk to discuss government efforts to fight anti-Semitism.
French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said the number of violent incidents against Jews and Jewish property this year reached 160, marking a 113 percent rise compared to the equivalent period last year, in which only 75 incidents were reported.
In an interview with Le Monde on Friday, de Villepin said the reasons for 80 percent of the incidents were unclear and the perpetrators have not been found. Only 11 attacks were committed by extreme right-wingers and 50 were committed by people of Arab or Muslim origin."
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Elder of Ziyon
The IDF has developed a pungent new weapon to be used to keep Palestinian protestors at bay, media sources reported. The so-called 'skunk bomb' contains a synthetic version of the odor skunks release to deter predators and will be used to break up stone-throwing confrontations without causing casualties, security officials said yesterday.
According to the reports, the new weapon was developed to replace controversial rubber bullets, which have caused numerous injuries and killed many Palestinians during the course of the Intifada. Security officials said the army, which has come under international criticism for allegedly using excessive force, has been seeking out new non-lethal weapons to deal with violent Palestinian protests.
The 'skunk bomb,' which is not yet operational, releases a cloud so pungent that according to initial tests it permeates clothes for five years, the officials said, according to a Reuters report.
The 'stinky' weapon could be particularly unpleasant for devout Muslims since they cannot pray with clothes that smell and would have to throw them away, the report said.
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