It was long overdue that finally Judeans and Samarians would begin to rally in Jerusalem and let their voices be heard loud and clear.
However, because of the actual situation on the ground, which is far from favorable to our friends who have chosen to live in the earth of the Land G-d gave to our people, Israel, it is our opinion, that only organizing a massive march to the Knesset will give a clear message to the leftist, liberal Israeli Government, to Obama and to the whole world, that the roughly 300,000 Jews residing in Judea and Samaria are there for good, by the Will of G-d.
___________________________
Nationalists Demonstrate in Jerusalem: Settlers Are Not Enemies
Dozens of nationalists demonstrated outside police headquarters in Jerusalem against the treatment of Judea and Samaria's residents.
By Elad Benari
As hundreds of hareidi-religious Jews were demonstrating in Jerusalem Saturday night against what they said was the unfair treatment of them in the media over the past several weeks, dozens of nationalists demonstrated in front of the Russian Compound in the city, where police headquarters are located, under the title: “The settlers are not enemies.”
The demonstrators protested against what they described as the police's “witch hunt” against nationalists. They carried signs which said that the settlers are not enemies and that supporters of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are not spies.
The protest came following recent allegations against nationalists, according to which a group of young people sent messages to residents of communities warning them against an impending demolition of their homes.
In at least one such case, video footage showed that police officers were harassing a nationalist inside his own home after he was arrested on suspicion of leaking military information to other residents in Judea and Samaria.
“The main message is that the finger that arrested the activists and is accusing them of spying is not only directed towards those young people but at all of us,” Binyamin Gal, one of the organizers of the protest, told Arutz Sheva. “All the residents of Judea and Samaria are being accused of espionage and we must understand that those who ignore the arrests of these young people will at one point find themselves being accused of those same crimes.”
Among the participants in the process were members of the legal aid group Honenu, which provides free legal counsel to those Israeli citizens and soldiers who, despite claiming that they acted in self-defense against Arab attackers, find themselves accused of illegal acts by Israel’s law enforcement authorities.
The Honenu members told Arutz Sheva that they have noticed a rise in the serious violations by police of the basic rights of youth who are arrested. They added that there has been a significant rise in the number of detainees from Judea and Samaria in recent weeks. One such incident involved the arrests last month of seven girls, six of them minors, over events which occurred two months earlier.
Source
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
BENADOR: Israel needs no potential refugees from Muslim Syria
One can but wonder, a legitimate question. Why would potential Muslim Syrian refugees even think of seeking asylum in Israel of all countries that surround them?
Saudi Arabia should plan on airlifting those potential Muslim refugees... It would be a major mistake to take any Muslim refugees to Israel. But, how could the current anti-Israel Israeli government see that...?
______________________________
Israel, Expecting Syrian Collapse, Braces for Refugees
By ISABEL KERSHNER Published: January 10, 2012
JERUSALEM — Israel’s military chief said on Tuesday that Jerusalem was preparing for a potential influx of refugees into the Golan Heights from Syria with the demise of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which he said was inevitable.
Addressing a closed meeting of the Israeli Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said that Israel was preparing to absorb the refugees in a buffer zone between Syria and the Golan, a strategic area controlled by Israel. The plans included defensive measures and humanitarian assistance for those in flight, including thousands from the ruling Alawite sect, the small minority to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
“I am not sure all the Alawites will run toward Israel,” General Gantz was quoted as saying, but he said he could not rule out the possibility that some would. He added that Mr. Assad could not continue to rule Syria, but he did not specify how much longer he thought the Assad government would survive.
Israel has tried to keep a low profile and not take sides in the struggle in Syria, a country that is hostile to Israel, but officials here have been increasingly open in their assessment that the Assad government is in dire straits.
The defense minister, Ehud Barak, told the same parliamentary committee on Jan. 2 that the Assad family’s prospects were worsening. “Though it is difficult to put an exact date on when the government will fall, the trend is clear and every day that passes brings the government closer to its end,” Mr. Barak said, according to a statement from his office. He added: “The cracks in the Syrian leadership are deepening, the economic situation is deteriorating and the military is having a hard time dealing with the opposition and the army deserters.”
Despite the uncertainty about who will take over in Syria in the event of a government collapse, and about the ascendancy of Islamic parties in other countries in the region, many Israeli officials and analysts said they would not shed any tears over Mr. Assad’s demise. Instead, Israel sees a potential benefit, saying that the collapse of his government would deal a severe blow to the “radical axis,” including enemies such as Iran, the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas.
Though Syria has mostly maintained quiet along its frontier with Israel for more than 30 years, it has forged an alliance with Iran and provided vital support to Hezbollah.
Israel has held inconclusive negotiations with Syria in the past for a peace treaty based on the return of the Golan Heights, which it conquered in the 1967 war. Israel has extended its law to the area, but for the 20,000 or so Syrians of the Druze religious sect who live there, it remains Syrian territory. Most refused to take Israeli citizenship.
One village, Ghajar, which straddles Israel’s frontier with Lebanon and sits close to the Syrian border, is home to more than 2,000 members of the Alawite sect. The village came under Israeli control along with the Golan Heights. When Israel annexed the area in 1981, the villagers chose to become Israeli citizens.
For refugees fleeing Syria in Israel’s direction, heading for the Golan could be risky. The border area became a scene of deadly confrontation last year when Israeli forces shot pro-Palestinian protesters from Syria as they tried to breach the frontier and enter Israeli-controlled territory twice in three weeks. As many as 26 protesters were killed.
Earlier Tuesday, before General Gantz spoke, the Parliament approved harsh new penalties on illegal migrants, a measure aimed at stopping the flow of African asylum seekers and economic migrants across Israel’s southern border with the Egyptian Sinai.
The amendment, to the existing Law to Prevent Infiltration, makes it possible to detain illegal migrants and their children for up to three years without trial. Anyone caught aiding illegal migrants found to be carrying weapons, or trafficking in humans or drugs, could face prison terms of five to 15 years.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a human rights organization, decried the new legislation as “draconian and immoral,” saying that “its entire purpose is to deter refugees from entering Israel.”
The Israeli government recently announced additional steps to stem the growing number of Africans who enter the country illegally. About 50,000, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have trekked across the Sinai into Israel over the past six years, a source of contention in Israeli society.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has described the illegal migration in the past as “a threat” that could “flood the foundation of the Zionist state.” Others here say that Israel, a nation of Jewish refugees, should show more compassion.
Source
Saudi Arabia should plan on airlifting those potential Muslim refugees... It would be a major mistake to take any Muslim refugees to Israel. But, how could the current anti-Israel Israeli government see that...?
______________________________
Israel, Expecting Syrian Collapse, Braces for Refugees
By ISABEL KERSHNER Published: January 10, 2012
JERUSALEM — Israel’s military chief said on Tuesday that Jerusalem was preparing for a potential influx of refugees into the Golan Heights from Syria with the demise of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which he said was inevitable.
Addressing a closed meeting of the Israeli Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said that Israel was preparing to absorb the refugees in a buffer zone between Syria and the Golan, a strategic area controlled by Israel. The plans included defensive measures and humanitarian assistance for those in flight, including thousands from the ruling Alawite sect, the small minority to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
“I am not sure all the Alawites will run toward Israel,” General Gantz was quoted as saying, but he said he could not rule out the possibility that some would. He added that Mr. Assad could not continue to rule Syria, but he did not specify how much longer he thought the Assad government would survive.
Israel has tried to keep a low profile and not take sides in the struggle in Syria, a country that is hostile to Israel, but officials here have been increasingly open in their assessment that the Assad government is in dire straits.
The defense minister, Ehud Barak, told the same parliamentary committee on Jan. 2 that the Assad family’s prospects were worsening. “Though it is difficult to put an exact date on when the government will fall, the trend is clear and every day that passes brings the government closer to its end,” Mr. Barak said, according to a statement from his office. He added: “The cracks in the Syrian leadership are deepening, the economic situation is deteriorating and the military is having a hard time dealing with the opposition and the army deserters.”
Despite the uncertainty about who will take over in Syria in the event of a government collapse, and about the ascendancy of Islamic parties in other countries in the region, many Israeli officials and analysts said they would not shed any tears over Mr. Assad’s demise. Instead, Israel sees a potential benefit, saying that the collapse of his government would deal a severe blow to the “radical axis,” including enemies such as Iran, the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas.
Though Syria has mostly maintained quiet along its frontier with Israel for more than 30 years, it has forged an alliance with Iran and provided vital support to Hezbollah.
Israel has held inconclusive negotiations with Syria in the past for a peace treaty based on the return of the Golan Heights, which it conquered in the 1967 war. Israel has extended its law to the area, but for the 20,000 or so Syrians of the Druze religious sect who live there, it remains Syrian territory. Most refused to take Israeli citizenship.
One village, Ghajar, which straddles Israel’s frontier with Lebanon and sits close to the Syrian border, is home to more than 2,000 members of the Alawite sect. The village came under Israeli control along with the Golan Heights. When Israel annexed the area in 1981, the villagers chose to become Israeli citizens.
For refugees fleeing Syria in Israel’s direction, heading for the Golan could be risky. The border area became a scene of deadly confrontation last year when Israeli forces shot pro-Palestinian protesters from Syria as they tried to breach the frontier and enter Israeli-controlled territory twice in three weeks. As many as 26 protesters were killed.
Earlier Tuesday, before General Gantz spoke, the Parliament approved harsh new penalties on illegal migrants, a measure aimed at stopping the flow of African asylum seekers and economic migrants across Israel’s southern border with the Egyptian Sinai.
The amendment, to the existing Law to Prevent Infiltration, makes it possible to detain illegal migrants and their children for up to three years without trial. Anyone caught aiding illegal migrants found to be carrying weapons, or trafficking in humans or drugs, could face prison terms of five to 15 years.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a human rights organization, decried the new legislation as “draconian and immoral,” saying that “its entire purpose is to deter refugees from entering Israel.”
The Israeli government recently announced additional steps to stem the growing number of Africans who enter the country illegally. About 50,000, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have trekked across the Sinai into Israel over the past six years, a source of contention in Israeli society.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has described the illegal migration in the past as “a threat” that could “flood the foundation of the Zionist state.” Others here say that Israel, a nation of Jewish refugees, should show more compassion.
Source
Sunday, January 8, 2012
BENADOR: No Impunity for Cyber-Attack against Israel
Hacking Israel internet services is daring and those who do that, must be ready for retaliation.
____________________________________
From YNetNews:
Saudi banks fear Israeli cyber attack
Al Arabiya reports Saudi banks raise alert level in fear of Israeli retaliation following leaked credit card details by Saudi hacker
Roi Kais
Al Arabiya network on Sunday reported that Saudi banks raised their security level due to concerns over an Israeli cyber attack against their computer systems.
According to the report, the move came following "the Israeli government's declaration that it sees the leaking of credit card details of its citizens as a violation of Israeli sovereignty, which is comparable to an act of terror that must be retaliated."
The Saudi TV network claimed that the data protection departments in several Saudi-based banks raised their alertness ahead of a possible attack on their systems. In addition, the banks boosted security and deterrence measures as well as increased monitoring against suspicious activity.
On Saturday, Ministry of National Infrastructures Uzi Landau discussed the online theft of thousands of Israeli credit cards by a Suadi hacker, saying he "has done us a favor."
"He shed a light on an existing crack, and it's time the government define security regulations for online groups. The public must be protected and right now it's not," said Landau.
'Act of terror'
Also on Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Israel will view such cyber attacks as "acts of terror" and will "retaliate forcefully against hackers who undermine Israel's cybernetic sovereignty."
Speaking at a cultural forum in Beersheba Saturday morning, Ayalon said Israel must "send a message to all those who have hurt or plan to hurt Israel – in cyberspace as well – that they would be hurting themselves. They will not be immune to Israeli retaliation.
Meanwhile, an 18-year-old man from the Tiberias area was arrested on Saturday on suspicion that he tried to use the credit card numbers published by the Saudi hacker in order to purchase a home theatre system, a smart phone and other electronic devices worth thousands of shekels.
A credit card company employee, who noticed the suspicious transaction, reported the incident to the police, which sent a police officer disguised as a messenger. The man will be arraigned at the Akko Magistrate's Court on Monday.
Source
____________________________________
From YNetNews:
Saudi banks fear Israeli cyber attack
Al Arabiya reports Saudi banks raise alert level in fear of Israeli retaliation following leaked credit card details by Saudi hacker
Roi Kais
Al Arabiya network on Sunday reported that Saudi banks raised their security level due to concerns over an Israeli cyber attack against their computer systems.
According to the report, the move came following "the Israeli government's declaration that it sees the leaking of credit card details of its citizens as a violation of Israeli sovereignty, which is comparable to an act of terror that must be retaliated."
The Saudi TV network claimed that the data protection departments in several Saudi-based banks raised their alertness ahead of a possible attack on their systems. In addition, the banks boosted security and deterrence measures as well as increased monitoring against suspicious activity.
On Saturday, Ministry of National Infrastructures Uzi Landau discussed the online theft of thousands of Israeli credit cards by a Suadi hacker, saying he "has done us a favor."
"He shed a light on an existing crack, and it's time the government define security regulations for online groups. The public must be protected and right now it's not," said Landau.
'Act of terror'
Also on Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Israel will view such cyber attacks as "acts of terror" and will "retaliate forcefully against hackers who undermine Israel's cybernetic sovereignty."
Speaking at a cultural forum in Beersheba Saturday morning, Ayalon said Israel must "send a message to all those who have hurt or plan to hurt Israel – in cyberspace as well – that they would be hurting themselves. They will not be immune to Israeli retaliation.
Meanwhile, an 18-year-old man from the Tiberias area was arrested on Saturday on suspicion that he tried to use the credit card numbers published by the Saudi hacker in order to purchase a home theatre system, a smart phone and other electronic devices worth thousands of shekels.
A credit card company employee, who noticed the suspicious transaction, reported the incident to the police, which sent a police officer disguised as a messenger. The man will be arraigned at the Akko Magistrate's Court on Monday.
Source
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
BENADOR: ISRAEL NEGOTIATING WITH EVIL
By Eliana Benador
Never mind that Hamas and Fatah have tried to negotiate a unified front. Now, appears that Hamas as they want to enter mainstream, are suddenly prone to give up violence... but, the big question is: for how long...?
As any observant Muslims, Hamas terrorists are certainly applying Taqqiya at one point, that magical taqqiya that allows them to rightfully and legally say whatever they need to say distorting the truth, in order to advance the cause of Islam in the world.
Hamas, the "Islamic Resistance Movement" is not going to abandon their goals, that's a truth we have to count on.
At the same time, another fake Jew, Thomas Friedman wrote in a New York Times op-ed that Israel would do well to release the funds for the Palestinian Authority. We all know Mr. Friedman's good intentions towards... the Muslim cause and the evil approach he takes against Israel.
And yet, Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his team, including Avigdor Lieberman, are now going to release the funds for the Palestinians, forgetting even the poisonous speech Abu Mazen, aka Mahmoud Abbas, gave at the United Nations.
A kind reminder:
Israel is G-d's Land given to His Children, the Jewish People...
Why choose any government who is going to defend the enemy instead of standing ferociously to defend their own people... One thing is sure: No Father would like to see that happen...
And, so, History is repeated -at your own risk.
G-d is clear: "Because they turned their back on me, I destroyed their cities."
And, G-d's Words are full of meaning and of purpose, they are never empty words...
That's why Israel will be taken in another direction altogether.
May G-d illuminate their new path.
_____________________________________
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top cabinet ministers approved the handover of $100 million in tax money to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, despite the vocal opposition of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
The FM's reason for wanting to hold the tax collection money was the possibility of it being used by a Palestinian unity government that would include Hamas – a terrorist organization in control of the Gaza Strip
On Sunday, Netanyahu appeared close to a decision, saying at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that he was considering releasing the money and that the cabinet would convene over the coming days to discuss the matter.
Netanyahu said he decided to go back on his decision to freeze the tax money due to the suspension of Palestinian activities at the UN, coupled with the fact that a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation does not appear to be on the horizon.
Lieberman was quick to respond at that meeting: "I have heard numerous infantile remarks about it being their money - as if with the money, they are free to murder or preach for the murder of Jews," the foreign minister said at a meeting of his Yisrael Beiteinu faction.
Nevertheless, Lieberman did back down on Sunday from the threats he made last week. "We will vehemently oppose the release of the funds," he said. "We won't quit the government and we won't create a crisis, but we will do everything we can to prevent the money from being transferred."
On Wednesday, the decision was finally made, with the forum of eight ruling that Israel would both transfer the withheld October tax funds as well as refrain from delaying taxes collected for the month of November.
A senior Israeli official said that Netanyahu's cabinet would consider freezing tax collection funds in the future if the Palestinians continue unilateral attempts for recognition at the United Nations or in the case of the formation of a unity cabinet between Fatah and Hamas.
Israel would track the money's use, and in the event that the funds are funneled toward terrorists, it will cut those amounts from future transactions, the official indicated.
Writing in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday, leading columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote that Israel would be wise to transfer the money to the PA, arguing that Netanyahu had to bolster moderate forces in the Arab world in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings.
Original source
Never mind that Hamas and Fatah have tried to negotiate a unified front. Now, appears that Hamas as they want to enter mainstream, are suddenly prone to give up violence... but, the big question is: for how long...?
As any observant Muslims, Hamas terrorists are certainly applying Taqqiya at one point, that magical taqqiya that allows them to rightfully and legally say whatever they need to say distorting the truth, in order to advance the cause of Islam in the world.
Hamas, the "Islamic Resistance Movement" is not going to abandon their goals, that's a truth we have to count on.
At the same time, another fake Jew, Thomas Friedman wrote in a New York Times op-ed that Israel would do well to release the funds for the Palestinian Authority. We all know Mr. Friedman's good intentions towards... the Muslim cause and the evil approach he takes against Israel.
And yet, Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his team, including Avigdor Lieberman, are now going to release the funds for the Palestinians, forgetting even the poisonous speech Abu Mazen, aka Mahmoud Abbas, gave at the United Nations.
A kind reminder:
Israel is G-d's Land given to His Children, the Jewish People...
Why choose any government who is going to defend the enemy instead of standing ferociously to defend their own people... One thing is sure: No Father would like to see that happen...
And, so, History is repeated -at your own risk.
G-d is clear: "Because they turned their back on me, I destroyed their cities."
And, G-d's Words are full of meaning and of purpose, they are never empty words...
That's why Israel will be taken in another direction altogether.
May G-d illuminate their new path.
_____________________________________
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top cabinet ministers approved the handover of $100 million in tax money to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, despite the vocal opposition of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
The FM's reason for wanting to hold the tax collection money was the possibility of it being used by a Palestinian unity government that would include Hamas – a terrorist organization in control of the Gaza Strip
On Sunday, Netanyahu appeared close to a decision, saying at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that he was considering releasing the money and that the cabinet would convene over the coming days to discuss the matter.
Netanyahu said he decided to go back on his decision to freeze the tax money due to the suspension of Palestinian activities at the UN, coupled with the fact that a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation does not appear to be on the horizon.
Lieberman was quick to respond at that meeting: "I have heard numerous infantile remarks about it being their money - as if with the money, they are free to murder or preach for the murder of Jews," the foreign minister said at a meeting of his Yisrael Beiteinu faction.
Nevertheless, Lieberman did back down on Sunday from the threats he made last week. "We will vehemently oppose the release of the funds," he said. "We won't quit the government and we won't create a crisis, but we will do everything we can to prevent the money from being transferred."
On Wednesday, the decision was finally made, with the forum of eight ruling that Israel would both transfer the withheld October tax funds as well as refrain from delaying taxes collected for the month of November.
A senior Israeli official said that Netanyahu's cabinet would consider freezing tax collection funds in the future if the Palestinians continue unilateral attempts for recognition at the United Nations or in the case of the formation of a unity cabinet between Fatah and Hamas.
Israel would track the money's use, and in the event that the funds are funneled toward terrorists, it will cut those amounts from future transactions, the official indicated.
Writing in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday, leading columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote that Israel would be wise to transfer the money to the PA, arguing that Netanyahu had to bolster moderate forces in the Arab world in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings.
Original source
Sunday, November 6, 2011
IRAN'S ETERNAL EVIL DREAMS VIS-A-VIS ISRAEL
Comment by Goodwill Ambassador Eliana Benador
Iran, Iran... AND Ahmadinejad...
Not many people in the West can tell this story:
I've been in the middle of a Muslim crowd in an undisclosed location in the GCC, attending a conference that had as keynote speaker none other than Larijani, the head of Iran's nuclear program back a few years ago.
The calm crowd, became vociferous once they heard Larijani's virulence against what he called the Zionist Israel... It was impressive to be in the middle of so much irrational hate and fury...
The excuse of Israel as a useful scapegoat for all the evil hidden in Islam, is a perennial one -and an irrational one that will incite endless violence, at the will of their masters...
No chance to change Islam or the hating Muslims -there is only one solution.
--------------------
DEBKA FILE: Tehran: For an Israeli attack, four Iranian missiles would hit a million Israelis
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) new agency Fars headlined a threat Sunday, Nov. 6: Four Iranian missiles can destroy tiny Israel, said the paper in Tehran's first reaction to the flood of conflicting reports about a possible Israel attack on Iran's nuclear sites. However, Iran's leaders are divided on how to assess the seriousness of an Israeli or American threat to their nuclear program and this is reflected in their various media.
The writer of the Fars story is identified by DEBKAfile's Iranian sources as Saad-allah Zarey, its senior military commentator and a crony of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He stressed that the four missiles capable of causing the Zionist entity a million casualties would be conventional.
According to those sources point that the experiences of the Gulf war show that this number of ordinary missiles could not cause anything like the damage calculated by the writer. What Zarey may be referring to are the stubborn rumors going around Western intelligence circles since early 2005 that during the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tehran laid hands on black market nuclear cruise missiles form the Ukraine and 3 to 5 more from Belarus.
DEBKAfile cites a BBC report of March 18, 2005:
Ukrainian arms dealers smuggled 18 nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in 1999-2001, Ukraine's prosecutor-general has said. The Soviet-era Kh-55 missiles - also known as X-55s - have a maximum range of 2,500km. They are launched by long-range bombers. The Kh-55, known in the West as the AS-15, is designed to carry a nuclear warhead with a 200-kiloton yield.
Our military sources add that with these missiles in hand, Iranian warplanes could bombard Israel 1,200 kilometers away without leaving their own air space.
The Ukrainian prosecutor-generalclaimed at the time that the missiles were not exported with nuclear warheads.
However our sources cite Western intelligence as suspecting that Tehran obtained those warheads from Belarus or from unconventional arms traffickers based in the Muslim Republics which were part of the USSR up until the 1990s. And indeed the Fars report did not specify what warheads the "conventional" missiles would carry.
Saad-allah Zarey described Israel as so small and vulnerable that even 100 Israeli bombs would not substantially damage Iran which is 80 times larger in area, whereas in a missile war Israel would not have enough time to rally its defenses. Therefore, he concludes, the chances of Israel or the US launching a military operation against Iran are slight.
Iran's most radical publication Kayhan finds in its Sunday editorial that Israel is too weak and America to exhausted to do much harm to Iran. Past experience has consistently shown that outside pressure makes Iran stronger, this paper says. Iran will come out on top of threats and sanctions compared with "Israel's defeat in its 33-day war against Hizballah," and America's "defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan."
However, another state-controlled paper, Tehran Emrooz, takes the opposite tack. Its editorial writer advises against underestimating the chances of an American military assault. According to this publication, Washington is preparing a "shock and awe" strike on Iran while at the same time stepping up sanctions.
Another editorial in Sharq agrees that "enemy plans" to attack Iran should not be taken lightly.
While all these comments reflect the debate underway among the various factions in the Iranian regime on the likelihood of an attack, no Iranian official has so far stepped forward with a definitive position.
Sunday, Ayatollah Khamenei sent a message of greeting to the Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, but made no mention of the nuclear issue except for a warning of the "perils and enemies" in wait for the Islamic Republic. And Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi likewise held his tongue on the issue in a speech he made Sunday in Tehran.
Original source
Iran, Iran... AND Ahmadinejad...
Not many people in the West can tell this story:
I've been in the middle of a Muslim crowd in an undisclosed location in the GCC, attending a conference that had as keynote speaker none other than Larijani, the head of Iran's nuclear program back a few years ago.
The calm crowd, became vociferous once they heard Larijani's virulence against what he called the Zionist Israel... It was impressive to be in the middle of so much irrational hate and fury...
The excuse of Israel as a useful scapegoat for all the evil hidden in Islam, is a perennial one -and an irrational one that will incite endless violence, at the will of their masters...
No chance to change Islam or the hating Muslims -there is only one solution.
--------------------
DEBKA FILE: Tehran: For an Israeli attack, four Iranian missiles would hit a million Israelis
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) new agency Fars headlined a threat Sunday, Nov. 6: Four Iranian missiles can destroy tiny Israel, said the paper in Tehran's first reaction to the flood of conflicting reports about a possible Israel attack on Iran's nuclear sites. However, Iran's leaders are divided on how to assess the seriousness of an Israeli or American threat to their nuclear program and this is reflected in their various media.
The writer of the Fars story is identified by DEBKAfile's Iranian sources as Saad-allah Zarey, its senior military commentator and a crony of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He stressed that the four missiles capable of causing the Zionist entity a million casualties would be conventional.
According to those sources point that the experiences of the Gulf war show that this number of ordinary missiles could not cause anything like the damage calculated by the writer. What Zarey may be referring to are the stubborn rumors going around Western intelligence circles since early 2005 that during the breakup of the Soviet Union, Tehran laid hands on black market nuclear cruise missiles form the Ukraine and 3 to 5 more from Belarus.
DEBKAfile cites a BBC report of March 18, 2005:
Ukrainian arms dealers smuggled 18 nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in 1999-2001, Ukraine's prosecutor-general has said. The Soviet-era Kh-55 missiles - also known as X-55s - have a maximum range of 2,500km. They are launched by long-range bombers. The Kh-55, known in the West as the AS-15, is designed to carry a nuclear warhead with a 200-kiloton yield.
Our military sources add that with these missiles in hand, Iranian warplanes could bombard Israel 1,200 kilometers away without leaving their own air space.
The Ukrainian prosecutor-generalclaimed at the time that the missiles were not exported with nuclear warheads.
However our sources cite Western intelligence as suspecting that Tehran obtained those warheads from Belarus or from unconventional arms traffickers based in the Muslim Republics which were part of the USSR up until the 1990s. And indeed the Fars report did not specify what warheads the "conventional" missiles would carry.
Saad-allah Zarey described Israel as so small and vulnerable that even 100 Israeli bombs would not substantially damage Iran which is 80 times larger in area, whereas in a missile war Israel would not have enough time to rally its defenses. Therefore, he concludes, the chances of Israel or the US launching a military operation against Iran are slight.
Iran's most radical publication Kayhan finds in its Sunday editorial that Israel is too weak and America to exhausted to do much harm to Iran. Past experience has consistently shown that outside pressure makes Iran stronger, this paper says. Iran will come out on top of threats and sanctions compared with "Israel's defeat in its 33-day war against Hizballah," and America's "defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan."
However, another state-controlled paper, Tehran Emrooz, takes the opposite tack. Its editorial writer advises against underestimating the chances of an American military assault. According to this publication, Washington is preparing a "shock and awe" strike on Iran while at the same time stepping up sanctions.
Another editorial in Sharq agrees that "enemy plans" to attack Iran should not be taken lightly.
While all these comments reflect the debate underway among the various factions in the Iranian regime on the likelihood of an attack, no Iranian official has so far stepped forward with a definitive position.
Sunday, Ayatollah Khamenei sent a message of greeting to the Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, but made no mention of the nuclear issue except for a warning of the "perils and enemies" in wait for the Islamic Republic. And Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi likewise held his tongue on the issue in a speech he made Sunday in Tehran.
Original source
TO ATTACK OR NOT TO ATTACK? THAT'S THE QUESTION: IRAN, ISRAEL AND THE BOMB...
Comment by: Goodwill Ambassador Eliana Benador
At a time when the whole world seems to follow the lead of the current president of the United States against America's former best ally, Israel, suddenly there is a rush to push Israel to repeat the prowess they did with Osirak -and which pushed Iraq's nuclear capabilities many years back.
Naturally, it will be no surprise that some of us will look with skepticism Israel's Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak's decisiveness to attack Iran.
The fact that this is being spoken and discussed in the public fora, makes it also implausible.
In the case of Osirak, Israeli political and military leaders decided what to do. They did it. And the first to learn about it, was the world.
--------------------------------
IRAN, ISRAEL, AND THE BOMB
Posted by David Remnick in The New Yorker
Around a year ago, I visited the Hatzor Air Force Base in central Israel. While interviewing a high-ranking officer about the training that was going on there for a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, I noticed a large picture on the wall of Israeli fighter jets flying over the territory of Auschwitz. The planes were there to participate in a commemoration, in 2003, of the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Polish Air Force. The photograph, the officer told me, was a gift from a leading Israeli Air Force official. It came with the caption, “Israeli warplanes over Auschwitz. Remember and do not forget. Always rely on ourselves.”
The officer did not express an opinion about whether Israel should launch a strike against Iran. That was not his job, he said. “What we’re trying to do is to give the political level a choice,” he said. “It’s not easy. It’s a leadership decision, probably the biggest such decision since the establishment of the state of Israel. We are building the opportunity, the capability.”
Later this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog outfit, will issue a report to its member states on Iran’s nuclear program. According to various press accounts, Western diplomats who have been briefed describe the report as finding, more explicitly than before, that Iran, despite its own denials and despite international sanctions, has been developing capabilities that appear intended for the production of a nuclear weapon. The I.A.E.A.’s evidence, the BBC reported, will include “intelligence that Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead,” and satellite images of a steel container that could potentially be used to test explosives “related to nuclear arms.” The Guardian’s account of developing events, by Julian Borger, is truly alarming.
The details will emerge—and they, inevitably, will be denied in Tehran. At a group interview that I attended in New York two months ago, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted yet again that Iran’s nuclear program was solely for civilian purposes, and, in advance of the new I.A.E.A. report, Iranian officials have declared the evidence that has leaked false, part of an overall fabrication.
An important article by Seymour M. Hersh published in The New Yorker last June, “Iran and the Bomb,” has made plain the complexity—and the potential perils—of trying to assess the nature and the pace of Iran’s nuclear program. Hersh quoted Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the I.A.E.A., as saying, “I don’t believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran.” The article, while taking into account the contradictions in Iranian statements and the nature of the regime (including its vicious crackdown on dissidents last year), began by reminding the reader of where hasty, exaggerated, and even manipulated intelligence led the Bush Administration, and the country, in 2003. (In that spirit, we should wait to read the I.A.E.A. report itself before coming to premature conclusions via diplomatic leaks. ElBaradei’s successor is less sanguine about evidence of Iranian intentions.)
From talking to American officials, I get the clear sense that President Barack Obama is deeply concerned about the I.A.E.A. report and the Iranian situation in general, but is hardly eager to lead, or even sanction, a military strike on Tehran. Hawks like Dick Cheney say that this is because Obama is weak and allergic to the use of military strength—a Republican talking point rendered ridiculous, time and again, by the President’s actions, from the killing of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to the use of drones in Pakistan and Yemen to his actions in Libya. In Cannes this week, Obama discussed with Nicolas Sarkozy of France and others ways to further isolate Iran in the U.N. and tighten sanctions, possibly making moves on Iranian financial institutions, including its central bank. On a trip to Asia later this week, Obama will try to persuade the Russians and Chinese, who are slower to act against Iran, to cooperate. The tension here is marked: The I.A.E.A. report comes not long after the United States accused Iran of hatching a plot to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington.
What has most heightened the sense of anxiety, in diplomatic circles and beyond, is a series of leaked reports coming from Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Secretary Ehud Barak, and other members of the seven-person security cabinet have grown increasingly determined to launch a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities—with or without Obama’s assent.
The country’s most influential columnist, Nahum Barnea, wrote a front-page commentary in Yediot Ahronoth recently called “Atomic Pressure,” slamming Netanyahu and Barak for acting dangerously and without a thorough public discussion. Barnea, who is as connected a journalist as I have ever met, tried to describe Netanyahu’s thinking: “Ahmadinejad is Hitler; if he isn’t stopped in time, there will be another Holocaust.” He continued, “There are those who describe Netanyahu’s attitude on the matter as an obsession: All his life he dreamed of being Churchill; Iran gives him the opportunity.”
Barnea is right: Netanyahu is obsessed with the Second World War parallels, real or imagined, and even used them to justify his opposition to the peace process with the Palestinians in the nineties. Netanyahu is deeply influenced not only by his hundred-year-old father’s right-wing Revisionist ideology, but also by a profound sense of himself as Israel’s post-Holocaust protector. Heroic imagery, like the F-15s flying over the rail tracks to Auschwitz, is no small part of what drives him. Five years ago, he said of the Iranian nuclear issue, “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany.”
Ehud Barak has a far more dovish image than Netanyahu, at least among many Americans, because of his overtures to the Palestinians in the last months and days of the Clinton Administration. But Barak carries with him a bitterness about those failed negotiations; he has said that they showed the Palestinian leadership’s “true face.” And on the Iranian issue he is far more hawkish. Indeed, he is said to be in agreement with Netanyahu on the need to act against Iran before it is, in their terms, too late.
Polls show deep division in Israel over a military strike on Iranian nuclear sites. To no one’s surprise, Haaretz, the paper read by the country’s liberal elite, has also published many editorials and columns denouncing a military strike or, at the very least, urging caution and public discussion.
Ari Shavit, a centrist by the paper’s standards, and a well-informed writer who has hardly been dismissive of the dangers of a potential Iranian bomb, wrote this week, “The strategic decision regarding Iran is the decision of our generation. Israel has not faced such an important and difficult decision since it decided to build the Dimona facility”—the nuclear complex in the Negev desert, which became active in the sixties. “If Israel acts against Iran prematurely, the implications could be dramatic. An eternal war with Tehran, an intermediate war with Hamas and Hezbollah, tens of thousands of missiles on dozens of cities in Israel.” Shavit did not stop there. “If Israel is late to act in Iran,” he wrote, “the implications could be critical to our survival. A nuclear bomb in the hands of fanatic Muslims could change our life entirely and could shorten our life span.”
The debate in Israel over Iran has not exactly been a secret, nor has it been limited to leaks from the government and columns in Yediot and Haaretz. (When is there ever a secret conversation in Israel? It may have the noisiest political culture in the world.) Many of Israel’s leading former intelligence and military leaders agree with Nahum Barnea (and are also, quite likely, among his sources). Meir Dagan, who led Israel’s Mossad spy agency until last January, has said publicly that an attack on Iran would be “a stupid idea….The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.” (Dagan also faulted the government for not proposing a peace initiative with the Palestinians.) On Iran, Dagan has been joined in his caution not only by political voices on the left, but also by the former chief of general staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and former head of the Shin Bet security agency, Yuval Diskin, as well as by leading non-liberals in the government such as Benny Begin (the son of Menachem Begin) and Dan Meridor.
“I decided to speak out because, when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure,” Dagan said earlier this year. “Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak.”
American officials, led by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, have met with Netanyahu and Barak, both in Israel and in Washington, and they discussed Iran at length. According to a report in Sunday’s edition of Haaretz, Panetta failed to extract a promise from the Israelis that they would not carry out a raid on Iran without coordinating it with the United States.
According to State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks, some Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, might object in public to an Israeli raid but would actually be delighted to see it happen. As the Arab Spring has transformed the region, the Iranians and the Saudis are engaged in a none-too-subtle battle for geo-strategic influence. The Saudis hardly see an Iranian bomb as a threat solely to Israel.
At the same time, the potential dangers of a strike are clear: a prolonged and bloody regional war; attacks on Israel from Gaza and Lebanon; the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a main world oil transport lane; a sharp rise in energy prices with disastrous effects on the world economy.
It does not require an Iranian official to point out that Israel, despite its policy of “ambiguity,” possesses somewhere around a hundred nuclear weapons. It developed those weapons in defiance of international law as a means of protection, a counterbalance to its overwhelming strategic disadvantages. Iran with a nuclear weapon, Israelis argue—and here there is near-unanimous agreement—is something else entirely: an aggressive theocratic dictatorship whose leaders routinely express everything from a desire to remove “the Zionist entity” to a denial of the Holocaust itself will, with nuclear capability, be a dangerously destabilizing force in an already unstable region.
If one assumes that there remains serious doubt about the details of Iran’s nuclear program—its progress, its timing—there can be no wishing away the seriousness of the issue or the nature of the regime. The attempts to stymie Iran so far—not only through sanctions, but through covert means, including assassinations of nuclear scientists and the Stuxnet computer worm—have, according to an analysis by David Sanger in Sunday’s Times, “slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by one or two years.” Sanger writes that a new computer worm, a “Stuxnet 2.0 may be in the works for Iran.”
The reports coming from Israel this week may be a kind of tactical noise. For at least the past five years, the Israeli leadership has made threatening sounds about absolute deadlines. It may be trying to heighten the sense of crisis in order to insure that the United States, Britain, and other Western powers will go to great lengths to intensify sanctions and exert maximum pressure on Iran in the wake of the new I.A.E.A. report.
A unilateral attack from Israel, however, would be a grave mistake for all the reasons made plain by Meir Dagan and so many others. It is terrible enough to imagine what might happen if Iran came to possess a bomb; but an attack now would almost certainly lead to a tide of blood in the region. The Middle East today is in a state of fragile possibility, full of peril, to be sure, but also pregnant with promise. A premature unilateral attack could upend everything and one result of many would be an Israel under fire, under attack, and more deeply isolated than ever before.
“For Israel,” a columnist from Ynet, Yediot’s English-language Web site concluded, “the way to cope with the Iranian nuclear threat is to adopt indirect routes, by supporting tougher sanctions against Iran and also by securing an agreement with the Palestinian Authority that would minimize regional tensions.” This route—call it the route of rigorous containment—is the right one.
Containment, as Louis Menand’s excellent essay on George Kennan (out Monday in The New Yorker) makes plain, is a complicated and costly form of vigilance—politically, diplomatically, and militarily. But it worked beyond anyone’s expectations during the Cold War. So much so that it avoided a headlong confrontation even as it sapped the strength of the Soviet regime. In the case of Iran, that kind of containment, however expensive in many ways, is immensely preferable to a heedless attack that risks the whirlwind.
The Israelis have great confidence in their capacity to check proliferation through military means. (Ask the Iraqis and the Syrians.) But even the senior officer at the Hatzor air base, where pilots were training for a possible mission to Tehran, was clear about the costs. The officer there told me that he and the rest of the Israeli military establishment knew that such a mission would not be nearly as simple as its strike, in 1981, on Iraq’s nuclear facility at Osirak. Not only does Iran have far more varied and well-protected facilities, he said, but, “It’s a huge issue—because of the day after. If and when it will happen, the whole region will be different.” That is a rare moment of understatement in the Middle East.
Original source
At a time when the whole world seems to follow the lead of the current president of the United States against America's former best ally, Israel, suddenly there is a rush to push Israel to repeat the prowess they did with Osirak -and which pushed Iraq's nuclear capabilities many years back.
Naturally, it will be no surprise that some of us will look with skepticism Israel's Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak's decisiveness to attack Iran.
The fact that this is being spoken and discussed in the public fora, makes it also implausible.
In the case of Osirak, Israeli political and military leaders decided what to do. They did it. And the first to learn about it, was the world.
--------------------------------
IRAN, ISRAEL, AND THE BOMB
Posted by David Remnick in The New Yorker
Around a year ago, I visited the Hatzor Air Force Base in central Israel. While interviewing a high-ranking officer about the training that was going on there for a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, I noticed a large picture on the wall of Israeli fighter jets flying over the territory of Auschwitz. The planes were there to participate in a commemoration, in 2003, of the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Polish Air Force. The photograph, the officer told me, was a gift from a leading Israeli Air Force official. It came with the caption, “Israeli warplanes over Auschwitz. Remember and do not forget. Always rely on ourselves.”
The officer did not express an opinion about whether Israel should launch a strike against Iran. That was not his job, he said. “What we’re trying to do is to give the political level a choice,” he said. “It’s not easy. It’s a leadership decision, probably the biggest such decision since the establishment of the state of Israel. We are building the opportunity, the capability.”
Later this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog outfit, will issue a report to its member states on Iran’s nuclear program. According to various press accounts, Western diplomats who have been briefed describe the report as finding, more explicitly than before, that Iran, despite its own denials and despite international sanctions, has been developing capabilities that appear intended for the production of a nuclear weapon. The I.A.E.A.’s evidence, the BBC reported, will include “intelligence that Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead,” and satellite images of a steel container that could potentially be used to test explosives “related to nuclear arms.” The Guardian’s account of developing events, by Julian Borger, is truly alarming.
The details will emerge—and they, inevitably, will be denied in Tehran. At a group interview that I attended in New York two months ago, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted yet again that Iran’s nuclear program was solely for civilian purposes, and, in advance of the new I.A.E.A. report, Iranian officials have declared the evidence that has leaked false, part of an overall fabrication.
An important article by Seymour M. Hersh published in The New Yorker last June, “Iran and the Bomb,” has made plain the complexity—and the potential perils—of trying to assess the nature and the pace of Iran’s nuclear program. Hersh quoted Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the I.A.E.A., as saying, “I don’t believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran.” The article, while taking into account the contradictions in Iranian statements and the nature of the regime (including its vicious crackdown on dissidents last year), began by reminding the reader of where hasty, exaggerated, and even manipulated intelligence led the Bush Administration, and the country, in 2003. (In that spirit, we should wait to read the I.A.E.A. report itself before coming to premature conclusions via diplomatic leaks. ElBaradei’s successor is less sanguine about evidence of Iranian intentions.)
From talking to American officials, I get the clear sense that President Barack Obama is deeply concerned about the I.A.E.A. report and the Iranian situation in general, but is hardly eager to lead, or even sanction, a military strike on Tehran. Hawks like Dick Cheney say that this is because Obama is weak and allergic to the use of military strength—a Republican talking point rendered ridiculous, time and again, by the President’s actions, from the killing of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to the use of drones in Pakistan and Yemen to his actions in Libya. In Cannes this week, Obama discussed with Nicolas Sarkozy of France and others ways to further isolate Iran in the U.N. and tighten sanctions, possibly making moves on Iranian financial institutions, including its central bank. On a trip to Asia later this week, Obama will try to persuade the Russians and Chinese, who are slower to act against Iran, to cooperate. The tension here is marked: The I.A.E.A. report comes not long after the United States accused Iran of hatching a plot to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington.
What has most heightened the sense of anxiety, in diplomatic circles and beyond, is a series of leaked reports coming from Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Secretary Ehud Barak, and other members of the seven-person security cabinet have grown increasingly determined to launch a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities—with or without Obama’s assent.
The country’s most influential columnist, Nahum Barnea, wrote a front-page commentary in Yediot Ahronoth recently called “Atomic Pressure,” slamming Netanyahu and Barak for acting dangerously and without a thorough public discussion. Barnea, who is as connected a journalist as I have ever met, tried to describe Netanyahu’s thinking: “Ahmadinejad is Hitler; if he isn’t stopped in time, there will be another Holocaust.” He continued, “There are those who describe Netanyahu’s attitude on the matter as an obsession: All his life he dreamed of being Churchill; Iran gives him the opportunity.”
Barnea is right: Netanyahu is obsessed with the Second World War parallels, real or imagined, and even used them to justify his opposition to the peace process with the Palestinians in the nineties. Netanyahu is deeply influenced not only by his hundred-year-old father’s right-wing Revisionist ideology, but also by a profound sense of himself as Israel’s post-Holocaust protector. Heroic imagery, like the F-15s flying over the rail tracks to Auschwitz, is no small part of what drives him. Five years ago, he said of the Iranian nuclear issue, “The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany.”
Ehud Barak has a far more dovish image than Netanyahu, at least among many Americans, because of his overtures to the Palestinians in the last months and days of the Clinton Administration. But Barak carries with him a bitterness about those failed negotiations; he has said that they showed the Palestinian leadership’s “true face.” And on the Iranian issue he is far more hawkish. Indeed, he is said to be in agreement with Netanyahu on the need to act against Iran before it is, in their terms, too late.
Polls show deep division in Israel over a military strike on Iranian nuclear sites. To no one’s surprise, Haaretz, the paper read by the country’s liberal elite, has also published many editorials and columns denouncing a military strike or, at the very least, urging caution and public discussion.
Ari Shavit, a centrist by the paper’s standards, and a well-informed writer who has hardly been dismissive of the dangers of a potential Iranian bomb, wrote this week, “The strategic decision regarding Iran is the decision of our generation. Israel has not faced such an important and difficult decision since it decided to build the Dimona facility”—the nuclear complex in the Negev desert, which became active in the sixties. “If Israel acts against Iran prematurely, the implications could be dramatic. An eternal war with Tehran, an intermediate war with Hamas and Hezbollah, tens of thousands of missiles on dozens of cities in Israel.” Shavit did not stop there. “If Israel is late to act in Iran,” he wrote, “the implications could be critical to our survival. A nuclear bomb in the hands of fanatic Muslims could change our life entirely and could shorten our life span.”
The debate in Israel over Iran has not exactly been a secret, nor has it been limited to leaks from the government and columns in Yediot and Haaretz. (When is there ever a secret conversation in Israel? It may have the noisiest political culture in the world.) Many of Israel’s leading former intelligence and military leaders agree with Nahum Barnea (and are also, quite likely, among his sources). Meir Dagan, who led Israel’s Mossad spy agency until last January, has said publicly that an attack on Iran would be “a stupid idea….The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.” (Dagan also faulted the government for not proposing a peace initiative with the Palestinians.) On Iran, Dagan has been joined in his caution not only by political voices on the left, but also by the former chief of general staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and former head of the Shin Bet security agency, Yuval Diskin, as well as by leading non-liberals in the government such as Benny Begin (the son of Menachem Begin) and Dan Meridor.
“I decided to speak out because, when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure,” Dagan said earlier this year. “Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak.”
American officials, led by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, have met with Netanyahu and Barak, both in Israel and in Washington, and they discussed Iran at length. According to a report in Sunday’s edition of Haaretz, Panetta failed to extract a promise from the Israelis that they would not carry out a raid on Iran without coordinating it with the United States.
According to State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks, some Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, might object in public to an Israeli raid but would actually be delighted to see it happen. As the Arab Spring has transformed the region, the Iranians and the Saudis are engaged in a none-too-subtle battle for geo-strategic influence. The Saudis hardly see an Iranian bomb as a threat solely to Israel.
At the same time, the potential dangers of a strike are clear: a prolonged and bloody regional war; attacks on Israel from Gaza and Lebanon; the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a main world oil transport lane; a sharp rise in energy prices with disastrous effects on the world economy.
It does not require an Iranian official to point out that Israel, despite its policy of “ambiguity,” possesses somewhere around a hundred nuclear weapons. It developed those weapons in defiance of international law as a means of protection, a counterbalance to its overwhelming strategic disadvantages. Iran with a nuclear weapon, Israelis argue—and here there is near-unanimous agreement—is something else entirely: an aggressive theocratic dictatorship whose leaders routinely express everything from a desire to remove “the Zionist entity” to a denial of the Holocaust itself will, with nuclear capability, be a dangerously destabilizing force in an already unstable region.
If one assumes that there remains serious doubt about the details of Iran’s nuclear program—its progress, its timing—there can be no wishing away the seriousness of the issue or the nature of the regime. The attempts to stymie Iran so far—not only through sanctions, but through covert means, including assassinations of nuclear scientists and the Stuxnet computer worm—have, according to an analysis by David Sanger in Sunday’s Times, “slowed Iran’s nuclear progress by one or two years.” Sanger writes that a new computer worm, a “Stuxnet 2.0 may be in the works for Iran.”
The reports coming from Israel this week may be a kind of tactical noise. For at least the past five years, the Israeli leadership has made threatening sounds about absolute deadlines. It may be trying to heighten the sense of crisis in order to insure that the United States, Britain, and other Western powers will go to great lengths to intensify sanctions and exert maximum pressure on Iran in the wake of the new I.A.E.A. report.
A unilateral attack from Israel, however, would be a grave mistake for all the reasons made plain by Meir Dagan and so many others. It is terrible enough to imagine what might happen if Iran came to possess a bomb; but an attack now would almost certainly lead to a tide of blood in the region. The Middle East today is in a state of fragile possibility, full of peril, to be sure, but also pregnant with promise. A premature unilateral attack could upend everything and one result of many would be an Israel under fire, under attack, and more deeply isolated than ever before.
“For Israel,” a columnist from Ynet, Yediot’s English-language Web site concluded, “the way to cope with the Iranian nuclear threat is to adopt indirect routes, by supporting tougher sanctions against Iran and also by securing an agreement with the Palestinian Authority that would minimize regional tensions.” This route—call it the route of rigorous containment—is the right one.
Containment, as Louis Menand’s excellent essay on George Kennan (out Monday in The New Yorker) makes plain, is a complicated and costly form of vigilance—politically, diplomatically, and militarily. But it worked beyond anyone’s expectations during the Cold War. So much so that it avoided a headlong confrontation even as it sapped the strength of the Soviet regime. In the case of Iran, that kind of containment, however expensive in many ways, is immensely preferable to a heedless attack that risks the whirlwind.
The Israelis have great confidence in their capacity to check proliferation through military means. (Ask the Iraqis and the Syrians.) But even the senior officer at the Hatzor air base, where pilots were training for a possible mission to Tehran, was clear about the costs. The officer there told me that he and the rest of the Israeli military establishment knew that such a mission would not be nearly as simple as its strike, in 1981, on Iraq’s nuclear facility at Osirak. Not only does Iran have far more varied and well-protected facilities, he said, but, “It’s a huge issue—because of the day after. If and when it will happen, the whole region will be different.” That is a rare moment of understatement in the Middle East.
Original source
REPORT: HIZBULLAH PREPARING MISSILE WAR ON ISRAEL "AS IRAN BRACES FOR ATTACK"
Comment by Goodwill Ambassador Eliana Benador
The militant, terrorist group, Hizbullah, turned a political organization -has nevertheless not made a secret their adherence to the terror methods that have been their leit motif and modus vivendi ever since the first days of their existence.
On another front, Hizbullah must deal with the Opposition leaders in Lebanon who have declared they will not accept any dialogue, unless Hizbullah's disarmament is discussed first.
However, Hizbullah's main goal, the destruction of Israel, will not be relegated to the second place by anyone or anything...
-----------------------------
Hizbullah preparing missile war on Israel as Iran braces for attack | World Tribune
“Hizbullah forces are being trained to fire at least 10,000 missiles, right at the war’s outset, at military and strategic targets such as airfields, military camps, and vital facilities including maritime ones, followed by the firing of rockets from launch sites whose location will come as a surprise to Israel,” the report, titled “Hizbullah Discusses Its Operational Plan for War with Israel,” said.
The report, released on Nov. 2 and based on open Arab sources, said Nasrallah has also ordered a ground force invasion of northern Israel. Hizbullah, with at least 20,000 fighters, was said to be planning to deploy
5,000 special forces troops trained in Iran to capture Israel’s Galilee region.
Original source
The militant, terrorist group, Hizbullah, turned a political organization -has nevertheless not made a secret their adherence to the terror methods that have been their leit motif and modus vivendi ever since the first days of their existence.
On another front, Hizbullah must deal with the Opposition leaders in Lebanon who have declared they will not accept any dialogue, unless Hizbullah's disarmament is discussed first.
However, Hizbullah's main goal, the destruction of Israel, will not be relegated to the second place by anyone or anything...
-----------------------------
Hizbullah preparing missile war on Israel as Iran braces for attack | World Tribune
“Hizbullah forces are being trained to fire at least 10,000 missiles, right at the war’s outset, at military and strategic targets such as airfields, military camps, and vital facilities including maritime ones, followed by the firing of rockets from launch sites whose location will come as a surprise to Israel,” the report, titled “Hizbullah Discusses Its Operational Plan for War with Israel,” said.
The report, released on Nov. 2 and based on open Arab sources, said Nasrallah has also ordered a ground force invasion of northern Israel. Hizbullah, with at least 20,000 fighters, was said to be planning to deploy
5,000 special forces troops trained in Iran to capture Israel’s Galilee region.
Original source
Sunday, October 30, 2011
WISHFUL THINKING AGAINST ISRAEL WON'T MAKE LIES BECOME TRUE
As antisemitism and Judeophobia rise worldwide, more lies see the light. A new analysis brings this situation to light in the following piece, recently published in Time Magazine.
____________________________
A new flood of propaganda is about to add to misconceptions about the state, writes Benjamin Pogrund
THERE is much passion among South Africans about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's understandable. The struggle against white domination and apartheid was against ethnicity and tribalism. The aim was a united, nonracial South Africa.
Israel, to many South Africans, seems to run counter to this. They view it as an apartheid and racist state; some even say it's worse than apartheid. Its founding ideology, Zionism, is rejected as racism. It is pilloried as a colonialist oppressor of Palestinians.
But merely to believe, or even say, these things doesn't mean they are true. Repeating them over and over doesn't make them true.
Yelling slogans to the effect that "Israel is apartheid" and "Zionism is racism" doesn't make any of it true.
The accusations are not true. This year I spent three-and-a-half months in South Africa, mostly as a Visiting Fellow at the Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town, and day after day read condemnations of Israel. Some were justified: Israel is as imperfect a society as anywhere else; moreover, its occupation of the West Bank and siege of the Gaza Strip lay it wide open to criticism.
Yet the attacks go beyond reality. They depict a racist monster which does not exist. I was astonished by the lack of knowledge which leads even well-meaning people into unjustified and cockeyed attitudes. The widespread ignorance also opens the way to manipulation: there are people who, for reasons best known to them, are malevolent and hate-filled towards Israel; it's depressing to read their lies and distortions, and even more to find that they are believed.
A few examples: it is not true, as some claim, that the United Nations did not consult Arabs before voting for partition of Palestine, in November 1947. A UN committee of inquiry was followed by full debate in the General Assembly - and led to voting, with a two-thirds majority, to create an Arab state and a "Jewish state". Both the US and the Soviet Union backed it. Jews accepted partition, Arabs didn't, went to war, and lost. Israel is the UN-sanctioned "Jewish state".
No one objects to Saudi Arabia having only Muslims as citizens. No one objects to Pakistan and Iran and others declaring themselves an "Islamic state". They are ethnic states. Israel is also an essentially ethnic state. Is it any less valid? Yet why is the "Jewish state" singled out for condemnation?
Equally the attacks on Zionism. Zionism grew at the end of the 19th century as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and within half a century achieved success with Israel's creation. It has been as valid and successful as the liberation movements in Europe during the 19th century and those in Africa and Asia during the 20th century.
Much misunderstood is that Arabs are 20% of Israel's population. As a minority they suffer discrimination; that's wrong, but is hardly unique in the world. Crucially, however, they have the vote and all citizenship rights. On the other hand, Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens and have no Israeli rights; the current international controversy is about them establishing an independent Palestinian state.
Another accusation is that marriages across the lines are barred, like apartheid's Mixed Marriages Act. The truth is a long way from that and has to do with religious rules - Jewish, Muslim and Christian - going back to the Ottoman empire 100 years ago. Several thousand couples defy the restrictions every year and go abroad to marry; their marriages are legally recognised on their return to Israel.
This sort of distortion is repeated regarding land, education, health and every aspect of society. The bottom line is that there is nothing remotely like South African apartheid.
I am writing this now because a flood of anti-Israel propaganda is about to pour over South Africa. It is coming next month through the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
The tribunal describes itself "as an International People's Tribunal created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East". It meets in Cape Town on November 5, 6 and 7.
It's theatre: the actors know their parts and the result is known before they start. Israel is to be dragged into the mud.
If anyone is in any doubt, look at the players: almost without exception, everyone has a publicly known - and hostile - stance towards Israel. Their motivations might vary, but the message they pump is the same.
Words like "tribunal", "jury" and "findings" mislead. There will not be any calm and dispassionate consideration of facts and a desire to understand the complexities resulting from history and wars: a quick Google check tells the story, from the naked prejudices of such as Ronnie Kasrils and John Dugard, to Cynthia McKinley, the former US Congress member whose loss of her seat was attributed to her loopy ideas of a Washington role in the 9/11 terrorism.
Money is part of the game: it's expensive to fly lots of people around the world, to sessions already held in Barcelona and London, now in Cape Town, and the US still to come. The players surely do not stay in youth hostels or live on hamburgers. According to the organisers, the Cape Town event alone is budgeted at R2-million. A French publisher has given à100000. Who is paying the bulk of the huge costs? And why?
And is anyone conscious of the irony of this bit of play-acting while in Israel's northern neighbour, Syria, 3000 pro-democracy protestors have died and the killing continues?
Pogrund was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail and then founder/ director of Yakar's Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem. He has written books about Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela and the press under apartheid and is co-editor of a book on Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. He is writing a book about Israel and apartheid
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A new flood of propaganda is about to add to misconceptions about the state, writes Benjamin Pogrund
THERE is much passion among South Africans about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's understandable. The struggle against white domination and apartheid was against ethnicity and tribalism. The aim was a united, nonracial South Africa.
Israel, to many South Africans, seems to run counter to this. They view it as an apartheid and racist state; some even say it's worse than apartheid. Its founding ideology, Zionism, is rejected as racism. It is pilloried as a colonialist oppressor of Palestinians.
But merely to believe, or even say, these things doesn't mean they are true. Repeating them over and over doesn't make them true.
Yelling slogans to the effect that "Israel is apartheid" and "Zionism is racism" doesn't make any of it true.
The accusations are not true. This year I spent three-and-a-half months in South Africa, mostly as a Visiting Fellow at the Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town, and day after day read condemnations of Israel. Some were justified: Israel is as imperfect a society as anywhere else; moreover, its occupation of the West Bank and siege of the Gaza Strip lay it wide open to criticism.
Yet the attacks go beyond reality. They depict a racist monster which does not exist. I was astonished by the lack of knowledge which leads even well-meaning people into unjustified and cockeyed attitudes. The widespread ignorance also opens the way to manipulation: there are people who, for reasons best known to them, are malevolent and hate-filled towards Israel; it's depressing to read their lies and distortions, and even more to find that they are believed.
A few examples: it is not true, as some claim, that the United Nations did not consult Arabs before voting for partition of Palestine, in November 1947. A UN committee of inquiry was followed by full debate in the General Assembly - and led to voting, with a two-thirds majority, to create an Arab state and a "Jewish state". Both the US and the Soviet Union backed it. Jews accepted partition, Arabs didn't, went to war, and lost. Israel is the UN-sanctioned "Jewish state".
No one objects to Saudi Arabia having only Muslims as citizens. No one objects to Pakistan and Iran and others declaring themselves an "Islamic state". They are ethnic states. Israel is also an essentially ethnic state. Is it any less valid? Yet why is the "Jewish state" singled out for condemnation?
Equally the attacks on Zionism. Zionism grew at the end of the 19th century as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and within half a century achieved success with Israel's creation. It has been as valid and successful as the liberation movements in Europe during the 19th century and those in Africa and Asia during the 20th century.
Much misunderstood is that Arabs are 20% of Israel's population. As a minority they suffer discrimination; that's wrong, but is hardly unique in the world. Crucially, however, they have the vote and all citizenship rights. On the other hand, Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens and have no Israeli rights; the current international controversy is about them establishing an independent Palestinian state.
Another accusation is that marriages across the lines are barred, like apartheid's Mixed Marriages Act. The truth is a long way from that and has to do with religious rules - Jewish, Muslim and Christian - going back to the Ottoman empire 100 years ago. Several thousand couples defy the restrictions every year and go abroad to marry; their marriages are legally recognised on their return to Israel.
This sort of distortion is repeated regarding land, education, health and every aspect of society. The bottom line is that there is nothing remotely like South African apartheid.
I am writing this now because a flood of anti-Israel propaganda is about to pour over South Africa. It is coming next month through the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
The tribunal describes itself "as an International People's Tribunal created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East". It meets in Cape Town on November 5, 6 and 7.
It's theatre: the actors know their parts and the result is known before they start. Israel is to be dragged into the mud.
If anyone is in any doubt, look at the players: almost without exception, everyone has a publicly known - and hostile - stance towards Israel. Their motivations might vary, but the message they pump is the same.
Words like "tribunal", "jury" and "findings" mislead. There will not be any calm and dispassionate consideration of facts and a desire to understand the complexities resulting from history and wars: a quick Google check tells the story, from the naked prejudices of such as Ronnie Kasrils and John Dugard, to Cynthia McKinley, the former US Congress member whose loss of her seat was attributed to her loopy ideas of a Washington role in the 9/11 terrorism.
Money is part of the game: it's expensive to fly lots of people around the world, to sessions already held in Barcelona and London, now in Cape Town, and the US still to come. The players surely do not stay in youth hostels or live on hamburgers. According to the organisers, the Cape Town event alone is budgeted at R2-million. A French publisher has given à100000. Who is paying the bulk of the huge costs? And why?
And is anyone conscious of the irony of this bit of play-acting while in Israel's northern neighbour, Syria, 3000 pro-democracy protestors have died and the killing continues?
Pogrund was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail and then founder/ director of Yakar's Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem. He has written books about Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela and the press under apartheid and is co-editor of a book on Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. He is writing a book about Israel and apartheid
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