Labels: anti-Israel obsession, Leftist Jews, Richard Silverstein
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:16 PM
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Arab media outlets reported mysterious explosions at a military facility near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia overnight Friday. BBC Arabic reported powerful explosions at a Syrian military arms depots near the Latakia port that sent shock waves several kilometers from the source.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Chairman Rami Abdel Rahman said intense explosions shook the entire region, where the Syrian regime has a large army base and multiple arms caches. The explosions occurred possibly after they were targeted with rockets, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Witnesses reported that at least 10 Syrian troops were killed following the explosions. Reports attributed the explosions to an attack aimed at government arms cashes near the village of Asamiya, 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Latakia.
Abdel Rahman said there were indications that the blasts were caused by rocket fire targeting the depots, but that there was uncertainty over who was behind the attack.
Israel's Defense Ministry said it was "studying the reports."
No one else knows who was behind the explosions. But Dickie 'tikkun olam' Silverstein is sure it's da Joooz. You see Latakia is near Tartus, the Russian naval base on the Syrian coast, and....
Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV network reported the attack and quoted a Syrian defense official saying it was carried out by rebels based in northern Latakia.
Though the Free Syrian Army took immediate credit for the attack, it was not the responsible party. A confidential Israeli source informs me that Israeli forces attacked the site. The target were components of Russia’s SA-300 anti-aircraft missile system which had been shipped by Russia to Tartus and stored in Latakia.
Israel and exerted tremendous pressure on Vladimir Putin to cancel its contract to supply the missile batteries to Syria, since once they were operational they would render Israeli aircraft more vulnerable to attack. Israel, of course, will countenance no front-line state having even defensive weapons which give it superiority over Israeli weapons systems. In response to Israeli entreaties, Russia’s leader refused to budge and recommitted to providing the weapons to Assad. Apparently, he’d begun to follow through on his promise with these first shipments.Dickie may not be able to put together a coherent English sentence, but for once I hope he's right. It's high time for at least one country in the free world not to back down in the face of Russia's meddling and support for terrorism. I'm glad it's my country.
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Free Syrian Army, Nusra Front, Richard Silverstein, Russia, S-300 missile defense system, Syrian uprising
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:15 PM
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Sorry about the longer-than-expected break. I went to sleep early last night (believe it or not) and shortly after I woke up, the network where I am staying went down.1) Nice continent you have there ... shame if anything happened to it
The New York Times reports Despite Alarm by U.S., Europe Lets Hezbollah Operate Openly. There's a lot of material in this article: some of it good and some of it disappointing spin. Notable though is the illustrative photograph of a crowd (apparently in Lebanon) giving full fisted salutes to Sheikh Nasrallah.Washington and Jerusalem insist that Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed terrorist organization with bloody hands, and that it is working closely with Tehran to train, arm and finance the Syrian military’s lethal repression of the uprising there. Yet, the European Union continues to treat it foremost as a Lebanese political and social movement.Why does the first paragraph quoted above start with "Washington and Israel insist?" The first sentence would be true even without that. In fact a lot of the reporting supports the charge that Hezbollah's threat isn't just the opinion of Israel and the United States.
As Israel heightens fears of a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, intelligence analysts warn that Iran and Hezbollah would respond with attacks of their own on targets abroad. Israeli and American officials have attributed the Bulgarian bus bombing last month that killed six people, including five Israeli tourists, to Hezbollah and Iran, saying it was part of a clandestine offensive that has included plots in Thailand, India, Cyprus and elsewhere.
While the group is believed to operate all over the Continent, Germany is a center of activity, with 950 members and supporters last year, up from 900 in 2010, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said in its annual threat report. On Saturday, Hezbollah supporters and others will march here for the annual Jerusalem Day event, a protest against Israeli control of that city. Organizers told the Berlin police that the event would attract 1,000 marchers, and that two counterdemonstrations were also likely.
Of course it's also not Jerusalem Day but Qods Day. The fact that Qods day was created by Ayatollah Khomenini and still observed by Hezbollah, is a pretty strong indication that Hezbollah is tied to Iran."There is no consensus among the E.U. member states for putting Hezbollah in the terrorist-related list of the organizations,” Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, the foreign minister of Cyprus, which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, said at the time. “Should there be tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism, the E.U. would consider listing the organization.”This, of course, is a common, if mistaken rationale - that a terrorist organization has a "militant" side in addition to a "political" or "charitable" side. Despite the various rationales provided for the European toleration of Hezbollah, near the end of the article we read:
The stark difference in views reflects the many roles that Hezbollah has played since it emerged in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion in 1982. Hezbollah’s militant wing was responsible for a string of kidnappings and for sophisticated bombings at home and has been accused of bombings abroad. But the group also became a source of social services that the shattered Lebanese government was incapable of providing, and has evolved since then into a political force with two cabinet ministers and a dozen seats in Parliament.
“They are quite professional in this, and this is something some Western donors are admitting that has a positive impression on some Western politicians,” said Stephan Rosiny, a research fellow at the Institute of Middle East Studies at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg.Some experts say that security officials on the Continent are resistant to blacklisting the group because they seem to see a tacit détente, where Hezbollah does not stage attacks and European law enforcement officials do not interfere with its fund-raising and organizational work.This is an idea that should have been developed more. Who are these experts? It wold be very interesting and disturbing if Europe, as a whole, allowed Hezbollah to operate within its borders out of cowardice.
Congress is attempting to change things in this regard.
2) Morsi's power grab
In contrast to last week's editorial in the New York Times, the editors of the Washington Post seem concerned with President Morsi's latest moves. In Egypt’s Morsi must moderate his power grab:PRESIDENT MOHAMED MORSI retilted Egypt’s balance of power Sunday, two months after the ruling council of generals had tilted it too far in their own direction. This could prove a step toward a truly democratic Egypt, a positive turn of events. But there is a danger, too, for Mr. Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate who won the first free presidential election in Egypt’s modern history. He must respect others in a nascent civil society.There's something quaint about an American newspaper lecturing the leader of Egypt on the benefits of democracy. It's pretty clear that those are niceties more respected by the former than the latter. Still it's good that the Post at least acknowledges that there's something disturbing about Morsi's overreach.
By any measure, the power grab by the council of generals was crude and offensive to the democratic aspirations of millions of Egyptians, who threw off Hosni Mubarak’s rule last year in the Arab Spring. Just as the polls closed in Egypt’s runoff presidential ballot in June, the military council stripped the presidency of power, seized authority to legislate until a new parliament is elected and to decide all matters related to the armed forces, and took a significant role in the writing of a new constitution.
On Sunday, Mr. Morsi returned those powers to himself. He also forced the country’s top two generals — both holdovers from the Mubarak years — into retirement and fired the chiefs of all the military services. Last week, he ousted Mr. Mubarak’s head of the security service. Mr. Morsi seems to have shrewdly capitalized on the Aug. 5 security debacle in which 16 Egyptian troops were killed by Islamist militants in the Sinai.
The Post, like the Times, believes that Egypt's military is the main impediment to democracy in Egypt, thus any other institution, by default, would be a better choice to lead Egypt. There's a certain myopia about recognizing the Muslim Brotherhood as having a totalitarian governing philosophy.
Barry Rubin synopsizes the control Morsi is exercising in What happened in Egypt:Egyptian President al-Mursi has now named the heads of the main Egyptian newspapers, radio stations, and television networks. They include sleaze balls that sold out to the Mubarak regime and will do whatever he tells them and supporters of Islamism. The first round-ups have begun of reporters who are to bold and honest in their investigations. The walls are closing in.Morsi's recent power grabs weren't isolated incidents. Rather they were part of an ongoing pattern of accruing more power for the presidency and, consequently, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Soon the generals will be replaced; soon the judges will be replaced, and so too will the diplomats. In other words, the internal and external bureaucracy of Egypt’s government will become transformed. The old national security considerations will change.
The next stop is the court system where plans are being made already to eliminate judges. True, there were many corrupt jurists but there was no institution in Egypt where there were more courageous individuals and advocates of democracy. But that’s the problem. The very integrity that made these e men stand up against Mubarak will make them do the same against the Brotherhood and they will not enforce Sharia law. Their vote against the parliamentary result was a warning. They will soon be ousted.
I missed something from Eric Trager's latest:Meanwhile, Mr. Morsi's newly appointed defense minister, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, admitted that the military had subjected female activists to "virginity tests" in its brutal crackdown on Tahrir Square protests in March 2011. In its first major move against dissenters, the Morsi regime this month began prosecuting the editor of Al-Dustour, a private daily, for "harming the president through phrases and wording punishable by law."If the former general, Ahmed Shafiq had won the presidential race against Morsi and put El-Sisi in a position of power, do you believe that any news organization would have failed to mention that he was involved in the "virginity tests?"
3) The not-so-secret life of Richard Silverstein
If I happen to know that an old man walks the streets in a long white beard and flowing robes carrying a sign that says "The World will end Soon," I could report, "Elijah Jones believes the world will end soon." That would be undeniably true. However, given that Mr. Jones is quite clearly eccentric or unbalanced, reporting that would bestow upon him an authority he doesn't deserve.
In a sense, Richard Silverstein, is Elijah Jones of the Middle East. He "reports" all sorts of stuff about Israel. The one criteria he seemingly has is that the information he "reports" is damaging to Israel.
In another sense, Silverstein is like Walter Mitty of the James Thurber short story. In order to escape the drudgery of his ordinary life, Walter Mitty imagines himself to different extraordinary people. Silverstein imagines himself an investigative reporter. The difference being that Mitty's reveries stopped when confronted with reality, news organizations actually extend Silverstein's fantasies by using his reports and pretending that he's a reliable source.
The latest incident occurred when Silverstein claimed to have gotten a secret report for Israel's war plans against Iran. Apparently, these plans came not from the Israeli government, but from an online forum in Israel called Fresh. Here's part of what the operators of Fresh wrote:Over the past two days, most of the people in Israel (ourselves included), have seen news reports all over the media, detailing the "Israeli Iran Attack Plan", allegedly originating from one Richard Silverstein, an American Anti-Israeli blogger.There have been a number of critiques of the media's irresponsible behavior from Jewlicious, The Algemeiner Journal, Honest Reporting and even the anti "war on terror" website War in Context.
Silverstein, whose lack of integrity is shown by his claims to have never visited www.fresh.co.il though he has an active account, which he used to write 11 posts (the 12th was an attempt to publish classified information and resulted in deletion and a six month suspension of his account – suspension which was ended over a year ago), published yesterday a translation of what he claimed to have been a document obtained from “a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer”. Since we can’t read minds, we can only guess whether Silverstein source actually exist, and whether the source was informed on this “attack plan”.
What we don’t need to speculate about, is the fact the first publication of the said document (in a different version, which defined it as “an optimistic scenario for an attack in Iran” and clearly stated that it was based on foreign and non-classified sources and on the author’s own imagination) – was published four days before Silverstein’s publication, right here, on this website, in the Army and Security Forum, as a thread which was started by the forum’s moderator, Sirpad, on behalf of one of the forum’s most veteran and respected users, who was the original author of the document (yes, he and non-other).
Israelly Cool ably exposed Silverstein's claims.
Elder of Ziyon graded the various media organizations that quoted Silverstein. Only three of these organizations rated a passing (C- or above) grade. I'd like to highlight one of the failures:
972magI don’t doubt that the document is real. I don’t doubt that it came from somewhere inside the Israeli government. What I doubt is the veracity of Silverstein’s source’s claim that this document is being used to “persuade high-level Israeli officials.” Believes him completely
F
972 is an online anti-Israel publication. Despite not being reliable, it has been quoted numerous times by The Lede blog at the New York Times. At least one of its contributors has been awarded an op-ed column in the Times. So yes, the problem of this one story extends beyond those publications who published it.
Silverstein, it should be remembered, was quoted in the New York Times and other publications lamenting the lack of civility in the blogging world. The complaint, coming from someone whose favored form of argument is an ad hominem attack, was laughable. Yet not one of the news organization that quoted Silverstein about civility bothered to check his blog to see his hypocrisy first hand.
When it comes to critics of Israel the standard of proof is so low that even legitimate news organizations will publish the rantings of the Elijah Joneses and Walter Mittys of the world. Whether it's always malice or an unhealthy addiction to sensational stories regardless of their veracity (two of Silverstein's dupes this time were Ynet and Arutz-7) this all too common defect shows a lack of standards in journalism.
Labels: Egypt, Egyptian army, Europe, Hezbullah, Middle East Media Sampler, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood, Richard Silverstein, Soccer Dad
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:31 PM
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A great new site you won't want to miss.Labels: Richard Silverstein
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:40 PM
4 comments
The Heron TP, Israel’s most advanced unmanned aerial vehicle, crashed on Sunday morning during a test flight near the Tel Nof Air Force Base outside Rehovot.The crash was not at all kept a secret here. In fact, it was reported on the radio almost immediately.
The Israel Air Force opened an investigation. According to initial findings, the crash occurred after the UAV performed a maneuver beyond its capabilities, causing one of its wings to break off. The aircraft was flying with a new navigation component that, the IAF suspects, might have disrupted the drone’s automatic flight systems.
The Heron TP is the largest UAV in the IAF. It has a 26- meter wingspan – the same as a Boeing 737 – and can stay airborne for up to 45 hours. It can carry a 1,000 kg. payload, making it capable of conducting a wide variety of missions.
According to foreign reports, it can also fire missiles, and in Israel it is often referred to as the UAV “that can reach Iran.”
The flight on Sunday was overseen by Israel Aerospace Industries and was held in conjunction with the IAF.
An exclusive report from a confidential highly-placed Israeli source says that a booby-trapped drone crashed and exploded at the top-secret Israeli airbase Sdot Micha. Sdot Micha (also profiled here) is the home of the Israeli missile arsenal including its long-range Jerichos capable of striking Iran. There were civilian and military eyewitnesses to the crash, which happened within the perimeter fence of the facility, which covers a large area just outside Bet Shemesh.I think that video is the one I posted above. It doesn't sound much like Richard's story, does it? And we know how reliable Richard's sources are, don't we?
The eyewitnesses and Israel’s wish to avoid pressure to retaliate against the Iranians, necessitated the publication of a media cover story. The story claims an advanced Israeli drone crashed near the Yesodot moshav, 10 miles from Sdot Micha. Israel also claims the drone took off from Tel Nof airbase. Eyewitnesses may be able to produce video documentation of the precise location of the crash unless it is impounded by the IDF.
None of this means I can knowingly report stories that are false (nor would I ever do so). On the other hand, I am reporting stories that aren’t (and usually can’t be) corroborated by second or third independent sources. That in turn means that the mainstream media is too conservative and cautious to publish my original reporting. This may save them from reporting a story that turns out to be criticized or unsubstantiated; but it also causes them to lose out when I report major stories embarrassing to the Israeli military-intelligence community. That’s why you’ll never see Reider or GRN breaking the story of Anat Kamm, Dirar Abusisi, Ameer Makhoul, the Eilat terror attacks, or Shamai Leibowitz.The difference between Silverstein and the rest of us is that when we report something that's speculation, we don't report it as fact. We report that it's speculation. And we don't do it from 9,000 miles away where whatever we get is much more likely to be unverified and unverifiable.
My critics fundamentally misunderstand what I do. My primary job isn’t to be an oracular James Reston or Walter Cronkite and only report what is scientifically, verifiably true and be right 100% of the time. My primary job is to be right as often as I can while staying true to the reasons I write this blog in the first place: to promote transparency in Israeli military-intelligence matters, Israeli democracy, and to oppose military adventurism. This is a tightrope act, one that is difficult to negotiate since there are so many unknowns, so much concealed information.
The goal of the national security state is to render its affairs as opaque as possible. It is to shut off information to journalists, bloggers and even its own citizens. That’s why it’s sometimes so damn hard to know if you got it right. But if anyone thinks I’m going to be deterred by the fact that every once in a while the I’s aren’t dotted or the T’s aren’t crossed or that even, God forbid, my source may get it wrong (which I do not concede in this instance), they’re sorely mistaken. I’ll accept the brickbats of Dimi Reider, Dapna Baram and others for the sake of the greater good of exposing the dangers a rampant Israel may pose to the region and the world.
Labels: Heron TP unmanned aerial system, Richard Silverstein
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:44 AM
1 comments
Richard Silverstein doesn't just love attention: He craves it. And he will do anything to get it, including making baseless claims to Iran's FARS News."My own confidential Israeli source confirms today's murder was the work of the Mossad and MKO, as have been a number of previous operations I've reported here," Richard Silverstein, a senior Jewish American journalist, said in his weblog named Tikun Olam.We all know how carefully Silverstein researches his posts, don't we?
"The method recalls another series of assassinations that occurred of Fereidoun Abbassi Davani (who was seriously wounded) and his colleague Majid Shahriari (who was killed)," Silverstein said in his weblog.
He downplayed the effects of such assassinations in Iran's scientific progress, and said, "I've said it before and I'll say it every time something like this happens: assassinations like the one today accomplish nothing. It doesn't fundamentally harm Iran's nuclear program. It doesn't deter Iran or its scientists from pursuing the research and whatever scientific goals they may have. These are shameful acts by a shameful Israeli government exploiting Iranian terrorists for their own ends. I find it disgusting that Israel can get away with such acts with impunity."
"I am not a supporter of Iran's nuclear program. But I am even less a supporter of assassination as state policy, and that includes my own nation, whose president seems especially enamored of targeted killings, even of US citizens."
Labels: Iranian nuclear program, MEK, Mossad, Richard Silverstein
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:18 PM
2 comments
A report indicates that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Richard Silverstein should he set foot in Israel (link in Hebrew) (Hat Tip: Jameel). According to the report, Silverstein is wanted for aiding the enemy and the warrant may have been issued as far back as a year ago. The warrant is apparently a result of Silverstein's connections with convicted American translator Shamai Leibowitz.Labels: Richard Silverstein, Shamai Leibowitz
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:57 PM
1 comments
One of the biggest shmucks in the Jewish blogging world - Richard Silverstein - thinks he has exposed Aussie Dave of Israellycool's true identity.Now, due to a sloppy error on his part (thanks to an eagle-eyed Israeli who finds him as repellant as I, who caught it), Aussie Dave has exposed his real identity. And since I believe that hypocrites deserve their comeuppance and that their dark secrets deserve to see the light, I’m exposing him for what and who he is: David Loeb, 23 Rashi Street Beit-Shemesh, Israel. In his Facebook profile he notes some sort of affiliation with Virgin Megastores, which may mean he works there. If anyone knows, I’d like to find out.There's just one little problem: Dave's last name isn't Loeb and that's not his address (I happen to know the real Dave personally). Dave set a trap for Silverstein and Silverstein fell for it (and continues to believe that he has outed Dave) lock, stock and barrel.
Commenters note that Loeb has featured a picture of a U.S. basketball player for his profile photo which makes that as fake as the rest of him and his blog is. He also might’ve considered that featuring his blog’s URL in his Facebook profile would be another dead giveaway to his real identity.
Labels: blogosphere, Richard Silverstein
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:10 PM
9 comments
Here's Ron Radosh on the New York Times' publishing the story of Richard Silverstein (pictured) and Shamai Leibowitz earlier this week. This is from the first link. I have a few thoughts about what Leibowitz passed on and what Silverstein published. First, the entire episode leads me to recall the hullabaloo for the past few years about the indictment of the two former AIPAC lobbyists who were accused of accepting classified information from Larry Franklin, in an FBI sting operation. The case was eventually thrown out of court. Those who followed it remember scores of stories about how the indictment revealed that the two innocent AIPAC officials were betraying their own country, and that it proved the “dual loyalty” of those Americans who were supporting Israel.Indeed.
Now, Richard Silverstein, by his own admission, accepted illegal classified information from an employee of the FBI, who compromised national security by giving the leftist blogger the classified data, in order to help stop what he thought might be an Israeli policy of which he disapproved. Silverstein blogged on the items because he too wanted to stop a possible Israeli strike on Iran.
Isn’t Mr. Silverstein, then, an accomplice to Leibowitz’s violation of the Espionage Act? He knew what he received was given to him illegally, and that he was dealing with secret information. Why, then, isn’t the U.S. government seeking to prosecute him also? Silverstein told the Times that after Leibowitz’s indictment, he burned the material in his back yard. As Omri Ceren wrote today at Contentions, “maybe the Times can explain how functionally single-sourced stories from agenda-driven partisans now qualify as publishable.”
Moreover, Shane even wrote that Silverstein’s “account could not be fully corroborated.” Yet the paper ran with the story. Evidently, if the story comes from a leftist opponent of Israel, it is worthy of a major story, even if the account eventually turns out to have major holes in it.
Perhaps when it comes to the Middle East, the paper should now have as its slogan: “All the anti-Israel news that we choose to print.” At least, then, readers would know what they’re getting when they buy the paper.
Labels: media bias, New York Times, Richard Silverstein, Shamai Leibowitz
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:34 PM
0 comments
Here is Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, September 6. 1) The Peter Principle in Palestine
Last week Khaled Abu Toameh wrote Failed Leaders Do Not Deserve to Become "Presidents" in which he lambastes Mahmoud Abbas for pursuing the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) at the UN later this month. (There's a similarly themed article at Comment is Free by Mehdi Hasan. h/t Lynn)The 76-year-old Abbas, however, is evidently not concerned about the consequences of his UN gamble.That last paragraph makes me a little uncomfortable as is it sounds much like an argument that Hamas would make. Abu Toameh has followed up that article with another, Why Palestine Will Not Have Peaceful Relations with Israel
So what if the Americans cut off more than $500 million in annual aid to the Palestinians?
Who cares if many of the Palestinians' friends in Europe are advising Abbas that his initiative would damage the peace process and further complicate the situation in the Middle East?
And who cares if even some Arab countries are opposed to the statehood plan? Just this week it was reported that Jordan's King Abdullah II had advised Abbas to reconsider the statehood bid out of fear that it would result in the loss of the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.
Like the rest of the Arab regimes, the Jordanians are afraid that a Palestinian state would mean that millions of refugees living in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would stay in these countries.The refugees do not want to go to a Palestinian state in the 1967 territories.They want to go back to Israel, and this is what the Palestinian Liberation Organization has been demanding. So if the PLO is gone, the refugees will not have anyone to represent their case.How can the Palestinians have diplomatic and peaceful relations with Israel when many are calling on Jordan and Egypt to close down the Israeli embassies in Amman and Cairo and expel the ambassadors?Both articles present the Palestinian diplomatic efforts in a much different light from the way they are portrayed in the mainstream media.
The Palestinian Authority is now saying that after the UN vote on the proposed Palestinian state, it will start talking with Hamas and other groups about the need to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian territories.
But can anyone provide guarantees that Hamas, or a more radical group, would not win the vote? In January 2006, many Palestinian Authority officials and Western "experts" assured the Americans and Europeans that Hamas would never win the parliamentary election.
Abbas is well aware of the fact that the state that he is seeking from the UN will have jurisdiction only over those areas in the West Bank that are under his control today.
Jennifer Rubin makes an interesting observation at the end of a column yesterday regarding the Palmer report (h/t Love of the Land):Not only is this an implicit repudiation of the premises of the Goldstone Report (which, in Operation Cast Lead, portrayed the Israelis as aggressors and Gazans as victims), but it is a powerful argument against granting the Palestinians their request for a declaration of statehood. The government of that new state is co-run by the very terrorists described in the flotilla report as waging war on Israel.There's another side to this observation too. A few months after the Goldstone report, Judge Goldstone himself, said that his investigation wasn't necessary. The Palmer report confirmed that Israel's blockade, despite the chorus of critics, is legal under international law. And now following those two, the Palestinians wish to use international law to achieve their goals. To anyone who is paying attention, Goldstone and Palmer point out the current corruption of the state of international law (at least as practiced by the UN), which should make the UDI even more suspect.
The United Nations is now going to reward Hamas with a declaration (albeit symbolic) that its unity government joins the “international community” of civilized nations? It’s of course preposterous. Neither the United Nations nor anyone else knows how, or even if, the unity government will function. What we do know is that Israel is involved (still) in an ongoing war against terrorists who target Israeli civilians in contravention of international law. Perhaps when it is Israelis’ turn to speak on the resolution, its representatives should hand the microphone over to Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Álvaro Uribe, who can read their informative report to the General Assembly.
2) Critiquing the critics
David Bernstein of the Volokh conspiracy takes on two of Israel's critics regarding the Palmer report. In the first case he rejects Kevin Jon Heller's assertion that the blockade is illegal.Because the Report concluded that the Hamas-Israel conflict was an IAC, it didn’t contradict Heller’s argument that if it’s not an IAC, the blockade is illegal under international law. But Heller also, as he acknowledges, “questioned the legality of the blockade” and said that it was not just wrong but that Israel’s claim to be in an IAC with Hamas is wholly implausible. While one Report cannot establish in everyone’s mind the lawfulness of the blockade, surely if an unsympathetic (or at the very least, non-sympathetic) forum like a U.N. commission adopts the Israeli position on IAC, that position cannot be deemed beyond the realm of even plausible argument, and Heller’s analysis is indeed “contradicted.”In the latter case he reminds us the Juan Cole claimed that the Mavi Marmara was populated by peaceful volunteers. The Palmer report though writes:Palmer Report: Israeli forces “faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.”Many of Israel's critics were refuted by the Palmer report, yet that aspect of the report seems to have been largely ignored.
As I pointed out at the time, Israel relied on faulty intelligence, and should have recalled its forces and started from square one when it became clear that they weren’t facing peaceful “aid volunteers,” but organized, violent fanatics itching for a fight.
3) Burning documents
Anti-Israel blogger and publicity hound, Richard Silverstein must be thrilled that he is once again a principal in a New York Times story, Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel (via memeorandum)
I really don't want to give the limelight seeker more attention, but Israel Matzav notedAnd by the way, someone in the US Attorney's office in Seattle ought to be looking into prosecuting Silverstein for destroying evidence.The guy is an unprincipled egotistical scoundrel; if he gets prosecuted because he boasted of a crime to the New York Times that would be satisfying.He said he had burned the secret documents in his Seattle backyard after Mr. Leibowitz came under investigation in mid-2009, but he recalled that there were about 200 pages of verbatim records of telephone calls and what seemed to be embassy conversations. He said that in one transcript, Israeli officials discussed their worry that their exchanges might be monitored.Sounds like destruction of evidence to me.
4) Cohen-head
It's hard to come up with new insults for Roger Cohen, though calling him a Zionist agent is pretty clever. his latest Israel Isolates Itself is typical of his work. It's filled with half-truths and distortions. My Right Word and Elder of Ziyon have already fisked it. One point here, Cohen writes:The Palmer report, leaked to The New York Times last week, is a split-the-difference document, with the Israeli and Turkish members of the panel including notes of dissent. My rough translation of its conclusion would be this message to Israel: You had the right to do it but what you did was way over the top and just plain dumb.Except this is from a previous Cohen article:The logic of the Israeli offensive, if there is one, must surely be that Hamas can be so weakened as ultimately to crumble. That is also the logic of the relentless blockade that persisted during the six-month cease-fire despite Israel’s earlier commitment, as part of the deal, to opening border crossings.In other words he believes the blockade to keep weapons out of Gaza to be wrong. The Palmer report showed that he was wrong. That's more than a split decision; Cohen's premise was knocked out. He possesses neither the good sense nor the humility to acknowledge that he is mistaken.
Labels: diplomatic isolation, Middle East Media Sampler, Palmer Commission, Richard Silverstein, Roger Cohen, Soccer Dad, spying, Unilateral declaration of independence (UDI)
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:44 PM
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In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Drudge Report had reported about US spying on the Israeli embassy in Washington. I reported that Israel has long suspected that the US spies on its Washington embassy, a fact that was confirmed by the New York Times on Tuesday morning. While treated as highly classified by the F.B.I., the fact that the United States spies on Israel is taken for granted by experts on intelligence. “We started spying on Israel even before the state of Israel was formally founded in 1948, and Israel has always spied on us,” said Mr. Aid, the author. “Israeli intercepts have always been one of the most sensitive categories,” designated with the code word Gamma to indicate their protected status, he said.But that's not all that the Times confirmed. The Times has confirmed that Shamai Leibowitz, a contract translator for the CIA, took transcripts of wiretaps of the Israeli embassy and turned them over to Jewish anti-Semitic blogger Richard Silverstein. Leibowitz's conviction for turning over classified information was widely reported at the time, but the name of the recipient had not been disclosed until now (and the recipient had been misidentified at the time). Leibowitz is the grandson of Rabbi Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a prominent Torah scholar who became an extreme Leftist and referred to the IDF as 'Judeo-Nazis.'
Mr. Silverstein’s account could not be fully corroborated, but it fits the publicly known facts about the case. Spokesmen for the F.B.I., the Justice Department and the Israeli Embassy declined to comment on either eavesdropping on the embassy or Mr. Leibowitz’s crime. He admitted disclosing “classified information concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States,” standard language for the interception of phone calls, e-mails and other messages by the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, which generally focuses on international communications.And by the way, someone in the US Attorney's office in Seattle ought to be looking into prosecuting Silverstein for destroying evidence.
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Mr. Silverstein, 59, writes a blog called Tikun Olam, named after a Hebrew phrase that he said means “repairing the world.” The blog gives a liberal perspective on Israel and Israeli-American relations [I won't link Silverstein because I don't want to give him any more traffic, but 'liberal perspective' is an understatement. CiJ]. He said he had decided to speak out to make clear that Mr. Leibowitz, though charged under the Espionage Act, was acting out of noble motives [This what prompted me to call Silverstein an arrogant SOB. Who the heck does he think he is? CiJ]. The Espionage Act has been used by the Justice Department in nearly all prosecutions of government employees for disclosing classified information to the news media, including the record-setting five such cases under President Obama.
Mr. Silverstein said he got to know Mr. Leibowitz, a lawyer with a history of political activism, after noticing that he, too, had a liberal-minded blog, called Pursuing Justice. The men shared a concern about repercussions from a possible Israeli airstrike on nuclear facilities in Iran. From his F.B.I. work from January to August of 2009, Mr. Leibowitz also believed that Israeli diplomats’ efforts to influence Congress and shape American public opinion were excessive and improper, Mr. Silverstein said. [And yet, Silverstein admits later in the interview that nothing Israel did goes beyond ordinary lobbying. But even if it did, who were Leibowitz and Silverstein to be the arbiters of that? Where do they come off replacing the Israeli government's judgment with their judgment - from Silver Spring and Seattle - as to what Israel's security requires? CiJ]
“I see him as an American patriot and a whistle-blower, and I’d like his actions to be seen in that context,” Mr. Silverstein said. “What really concerned Shamai at the time was the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, which he thought would be damaging to both Israel and the United States.” [Again, who are they to decide that? Who placed them in charge? CiJ]
Mr. Silverstein took the blog posts he had written based on Mr. Leibowitz’s material off his site after the criminal investigation two years ago. [And the Times couldn't find them in the Way Back Machine? We'll have to work on that... CiJ] But he was able to retrieve three posts from April 2009 from his computer and provided them to The New York Times.
The blog posts make no reference to eavesdropping, but describe information from “a confidential source,” wording Mr. Silverstein said was his attempt to disguise the material’s origin.
One post reports that the Israeli Embassy provided “regular written briefings” on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza to President Obama in the weeks between his election and inauguration [Well, no kidding. It's no secret here that Cast Lead was ended at Obama's 'request' before his inauguration. CiJ]. Another describes calls involving Israeli officials in Jerusalem, Chicago and Washington to discuss the views of members of Congress on Israel. A third describes a call between an unnamed Jewish activist in Minnesota and the Israeli Embassy about an embassy official’s meeting with Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, who was planning an official trip to Gaza.
Mr. Silverstein said he remembered that embassy officials talked about drafting opinion articles to be published under the names of American supporters. He said the transcripts also included a three-way conversation between a congressman from Texas, an American supporter of the congressman and an embassy official; Mr. Silverstein said he could not recall any of the names.
At his sentencing, Mr. Leibowitz described what he had done as “a one-time mistake that happened to me when I worked at the F.B.I. and saw things which I considered were violation of the law, and I should not have told a reporter about it.” [One-time mistake? Given all those blog posts, it sounds like a many times mistake. CiJ]
That was a reference to Israeli diplomats’ attempts to influence Congress, Mr. Silverstein said, though nothing Mr. Leibowitz described to him appeared to be beyond the bounds of ordinary lobbying.
He said he had burned the secret documents in his Seattle backyard after Mr. Leibowitz came under investigation in mid-2009, but he recalled that there were about 200 pages of verbatim records of telephone calls and what seemed to be embassy conversations. He said that in one transcript, Israeli officials discussed their worry that their exchanges might be monitored.Sounds like destruction of evidence to me.
Labels: CIA, Israeli embassy, Richard Silverstein, Shamai Leibowitz, spying, traitor
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:10 AM
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I'm debating which is funnier - that Leftist blogger Richard Silverstein published this unsourced drivel or that the Iranians actually believe it.There have been all sorts of speculations about his fate. Yoav Stern of Haaretz asserted on March 5, 2007, that Asgari "may have defected." Two days later, the Jerusalem Post claimed that he had been in Europe and was then taken to the United States. However, Niles Lathem and Oron Dan of the New York Post reported on the same date that U.S. officials denied that he had been transfer there. On March 8, 2007, Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post reported that Asgari was indeed in the United States and willingly cooperating with the CIA. The next day, Lathem reported that Iranian dissidents living in Europe and the United States had helped Asgari to defect. It was claimed, in particular, that Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, a former Guard officer in the Quds force who turned against the hardliners and now lives in Europe, had a hand in Asgari's defection.I find this story hard to believe. I recall claims at the time that Asghari had two wives and took the other one with him, so I don't give much credibility to claims made by his 'wife.' Also, given that Shahram Amiri really did turn out to be in the United States, and apparently disclosed the existence of the Qom facility to the Americans, it makes it far more likely that Asghari was also in the United States. If Asghari was in the United States, I can see the Mossad being allowed to question him, but I find it hard to believe that the CIA would just turn him over to the Mossad, and that the Mossad would be allowed to take him back to Israel and hold him incommunicado. And the labeling of Silverstein's source as a 'confidential Israeli source' (as opposed to - for example - 'a member of the security forces') undercuts that source's credibility. Something doesn't make sense here.
These reports, however, were countered by others indicating that Asgari was in an Israeli prison. Some Arab diplomats have reportedly said to the media that he was kidnapped by the CIA and/or Mossad. On November 15, 2009, the Associated Press quoted the website Alef -- run by Ahmad Tavakkoli, a Majles deputy from Tehran and cousin of the Larijani brothers -- as saying that Iran believes that Asgari is in Israeli detention.
New information has now emerged. Richard Silverstein, who blogs on Middle Eastern issues, reports that he has received confirmation from a reliable source in Israel that Asgari is indeed incarcerated in Unit 15 of Ayalon prison. Silverstein had already reported on June 13,Earlier today, Yediot Achronot published a story about a Mr. X imprisoned in an Israeli jail. The man was in solitary confinement. His jailers did not know who he was, did not share a word with him, no one came to visit him. No one seemed to know he was there. They didn't even know what crime he had committed or how he came to be in the prison. His prison cell was completely isolated from other prisoners and he couldn't communicate in any way with them.As Silverstein now explains about the specific location where Asgari is reportedly being held, "This cell in Ayalon's Unit 15 is the same one specially built to hold Yigal Amir, assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. In other words, it is meant to isolate the prisoner from the outside world and the rest of the prison system."
The report still does not clarify the reason for Asgari's disappearance. It could be that he originally defected. The Sunday Times of London claimed that he had been spying for the West since 2003. But no supporting evidence of any sort has ever been presented. If he defected, then why is he in a prison in Israel? It could be that when Israel realized that he had information about the Hezbollah and, in particular, the eventual fate of Ron Arad, the Israeli pilot captured in Lebanon who was never heard from again, he was transferred from the United States or Europe. Or, it could be that he was actually kidnapped.
I personally find it hard to believe that Asgari planned to defect. If he had such a plan, why did he not take his family with him to Turkey? Why has he not called his family for four years? Why is his wife still looking for him, saying that she has never heard from him since December 9, 2006? In addition, it is well known that when Iranians who have held high-ranking government positions retire , they are forbidden from traveling abroad for many years. Given that Asgari was an active Guard officer for a long time and had access to a considerable amount of sensitive information, it is inconceivable that he was allowed to travel to Syria and Turkey, unless he was still working with the government on a secret mission. If so, if he were planning to defect, I find it difficult to believe that the Guard intelligence unit or the Ministry of Intelligence would not have noticed anything unusual about him.
Labels: Ali Reza Asghari, Iranian nuclear program, Richard Silverstein, Ron Arad, Tehran Bureau
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:22 PM
1 comments
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
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