Monday, December 27, 2004

  • Monday, December 27, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
As the death toll in the Southeast Asian earthquake and tsunami catastrophe passed the 24,000 mark, fears grew Monday for the fate of hundreds of Israelis missing and unaccounted for.
Foreign Ministry figures updated Monday showed that a total of 540 Israelis in Southeast Asia who have not been in touch since the devasting earthquake and tsunamis struck. The list which includes all tourists and others who have failed to contact loved ones in Israel. Active searches are underway for some 20 whom diplomats in the area have listed as missing.

The missing list includes 160 Israelis on Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal; 270 in southern Thailand; 60 in Sri Lanka and around 50 people in southern India. Another 330 Israelis in the region have since been accounted for.

...At least 10 Israelis were injured in Thailand by the earthquake and subsequent massive tidal waves, the Foreign Ministry said.

Israel on Sunday night sent an initial relief delegation to Sri Lanka, including four doctors from Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, in Jerusalem.

The doctors, who are scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka later Monday, specialize in rescue operations, trauma and pediatrics. The team was sent to assess the scope of the disaster and decide whether to establish a field hospital.

"It is possible... we will advise Israel and the Foreign Ministry... to send something more massive," said Dr. Avi Rivkind, director of Hadassah's trauma unit. "We will try to use our... broad experience in dealing with terror attacks and rescuing masses to help in this disaster as well."

Sunday, December 26, 2004

  • Sunday, December 26, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
A California woman reveals to ABC News that she unknowingly married a Muslim extremist who helped set up what authorities say was one of the first al Qaeda sleeper cells out of their Orange County apartment complex.

Saraah Olson says she watched as her then-husband, Hisham Diab, and his group transformed local teen Adam Gadahn into an America-hating fanatic who she says is the masked man who promised in an al Qaeda video message released in Pakistan late October that the "streets of America will run red with blood."

"I was just a stepping stone to a green card," Olson said. "I married a terrorist. I married somebody who did not like America, who didn't like Americans."

Gadahn, who met Olson's former husband at a local mosque, was "fresh meat," she said. "Someone they could control. Not only that, he's very unassuming-looking, he can do a lot of their tasks."

The voice, gestures and rhetoric of the video's "Azzam the American" were all familiar to Olson, especially the phrase "red with blood," which was one of the group's favorite sayings, she said.

And over the course of six years, Olson said, some of Osama bin Laden's top deputies would stay with her and her husband, including blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who would later go to prison for life for his role in organizing terrorist plots against the United States.

Olson said she repeatedly tried to notify the FBI of her husband's suspicious activities, but that she was never taken seriously. "I'm in hell," Olson remembers thinking after she recognized Abdel-Rahman in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. "I have entered the bowels of hell and I'm going to be here forever. And I've only been married seven months. I've got a terrorist in my house."

The FBI said in a statement that counterterrorism is their top priority. "Whenever we receive credible information pertaining to terrorist threats against the United States, the FBI acts immediately to thoroughly pursue all such leads," the statement read.

Federal authorities say the couple's neighbor Khalil Deek, considered a major al Qaeda figure, ran the Orange County sleeper cell operation.

Diab, who obtained a U.S. passport after marrying Olson, left the country suddenly in June 2001. He is now being sought by U.S. authorities and is believed by intelligence officials to be hiding in Pakistan with top al Qaeda leaders.

"I was the wife," Olson now says. "So it looked like a typical guy married to an American girl with the little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy in tow."
Blinded by Love

But when she first met Diab 13 years ago, while working at a local university issuing foreign student visas, she thought the then-32-year-old Diab had more honorable intentions.

"I really loved him," she said. "I was 22 years old and I was in love."

Diab introduced himself as an Egyptian national who had overstayed his visa and needed to switch visas, said Olson. She then explained that the school's program was not applicable to him, that he could not switch visas.

"He seemed fine with it," Olson said. "He left. No problems. Came back the next day, 'Will you go out with me?'"

In just a few months, they were married and settled in an apartment complex in Anaheim. Olson and her 4-year-old son from another relationship, Ryan, both converted to Islam.
'Follow the Rules'

The honeymoon was short-lived, however. First, she said Diab insisted she wear the hijab, a head scarf worn by certain devout Muslim women, and conform to other strict Islamic customs.

And the beatings came next, she said, provoked by what were deemed violations of her husband's strict rules, which including forbidding physical contact with any man. She says he hit her the first time just weeks after their wedding for accidentally bumping into the manager of their apartment building.

"You have to listen to me and I am God," she said Diab told her. "Follow the rules."

Olson's son Ryan, now a teenager, says he was beaten almost daily when he did poorly in the Arabic lessons he was forced to take.

"I mispronounced something and that set him off," the college freshman said. "And I remember he clasped both his hands together and just hauled off and hit me right square in the back. I remember the wind, you know, getting knocked out of me, crying out."

Ryan said Diab's cell tried to recruit him into their group and he would be brought to small meetings where the men would rail and plot against America.

"He wanted me to be just as extreme as he was you know, hate America, anything that his little group didn't like," he said. "I just can't really say I ever believed it. I just went along, just nodded my head."

And Saraah Olson admits she played a role in drawing up the papers for a fake charity, called Charity Without Borders, that the cell used to funnel money overseas. The organization would not be discovered or shut down until after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It was an act of desperation, Olson said. "I'm not proud of it. Not proud of it at all," she said. "I just knew that I lived in hell and I wanted out. And if helping him do whatever it was that he was doing meant that I wouldn't get hit, I was willing to do it at that point."
Falling Into Al Qaeda's Web?

Olson's story is confirmed in detail by the imam of the Islamic Society of Orange County, Haitham Bundakji. He said Diab and others in the cell were disruptive troublemakers who caused the most harm by recruiting innocent others, especially Gadahn.

"And I blame myself and my people for not embracing him [Gadahn] and not making more efforts to gain him," Bundakji said. "He fell in the wrong hands and he became as aggressive as they were."

Olson explained why she now feels it is the time to come forward.

"Because it's the right thing to do," she said. "These are dangerous people and a lot of people were hurt."

Friday, December 24, 2004

  • Friday, December 24, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem was to be the target of choice for an Israeli-Arab couple who planned to blow themselves up following their wedding. Israeli security forces thwarted their plans.

It was released for publication on Wednesday that the GSS recently arrested an Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem on suspicion of planning to carry out a suicide bombing together with his 16-year-old fiancי. The attack was scheduled for shortly after their wedding.

Ahmed Jazawi, an Israeli-Arab resident of the mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood of Abu-Tor, was recruited by Hamas handlers from Hevron – the same terror gang that carried out the double suicide-bombing in Be’er Sheva this past August, murdering 16 people.

Jazawi, 22, had already convinced his young fiancי, to carry out the attack together with him, and was in the midst of gathering intelligence with the goal of bombing the Sbarro pizzeria when he was arrested. Sbarro became famous in the summer of 2002 when, in a different downtown Jerusalem location, it suffered a suicide terrorist blast felling 15 Jews, including parents and three of their eight children.

The investigation revealed that Jazawi had friendly relations with Moutzab Hashlamoun, a Hamas handler from Hevron. They studied together at Abu-Dis University. Half a year ago, Jazawi told Hashlamoun he wanted to carry out a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. The Hamas handler agreed and began to direct Jazawi on how to make his way to a target with his bomb, and how to maximize the number of murdered.

Jazawi enjoys the benefits of Israeli citizenship, including an Israeli ID card. Equipped with that card, he began surveying downtown Jerusalem’s streets for targets. He visited Jaffa Road and chose the newly relocated Sbarro pizzeria as his favored target. Hashlamoun then had Jazawi obtain chemicals and transfer them to Hamas bomb-makers in Hevron to construct bomb-belts.

Jazawi then decided that a double suicide bombing would be more effective, and approached his new fiancי, also from Abu Tor, on the matter – and she agreed. In the end, however, they decided to postpone the attack until after the wedding. Their plans were nipped in the bud on December 15, when Jazawi was arrested and handed over to the GSS for investigation.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

  • Thursday, December 23, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
The city of Jerusalem distributed free Christmas trees to Christians on Thursday as part of a longstanding tradition.

For decades, Israel has distributed the trees free of charge, particularly to the ex-patriot community of Christian leaders, journalists, diplomats and others.

One observer quipped that the Jewish State is probably the only country in the world that gives away free Christmas trees to Christians.

It is "symbolic of the way Jerusalem unites all three monotheistic religions," said Jerusalem municipality spokesman Gideon Schmerling in a statement.

The trees are donated by the Jewish National Fund, which is the country's forestry agency.

"Every year we distribute about 1,200 Christmas trees to religious leaders from different churches, diplomats, U.N. representatives, U.N. peacekeepers and the foreign press," said Paul Ginsberg, head of the forestry department of northern Israel.

"We also make trees available for sale for the Christian Arab population," Ginsberg told the Cybercast News Service. Between one thousand and fifteen hundred trees are sold each year.

"Because we're the only official forestry agency in Israel, we feel responsible to sections of the population to provide them with a service they require," he said.

According to Ginsberg, the most popular variety is the Arizona Cyprus, which looks the closest to a "normal Christmas tree," has a fairly dense number of branches and a greenish-gray color.

Most trees are four to six feet tall, although special-order trees are larger. They are harvested as part of the regular process of thinning out the forests.

"We do our best not only to plant trees for future need [but also to make sure they are] the right size," he added.

Foresting the land

Founded in 1901, the Jewish National Fund is a non-governmental organization that has been working to forest the land here for one hundred years - starting more than 40 years before the State of Israel was established.

"The land of Israel was in a fairly degraded state through a history of overgrazing and over-cutting," Ginsberg said.

During World War I, the Ottoman Turkish rulers of the land cut down many trees to use to build the Hajaz railway, which stretched from Egypt through the Holy Land and Lebanon into Turkey, he added.

Since its founding, the JNF has planted 220 million trees nationwide -- some 300,000-320,000 acres of planted forest, Ginsberg said -- and "all planted by hand."

The JNF plants a "very large variety" of trees, including pine, cypress, cedars and eucalyptus, as well as native trees such as oak, pistachio, red bud, carob, bay laurel, olive, almond, pomegranate and something known as Christ thorn, called as such because it is believed that it was used to plait the crown of thorns placed on Jesus' head, said Ginsberg.
  • Thursday, December 23, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Iran's Sahar 1 TV station is currently airing a weekly series titled 'For You, Palestine,' or 'Zahra's Blue Eyes.' The series premiered on December 13, and is set in Israel and the West Bank. It broadcasts every Monday, and was filmed in Persian but subsequently dubbed into Arabic.

The story follows an Israeli candidate for Prime Minister, Yitzhak Cohen, who is also the military commander of the West Bank. The opening sequence of the show contains graphic scenes of surgery, and images of a Palestinian girl in a hospital whose eyes have been removed, with bandages covering the sockets.

In Episode 1, Yitzhak Cohen lectures at a medical conference on the advances being made by Israeli medicine regarding organ transplants. Later in the episode, Israelis disguised as UN workers visit a Palestinian school, ostensibly to examine the children's eyes for diseases, but in reality to select which children's eyes to steal to be used for transplants.

In Episode 2, the audience learns that the Israeli president is being kept alive by organs stolen from Palestinian children, and an Israeli military commander is seen kidnapping UN employees and Palestinians.

Sahar TV also broadcast an interview with the director of the series, a former Iranian education ministry official, who discussed his motivations for making a series 'about children.'

Check out the link for transcripts from the show. Absolutely disgusting. - EoZ

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

  • Wednesday, December 22, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Web video teaches terrorists to make bomb vest

Chilling video offers
step-by-step suicide vest instructions

Posted in a militant Islamic chat room three days ago, a stunningly detailed 26-minute video on how to make a sophisticated suicide bomb vest, along with a demonstration of its kill range, using a mannequin.

Titled 'The Explosive Belt for Martyrdom Operations,' the video obtained by NBC News demonstrates how to make an explosive vest that would be tough to detect, mostly from common off-the-shelf materials.

'The most disturbing thing about this video is that it exists,' says NBC analyst and retired military intelligence officer Lt. Col. Rick Francona.

He says the video would be extremely valuable to any terrorist.

'Every military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan should be aware of this,' says Francona. 'This video shows someone how to more effectively attack American troops.'

Experts believe the video was made by a Palestinian group.

'The video was accompanied by a note that explained it was there for the purposes of aiding the brothers, the fighting brothers, in cities in central Iraq,' says NBC terror analyst Evan Kohlmann.

Specifically, the note mentioned wanting to help fighters in Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, though there's nothing to tie this to Tuesday's attack. The person who posted the note and video on the Internet called himself 'terrorist007.'

NBC News will not reveal most details, but the video demonstrates each step of bomb making:

* select a fabric and sew the vest;
* mix explosives;
* arrange shrapnel to kill victims in a large radius;
* attach a detonator.

In one demonstration, a would-be bomber is told where to stand in a bus for maximum carnage. 'Notice that the shrapnel has greatly penetrated all of the seats," says an Arabic voice on the video, translated by NBC News.

Another demo shows a vest that causes lethal wounds 30 yards away.

"I was startled by the amount of damage that such a small amount of explosives with the ball bearings could do," says Francona.

It's a chilling reminder of the sophistication and cold-blooded determination of terrorists.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

  • Tuesday, December 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
The image “http://tsel.org/keveryoseph/kyos1900wm.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
This is what the Tomb of Joseph looked like about a hundred years ago. Notice not a single Arab home around it (in what is now called Nablus, what has been known as Shechem for thousands of years.)

The verse in the picture means:
And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt,
buried they in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Jacob bought
of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money;
and they became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
Joshua 24:32

Now the tomb has been desecrated by Arabs during the Oslo "peace" process. Here's what the inside looks like now:
The image “http://www.shechem.org/kyos/kyosadar3.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Does anyone doubt that they would do the same to the other Jewish holy sites if they had the chance?
  • Tuesday, December 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Make No Mistake
By DAVID BROOKS

It was a series of unfortunate events.

How did we get to this sudden moment of cautious optimism in the Middle East? How did we get to this moment when Egypt is signing free trade agreements with Israel, when Hosni Mubarak is touring Arab nations and urging them to open relations with the Jewish state? How did we get to this moment of democratic opportunity in the Palestinian territories, with three major elections taking place in the next several months, and with the leading candidate in the presidential election declaring that violence is counterproductive?

How did we get to this moment of odd unity in Israel, with Labor joining Likud to push a withdrawal from Gaza and some northern territories? How did we get to this moment when Ariel Sharon has record approval ratings, when it is common to run across Israelis who once reviled Sharon as a bully but who now find themselves supporting him as an agent of peace?

It was a series of unfortunate events.

It was unfortunate that Ariel Sharon, whom tout le monde demonized as a warmonger, was elected prime minister of Israel. After all, as Henry Siegman of the Council on Foreign Relations reasoned in The New York Review of Books, 'The war Sharon is waging is not aimed at the defeat of Palestinian terrorism but at the defeat of the Palestinian people and their aspirations for national self-determination."

It was unfortunate that George W. Bush was elected and then re-elected as president of the United States. After all, here is a man who staffed his administration with what Juan Cole of the University of Michigan called "pro-Likud intellectuals" who went off "fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv." Under Bush, the diplomats agreed, the U.S. had inflamed the Arab world and had forfeited its role as an honest broker.

It was unfortunate that Bush gave that speech on June 24, 2002, dismissing Yasir Arafat as a man who would never make peace. After all, the Europeans protested, while Arafat might be flawed, he was the embodiment of the Palestinian cause.

It was a mistake to build the security fence, which the International Court of Justice called a violation of international law. Never mind that the fence cut terror attacks by 90 percent. It was the moral equivalent of apartheid, the U.N. orators declared.

It was a mistake to assassinate the leaders of Hamas, which took credit for the murders of hundreds of Israelis. France, among many other nations, condemned these attacks and foretold catastrophic consequences.

It was unfortunate that President Bush never sent a special envoy to open talks, discuss modalities and fine-tune the road map. As Milton Viorst wrote in The Washington Quarterly, this left "slim prospects" for any progress toward peace.

It was unfortunate that Bush sided openly with Sharon during their April meetings in Washington, causing the European Union to condemn U.S. policy. It was unfortunate that Bush kept pushing his democracy agenda. After all, as some Israelis said, it is naïve to export democracy to Arab soil.

Yes, these were a series of unfortunate events. And yet here we are in this hopeful moment. It almost makes you think that all those bemoaners and condemners don't know what they are talking about. Nothing they have said over the past three years accounts for what is happening now.

It almost makes you think that Bush understands the situation better than the lot of them. His judgments now look correct. Bush deduced that Sharon could grasp the demographic reality and lead Israel toward a two-state solution; that Arafat would never make peace, but was a retardant to peace; that Israel has a right to fight terrorism; and that Sharon would never feel safe enough to take risks unless the U.S. supported him when he fought back.

Bush concluded that peace would never come as long as Palestine was an undemocratic tyranny, and that the Palestinians needed to see their intifada would never bring triumph.

We are a long way from peace. But as Robert Satloff observes in The Weekly Standard, Israel's coming disengagements "will constitute a huge leap - both in psychology and in strategy - rivaling the original Oslo accords in historic importance." And the U.S. is already raising millions to help build a decent Palestinian polity.

We owe this cautiously hopeful moment to a series of unfortunate events - and to a president who disregarded the received wisdom.
  • Tuesday, December 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
A group of 117 Americans whose relatives have been killed or injured in terror attacks in Israel sued the Jordan-based Arab Bank on Monday, charging that money transfers performed by the bank violate U.S. criminal and civil laws.
The plaintiffs are charging the bank with illegally funneling funds from Islamic charitable foundations and other bodies to recognized terrorist organizations, through its Madison Avenue branch in Manhattan. Recipients of the funds allegedly include Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Islamic Jihad.

The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

In Litle v. Arab Bank, the plaintiffs are seeking damages from the bank for providing insurance-type services to terrorist groups via accounts held directly in the name of Hamas and its many terrorist front groups.

The plaintiffs say the bank distributed death and dismemberment benefits to families of suicide bombers.

Arab Bank allegedly laundered funds, transferring money to the families of suicide bombers as incentives and rewards for their participation in murdering Americans and Israelis in Israel and in the territories. Money was converted into dollars and then re-routed to local branches of Arab Bank in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the lawsuit.

Each eligible Palestinian suicide bomber's family was allegedly encouraged to collect the terrorism payments through a local branch of Arab Bank in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

The plaintiffs include the families of Abigail Litle, a Baptist eighth grader active in Arab-Jewish co-existence projects; the family of Dr. David Applebaum, a trauma specialist from Shaare Zedek Medical Center, and his daughter Naava, who were killed when a suicide bomber attacked Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem on the eve of Naava's wedding; and the family of Jack Baxter, an American filmmaker who was working on a documentary on terrorism entitled "Blues on the Beach" when he himself became a victim of the April 2003 terrorist attack at Mike's Place, a beachside bar in Tel Aviv.

The Litle lawsuit is being spearheaded by a consortium of American law firms led by Richard D. Heideman of Heideman Lezell Nudelman & Kalik, PC, in Washington, DC; Mark Werbner of Sayles Werbner in Dallas, Texas; and Steven R. Perles of The Perles Law Firm in Washington DC, who served as counsel in the similar case of Flatow vs. Iran.

"We have made some detailed allegations and intend to prove that Arab Bank is being used to help finance terrorist groups and that its New York branch has illegally laundered money to the terrorists and their families," said Werbner.
  • Tuesday, December 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Last week's Israeli-Egyptian-American trade agreement was hailed both in Israel and abroad as another harbinger of improved Israeli-Egyptian relations.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom expressed hope that the agreement – which establishes "Qualifying Industrial Zones" (QIZs) from which Egyptian firms can export to the US duty-free as long as their products contain at least 11.7 percent Israeli content – would lead to "warmer relations between the peoples."

The New York Times welcomed it as "a giant step toward peace in our time." The theory is that the pact will boost Egyptian exports, create jobs, and thereby convince ordinary Egyptians that peace with Israel is a good thing.

Economically, this theory makes sense.

Israel's five-year-old QIZ agreement with Jordan has boosted Jordanian exports to America from $13 million to about $800 million and created some 40,000 jobs; there is no reason to believe that QIZs will not have a commensurate impact on Egypt's economy.

Yet no amount of economic growth will produce improved Egyptian attitudes toward Israel unless the ordinary Egyptian knows about Israel's role in it. And unfortunately, experience shows that nothing is more unlikely.

Even in Jordan, whose relationship with Israel has traditionally been much better than Egypt's, the connection between the QIZs, Israel and the country's export boom is not widely known.

But in Egypt, information about Israel's contribution to the economy appears to be a closely guarded secret.

Most Egyptians, for instance, were completely unaware that Israelis account for a major share of the Sinai tourist trade until the Israeli victims of October's terrorist attacks in Sinai accidentally brought this fact to light.

"We were completely surprised by the large number of Israeli tourists in Sinai," an Egyptian businessman told Haaretz after the attacks.

"Since the peace treaty, we did not grasp the scale of the Israeli contribution."

Indeed, Egypt appears to view secrecy as a virtual precondition for business with Israel – as the natural gas saga demonstrates.

For years, the two countries negotiated over a multiyear, $2.5-billion sale of Egyptian natural gas to Israel. Although British Gas had made a competing offer, Israel's government preferred Egypt, as it attributed great importance to boosting Egypt's economy.

The talks were extensively reported in Israel, but in Egypt they were apparently kept secret until a Cairo newspaper broke the story this June.

Egyptian legislators promptly demanded that the government clarify this "worrying" report of an impending deal with Israel, and the next day Egypt informed Israel that the deal was off.

(Talks have since resumed, but a deal has still not been signed.)

NOR IS it only on economic issues that official Egypt discourages any hint of positive information about Israel.

This past May, the Egyptian newspaper Nahdat Misr reported that Egypt's parliament had deprived a legislator of speaking privileges because he spent 10 days in Israel and then wanted to ask a question about something he had heard there (a proposal whereby Israel would give Egypt part of the Negev in exchange for Egypt giving the Palestinians part of Sinai).

That same month Egypt's highest administrative court banned the establishment of an Egyptian-Israeli friendship association – which might, God forbid, have disseminated information about Israel to Egyptians.

The court declared that relations with Israel were strictly the government's prerogative and no private organization had the right to get involved.
  • Tuesday, December 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ukraine’s presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko is to have plastic surgery in Israel following the Dec. 26 repeat elections, after doctors confirmed that the pockmarks and cysts that disfigured his face were the result of dioxin poisoning.

Yushchenko is scheduled to travel to one of the leading plastic surgeons in the world in late December, and has already been granted a visa, the Interfax news agency reported, citing Israel’s Maariv daily.

Yushchenko, who doctors say was poisoned with a dangerous form of dioxin in early September, must also be treated for liver problems and other ailments as a result of the poisoning.

One of Yushchenko’s aides has already visited the private clinic in Israel ahead of the opposition leader’s trip to prepare for treatment there.
  • Tuesday, December 21, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
A new radar system for a Katyusha-killing laser cannon has been brought to Israel to be tested against Kassam rockets and mortar shells fired by the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The joint US-Israeli mobile laser gun, called the Nautilus, is still being developed and tested in the United States, but the radar arrived in the country a few days ago and will be deployed shortly near Sderot to track incoming rockets, military sources said.

They hope the radar will boost early warning of incoming rockets by a few precious seconds and help pinpoint their launch sites so the IDF can retaliate against the Kassam or mortar crews.

'This is just the radar and that is just one component of the Nautilus system. The main component is the laser gun, which fires a beam that destroys Katyushas, rockets, Kassams and mortar shells in the air,' said Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a former head of military research and development. He said the laser gun is still being tested and developed.

The Nautilus is also known as the Tactical High Energy Laser or THEL.

Ben-Israel said the Nautilus radar is a derivative of the Green Pine radar developed for the Arrow 2 antiballistic missile system. He said the Nautilus radar has a quarter of the range of the Green Pine, based on a 'few hundred' modular radar scanners instead of the 'few thousands' on the Green Pine.

The radar not only allows the projectile to be followed in the air, but to determine the exact location of its origin. This would allow for a quick retaliatory strike.

'The mortar shells and Kassam rockets only fly for a few seconds,' Ben-Israel told Army Radio. 'If you can detect it immediately after it is laun"

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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