It's been a wild day at work and I'm going back to work momentarily....
You will recall that last weekend, I reported on the letter written by 43 (hopefully former) members of Unit 8200 in which they decried their unit's 'harming innocent Palestinians.'
Wednesday's New York Times has an op-ed from James Bamford, who spent a considerable amount of time this summer interviewing Edward Snowden for Wired Magazine. Bamford claims that Snowden told him that information about 'Palestinian Americans' was routinely shared with the IDF's Unit 8200.
Among
his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A.
was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a
large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit
8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the
communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.
Typically,
when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it
would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally
identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel,
the N.S.A. evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this
way.
Mr.
Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained
the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab-
and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian
territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think
that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve
seen.”
Bamford goes on to tie Snowden's 'revelations' into the 8200 scandal.
It appears that Mr. Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 — many still serving in the reserves — accused the organization of startling abuses.
In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used
information collected against innocent Palestinians for “political
persecution.” In testimonies and interviews given to the media,
they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual
orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions
and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into
becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society.
The
veterans of Unit 8200 declared that they had a “moral duty” to no
longer “take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians.” An
Israeli military spokesman disputed the letter’s overall drift but said
the charges would be examined.
The data was transferred pursuant to an agreement between the NSA and the government of Israel.
I'm not in favor of - and I don't believe that the information was used - just to harass people. On the other hand, if it's used to fight terrorism, I don't really have a problem with allies sharing information that way. Obviously, it's not admissible in court. But it can be used to stop terror attacks before they happen.
When you don't share information, the result is that people like the Tsarnaev brothers, about whom the governments of Russia and Saudi Arabia both claimed to have 'warned' the United States, but about whom no one had any solid evidence until after the Boston Marathon terror attack.
Oh my: Black widow Muslim suicide bomber may already be in Sochi
Chechen bombers apparently have a thing for sports events.
As you might recall, last April, two Chechen brothers set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing five people and wounding hundreds of others.
Now, reports indicate that a 'black widow' Muslim suicide bomber from the same Dagestan region of Chechnya is reportedly in Sochi threatening the upcoming winter olympics.
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
Police in Sochi have launched an urgent search for a possible female
suicide bomber who may have already made it past the ring of security
set up for the Olympic Games.
Hotel employees in Sochi told ABC News that posters with pictures and
descriptions of a 22-year-old woman from nearby Dagestan were
distributed over the weekend by authorities and a similar flyer was also
seen posted at Sochi's airport.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Olympic Committee reacted to the revelation
by saying that the safety of Team USA is their "top priority."
"As is always the case, we are working with the U.S. Department of
State, the local organizers and the relevant law enforcement agencies in
an effort to ensure that our delegation and other Americans traveling
to Sochi are safe," spokesperson Patrick Sandusky said.
The woman featured on the wanted posters is identified as Ruzanna
Ibragimova, using the nickname Salima, the widow of a militant
reportedly killed in a shoot-out with police last year in Dagestan.
She is described as being affiliated with the Caucasus Emirate, the
terror group led by Doku Umarov that has threatened attacks against the
Winter Games in Sochi.
Ibragimova is described as having a 10 centimeter scar across the left
cheek, a pronounced limp, and a stiff left arm that doesn't bend at the
elbow.
Until the world takes Islamic terrorism seriously and stops pretending that it's something else, the world will continue to suffer from terror attacks.
Hmmm... Bat Yam bus bomb just like Boston Marathon bomb
The bomb that was used to blow up a Dan bus in Bat Yam last month was remarkably similar to the bomb that was used in the Boston Marathon terror attack in April of last year.
The bomb that exploded last month on an evacuated public bus in
central Israel closely resembled the type used in the Boston Marathon
attack.
The
explosive in Bat Yam was enclosed in a pressure cooker and was
activated by a cell phone, according to the Shin Bet security service.
...
The bomb, which was placed in a black backpack with wires sticking
out, detonated on December 22. The passengers were evacuated from the
bus before the bomb was detonated after alerting the driver to a
suspicious package left on the vehicle, which was traveling from Bnei
Brak to Bat Yam.
The pressure-cooker bomb included more than four pounds of explosives and was surrounded by bails and screws.
At
the Boston Marathon in April, three people were killed and more than
250 were injured by a bomb allegedly made by brothers Dzhokhar and
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, possibly using an Al-Qaida manual online.
I saw online a while ago that the bomb was a pressure cooker and that it was activated by a cell phone. But until now, I thought that the only connection between the two bombings might have been the use of the al-Qaeda manual if that.
The fact that the Shin Bet has chosen to highlight the connection makes me think that there's more to it than the manual. Hmmm.
The principal of Concord Carlisle High School in Boston
issued an apology Wednesday after a Muslim poem was recited over the
intercom on the 12th anniversary of 9/11, and the Pledge of Allegiance
was not.
According to principal Peter Badalament, a “small number”
of people were outraged at the poem, which was meant to promote
“cross-cultural understanding,” Boston.com reported.
Apparently, the Pledge of Allegiance was not read because of some confusion.
...
Mohja
Kahf’s “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at
Sears,” tells a granddaughter’s account of watching her grandmother
adhere to the religious Muslim custom of washing her feet five times a
day, Boston.com reported.
“Respectable Sears matrons shake their
heads and frown,” Miss Kahf writes, “as they notice what my grandmother
is doing … an affront to American porcelain … a contamination of
American Standards by something foreign and unhygienic requiring civic
action and possible use of disinfectant spray.”
Less than five months since the Boston Marathon massacre. How soon they forget...
Video: Judge Jeanine Pirro Rips Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover Boy
Once again, Judge Jeanine Pirro is in high dudgeon as she rips into
Rolling Stone magazine for glorifying and glamorizing maimer and
murderer and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. She finishes with a sharply worded
message to the Boston Bomber Boy himself as she gives voice to what so
many Americans feel but rarely hear in our PC-saturated media. This the
July 20, 2013, "Opening Statement" by Judge Jeanine.
Let's go to the videotape.
She's dynamite, isn't she? Kind of ironic that news of Helen Thomas' death appears underneath in the scrolling headlines while Judge Jeanine talks....
Remember this guy? His name is Abdul Rahman Ali Issa Al-Salimi Alharbi and he's the Saudi national who at one time was a 'person of interest' in the Boston Marathon terror attack, and who was supposedly deported to Saudi Arabia after Michelle Obama came to visit him at the hospital?
Would you believe he returned to the White House on July 4?
He's the guy on the right. He was part of a group of 'military families.'
Boston Marathon terrorist dreamed of joining Hamas in Gaza
Returning from a fact-finding trip to Russia, Congressman Stephen Cohen (D-Tn) told The Hill on Tuesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two Russian brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon terror bombing, really wanted to join Hamas in Gaza, but because he did not speak Arabic, he joined Chechen 'rebels' instead.
Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev hoped to join an
anti-Israeli movement in Gaza, but ended up joining Chechen rebels in
Dagestan because he didn’t speak Arabic, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) told
The Hill in an interview on Tuesday.
Cohen and a group of five
other lawmakers returned Monday from a trip to Russia, where they met
with the head of a Russian counter-terrorism unit, the director of the
Committee for State Security (KGB), and other national security
officials.
Reading from notes from a briefing with Russian intelligence
officials, Republican Representative Steve King said Monday that they
indicated Russia had told the FBI that Tamerlan was "very close to
radical Islam and very religious."
"I suspect that he was raised to do what he did," King said of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Indeed. And Gaza is the number one attraction to these people.
Israel Trauma Coalition helps get Boston back on its feet
Israelis have experience - too much experience - dealing with terror attacks. This week, a group of Israelis came to Boston to help that city deal with the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terror attack (Hat Tip: Lance K).
“Trauma, when it comes to reside within you, is a partner that you take
over the years,” said Talia Levanon, director of the coalition. “We’re
trying to minimize the control it has over our lives.”
...
“The first time is a shattering experience,” Levanon said before the
session at Watertown High School Wednesday. “It shatters the assumption
that the world is safe, that if you are a good person, nothing bad will
happen to you.”
The team also visited the school that the bombing’s youngest victim,
8-year-old Martin Richard, attended. And the Israelis met in Watertown,
Boston, and Westborough with emergency workers, medical professionals,
and religious leaders.
The coalition unites about 40 organizations in Israel that also
responded to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks. The coalition’s trip is being sponsored by Combined Jewish
Philanthropies, a Boston organization that helps people in need and
advocates for Israel.
The team of six specialists emphasizes that every person’s response
to trauma is individual, that people cope in their own ways, and that to
care for others, people must first care for their own well-being. They
use the analogy of oxygen masks on an airplane: Before you fit one over
the child next to you, you must put on your own.
“There’s an expectation that as professionals, as teachers, as
somebody who knows what to do, you will come and fix everything,”
coalition member Ruvie Rogel told the Watertown teachers. “This is very
unrealistic, especially in a situation when you are actually sharing the
event with the population that you are supposed to help.”
But for those with jobs caring for others, it is not always natural to pause for their own healing.
...
Coalition members, scheduled to leave Friday, have insisted they are
not here to tell people how to react, but to start a dialogue about
healing. The trauma will never entirely fade.
“Some people think that resilience means going back to what you were
before,” Daniels said. “But actually, there’s no way back. You don’t go
back, you move forward.”
Must see video: Boston Marathon double amputee victim honored by Bruins
This is a must-see video. Jeff Bauman lost both his legs in the Boston Marathon terror attack. On Saturday night, at Game 2 of their first-round playoff series, the Boston Bruins honored Bauman.
A senior Saudi government official told Daily Mail
that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent a written warning to the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security in 2012. According to the source, the
letter was pertaining to Tsarnaev and potential terror threats.
This information was allegedly separate from warnings that Russia
sounded and was apparently predicated upon intelligence that was
collected in Yemen, Daily Mail reports.
In addition to sending the warning to America, the Saudi government
also denied an entry visa to Tsarnaev in Dec. 2011 when he purportedly
sought to take the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the individual claimed.
This is the first time that alleged plans to visit Islam’s most holy
city have been divulged.
The source went on to say that, although the letter, which purportedly came from the Saudi Ministry of Interior,
did not name Boston specifically, it did cite Tsarnaev and it was “very
specific.” The Saudi official also told the outlet that the notice
warned the U.S. government that “something was going to happen in a major U.S. city.”
But the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security denies receiving any such warning.
DHS has no knowledge of any communication from the Saudi
government regarding information on the suspects in the Boston Marathon
Bombing prior to the attack,’ MailOnline learned from one Homeland
Security official who declined to be named in this report.
The White House took a similar view. ‘We and other relevant
U.S. government agencies have no record of such a letter being
received,’ said Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the president’s
National Security Council.
Whom are you going to believe? Our friends the Saudis or Obama and Crapolitano? Seems obvious to me.
By the way, when I arrived at Heathrow, there were signs all over the place asking if you were coming from Boston and have any pictures or information.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a woman's DNA has been found on the remnants of one of the bombs used by Tamerlan and Dhzokhar Tsarnaev to commit terrorism at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Although that may not mean that a woman was involved in assembling the bombs, the FBI has asked for a DNA sample from Katherine Russell, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's widow. She may not have been the only person asked (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The officials familiar with the case cautioned that there could be
multiple explanations for why the DNA of someone other than the two
bombing suspects—Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother,
Dzhokhar—could have been found on remnants of the exploded devices. The
genetic material could have come, for example, from a store clerk who
handled materials used in the bombs or a stray hair that ended up in the
bomb.
On Monday, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were seen leaving
the Rhode Island home of the parents of Katherine Russell, the widow of
Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The elder brother died after a shootout with police
four days after the April 15 bombings.
Ms. Russell has been staying with her parents since the bombings, and
FBI agents have been seen posted outside the home since her late
husband was identified as one of the bombers. Her lawyer has said she is
"doing everything she can to assist with the investigation."
One official familiar with the case said agents went to the house
Monday to collect a DNA sample from Ms. Russell, the culmination of days
of negotiations. FBI officials also have been negotiating with Ms.
Russell's attorney in recent days to get fuller access to question her,
the officials familiar with the case said. The officials briefed on the
investigation said the DNA request was needed to determine whether it
matched the DNA found on the bomb remnants.
Ms. Russell is one of as many as a half-dozen people in whom
investigators are interested as they seek to determine if the brothers
had any help in the bomb attack or the days afterward, the officials
said. Ms. Russell's lawyer didn't immediately respond to a request for
comment about the latest developments.
So nice to see the FBI on the case. After all, they did such a great job of preventing the terror attack from happening.
Noah Beck reminds us that what happened in Boston two weeks ago was a weekly occurrence in Israel a decade ago.
But imagine if this happened again next week, at a pizzeria, killing 15
diners. And again, a week later, on a bus, killing 19 passengers. Then,
at a discotheque, killing 21 teens. Then, at a church, killing 11
worshipers. And so on, with a new bombing terrorizing us almost every
week.
Israelis don't have to imagine. They just have to remember. Between
1995 and 2005, each year saw an average of 14 suicide bombings,
murdering 66 victims. 2002 was the worst year, with 47 bombings that
slaughtered 238 people. That’s almost one Boston bombing every week.
Adjusted for population differences, Israel’s victims in 2002 amounted
to the equivalent of three 9/11s in one year. And these bombing
statistics don’t include all of the shootings, stabbings, and other
violent attacks by Palestinian extremists during those years.
Most Americans (and Europeans), who enjoy lives of far greater
security, can barely recall such attacks because they usually received
only scant and perfunctory media coverage, if they were mentioned at
all. A few particularly gruesome attacks (like the Netanya Passover
bombing that killed 30 and injured 140) were prominently reported but
most attacks were barely and inconspicuously noted, and many smaller but
horrific attacks went entirely unreported.
Of course, whenever Israel responded militarily to these attacks, that
would be headline news.
As WSJ columnist Brett Stephens noted in 2009,
"every Palestinian death receives somewhere in the order of 28 times the
attention of every Chechen death." When Israel erected its West Bank
security barrier, a non-violent but extremely effective way to prevent
Palestinian terrorism, that too was headline news. The fence was even
brought before the International Court of Justice in 2004 – unlike the
terrorism that compelled it. Israel surely had other uses for the $2
billion spent to build the barrier, but the number of attacks and
fatalities dropped so dramatically after its construction that few
Israelis doubted its necessity.
What's worse is that every Israeli knows (or ought to know) that if the IDF were to leave Judea and Samaria tomorrow, we'd be right back to where we were in 2002 - and worse, God forbid.
We now know the identity of 'Misha,' the alleged bad influence on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon terrorist. This is from the first link.
Today I was able to meet “Misha,” whose real name is Mikhail
Allakhverdov. Having been referred by a family in Boston that was close
to the Tsarnaevs, I found Allakverdov at his home in Rhode Island, in a
lower middle class neighborhood, where he lives in modest, tidy
apartment with his elderly parents. He confirmed he was a convert to
Islam and that he had known Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but he flatly denied any
part in the bombings. “I wasn’t his teacher. If I had been his teacher, I
would have made sure he never did anything like this,” Allakhverdov
said.
...
Allakhverdov said he had known Tamerlan in Boston, where he lived until
about three years ago, and has not had any contact with him since. He
declined to describe the nature of his acquaintance with Tamerlan or the
Tsarnaev family, but said he had never met the family members who are
now accusing him of radicalizing Tamerlan. He also confirmed he had been
interviewed by the FBI and that he has cooperated with the
investigation.
...
An FBI spokesman in Boston declined to comment on an ongoing case. Allakverdov’s statements, however, seemed to bear out recent reports that the FBI have not found any connection between “Misha” and the bomb plot.
One question is why members of the Tsarnaev family have made
accusations about Allakverdov. A close friend of the family in Boston
said that Misha was not known to have visited Tamerlan at home. I
interviewed Allakhverdov in Russian and it seems likely that in whatever
contact the two men had, they would have spoken Russian.
In many ways, Allakhverdov’s parents seem typical former-Soviet
émigrés who had embraced middle class life in the United States. His
father is an Armenian Christian and his mother is an ethnic Ukrainian.
The family had lived in Baku, Azerbaijan, but had left in the early
1990s for the United States to escape growing persecution of Armenian
Christians there. The family was welcoming to me but very nervous. “We
love this country. We never expected anything like this to happen to
us,” his father said.
NY Times: 'If we'd let Tamerlan become a citizen despite being an Islamist and beating his girlfriend, he wouldn't have blown up the Marathon'
In an article whose lead author is Deborah Sontag, the New York Times argues that if only the US had allowed Tamerlan Tsarnaev to become a citizen, despite being an Islamist and beating his girlfriend, he would not have perpetrated the Boston Marathon terror attack.
From one year to the next, though, the tournament rules had changed,
disqualifying legal permanent residents — not only Mr. Tsarnaev, who was
Soviet-born of Chechen and Dagestani heritage, but several other New
England contenders, too. His aspirations frustrated, he dropped out of
boxing competition entirely, and his life veered in a completely
different direction.
Mr. Tsarnaev portrayed his quitting as a reflection of the sport’s
incompatibility with his growing devotion to Islam. But as dozens of
interviews with friends, acquaintances and relatives from Cambridge to
Dagestan showed, that devotion, and the suspected radicalization that
accompanied it, was a path he followed most avidly only after his more
secular dreams were dashed in 2010 and he was left adrift.
His trajectory eventually led the frustrated athlete and his loyal
younger brother, Dzhokhar, to bomb one of the most famous athletic
events in this country, killing three and wounding more than 200 at the Boston Marathon,
the authorities say. They say it led Mr. Tsarnaev, his application for
citizenship stalled, and his brother, a new citizen and a seemingly
well-adjusted college student, to attack their American hometown on
Patriots’ Day, April 15.
What about the other three murders Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have committed? Were those also because he was kicked out of a boxing tournament?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
