israel

Israel’s military has “unfriended” one of its own — after a combat soldier potentially updated Israel’s enemies on Facebook.

The military said Wednesday that a planned raid on a West Bank village was called off after the soldier disclosed its details online. The military said the soldier posted the time and location of the raid on his Facebook page, saying that troops were planning on “cleaning up” the village.

Fellow soldiers reported the leak to military authorities, who canceled the raid, fearing that the information may have reached hostile groups and put troops at risk.

The soldier was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 days in prison. He was also removed from his battalion and combat postings.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

Britain last night fired the first shot in a potentially explosive diplomatic row with Israel by calling in the country’s ambassador to explain the use of faked British passports by a hit squad who targeted a Hamas official in Dubai.

The Israeli ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office to “share information” about the assassins’ use of identities stolen from six British citizens living in Israel, as part of the meticulously orchestrated assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement, but to signal its displeasure, the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. “Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now,” an official told the Guardian.

Gordon Brown yesterday launched an investigation into the use of the fake passports, which will be led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca). The British embassy in Tel Aviv is also contacting the British nationals affected in the plot, “and stands ready to provide them with the support that they need”, the Foreign Office said in a statement last night.

“The British passport is an important part of being British and we have to make sure everything is done to protect it,” Brown told LBC Radio yesterday.

Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, insisted there was no proof that the Mossad was involved in Mabhouh’s killing in a Dubai hotel last month, but added that Israel had a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters.

Source/Full Story: The Guardian

Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities.

Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

They are also suspected of recent killings in Dubai, Damascus and Beirut. While Israel’s Mossad spy agency has been suspected of staging assassinations across the world since the 1970s, it does not officially acknowledge or admit its activities.

Source/Full Story: Times Online

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has slapped down his controversial foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, for warning President Bashar al-Assad of Syria that his regime would collapse if he attacked the Jewish state.

Seeking to draw a line under a two-day war of words between Damascus and Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s spokesman clarified that Israel’s policy was to engage in “unconditional” talks with Syria.

Lieberman had earlier warned Assad of the consequences of going to war and suggested Israel would never return the Golan Heights, occupied since 1967.

“Assad should know that if he attacks, he will lose the war and that neither he nor his family will remain in power,” Lieberman said at a business conference. “Whoever thinks territorial concessions will disconnect Syria from the axis of evil is mistaken. Syria must be made to understand that it has to relinquish its demand for the Golan Heights.”

Syria insists it will only make peace with Israel if the entire Golan is returned.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

Avigdor Lieberman rubbing elbows with Condoleezza Rice

A new Israeli report defending the military’s conduct in the Gaza war was challenged tonight after evidence emerged apparently contradicting one of its key findings.

Israel submitted a 46-page report to the UN on Friday saying its forces abided by international law throughout the three-week war last year. It was meant to avert the threat of international prosecutions and to challenge a highly critical UN inquiry by South African judge Richard Goldstone, which accused both Israel and Hamas of “grave breaches” of the fourth Geneva convention, war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

The Israeli report looked in detail at a handful of incidents, including the attack on the al-Badr flour mill in northern Gaza, which was severely damaged.

The UN mine action team, which handles ordnance disposal in Gaza, has told the Guardian that the remains of a 500-pound Mk82 aircraft-dropped bomb were found in the ruins of the mill last January. Photographs of the front half of the bomb have been obtained by the Guardian.

This evidence directly contradicts the finding of the Israeli report, which challenged allegations that the building was deliberately targeted and specifically stated there was no evidence of an air strike. Goldstone, however, used the account of the air strike as a sign that Israel’s attack on the mill was not mere collateral damage, but precisely targeted and a possible war crime.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

The Israel Defense Forces on Monday denied that two of its senior officers had been summoned for disciplinary action after headquarters staff found that the men exceeded their authority in approving the use of phosphorus shells during last year’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli government wrote in a recent report.

In an official response provided to the United Nations over the weekend in response to last September’s Goldstone Commission report, the government said that a brigadier general and another officer with the rank of colonel endangered human life during by firing white phosphorous munitions in the direction of a compound run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The government finding aknowledges, at least in part, allegations by international organizations.

But the IDF on Monday flatly denied the report. No phosphorous had been used during the war, said the IDF, nor hadGaza Division Commander Brig. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg and Givati Brigade Commander Col. Ilan Malka been subject to disciplinary action by GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant.
…
Many human rights organizations said that the IDF had illegally used the phosphorus munitions, which are shot from 155 mm. cannon, and that the material caused many burn injuries among the Palestinian population. The IDF responded that the munitions were permitted under international conventions and that similar shells are in use by other Western armies. The army also contended that the munitions were used in locations remote from heavily -populated areas.

Source/Full Story: Haaretz

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran rose Monday after the Obama Administration quietly increased the capability of land and sea-based missile defenses in several Gulf nations to protect American allies against a potential Iranian strike.

Administration officials said over the weekend that the U.S. was speeding up arms sales to a number of Gulf Arab states and that it had also deployed warships capable of knocking down hostile missiles in flight to the region.

The moves, which include the sales of anti-missile systems to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, are designed to deter Iran from launching attacks against its Sunni Muslim neighbors and to send a message to Israel that a preemptive strike against Iran is unnecessary.

The deployments come as President Obama enters a new phase in efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program after the failure of a diplomatic offensive. Washington is anxious to get a tough new round of U.N. sanctions against Tehran, something that China and Russia have shown little interest in backing.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

Hamas claimed on Friday that Israeli agents assassinated one of the Palestinian militant group’s veteran operatives in a killing allegedly carried out last week in Dubai, and vowed to retaliate.

The militant group identified its slain figure as Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing that has been responsible for hundreds of deadly attacks and suicide bombings targeting Israelis since the 1980s. It said he was 50 years old.

Hamas blamed Israel for the slaying but gave no details on how al-Mabhouh was killed and no information on alleged Israeli involvement in the man’s death. Israel’s government had no immediate comment.

Izzat Rashaq, a top member of Hamas’ exiled leadership in Damascus, told The Associated Press that details have not been released to avoid compromising an ongoing investigation, and that Hamas’ delayed announcement was linked to an attempt to “reach the Israeli agents who implemented this operation.”

Al-Mabhouh lived in Syria and was passing through Dubai when he was killed late Jan. 19 or early Jan. 20, Rashaq said. Originally from the Gaza Strip, al-Mabhouh was married and had four children, he said.

“We in Hamas hold the Zionist enemy responsible for the criminal assassination of our brother, and we pledge to God and to the blood of the martyrs and to our people to continue his path of jihad and martyrdom,” read the statement on Hamas’ Palestinian Information Center Web site. The group pledged to “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate time and place.”

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

If I came up with a headline claiming the devastation in Haiti is “good
for the Jews”, I could reasonably be accused of being anti-Semitic. But
it’s not my headline. It comes from this report on a site run by Israel’s popular Hebrew daily, Maariv.

Every disaster needs a hero, the report says, and the heroes in Haiti are the Israelis.

The message that Israel is saving Haiti
was likewise captured in an editorial cartoon in Yediot Aharonot which
shows American soldiers digging for earthquake survivors. A voice from beneath the rubble calls out, “Would you mind checking to see if the Israelis are available?”

Source/Full Story: Signs of the Times News

The United States Justice Department indicted four Israeli businessmen Tuesday for allegedly attempting to bribe the defense minister of an African country in order to secure a multimillion-dollar contract to supply his country with military equipment. 18 other businessmen were indicted in the same case.

The U.S. Department of Justice identified the Israelis as Ofer Paz, 50 – the president and chief executive officer of an Israeli company, Paz Logistics, that acts as sales agent for companies in the law enforcement and military products industries; Haim Geri, 50 – the president of a North Miami Beach, Fla., company that serves as a sales agent for companies in the law enforcement and military products industries; Yochanan R. Cohen, aka Yochi Cohen, 47 – the chief executive officer of a San Francisco company that manufactures security equipment, including body armor and ballistic plates; and Israel Wissler, former CEO of the company Ayit which sold equipment to the Israeli Defense Forces.

Twenty-one of the businessmen, including the Israelis, were arrested in Las Vegas on the eve of a major annual military equipment sales show, following a two-and-a-half-year FBI undercover sting operation.

The defendants allegedly agreed to pay a 20 percent commission to an undercover FBI agent who posed as the African minister.

The indictments allege conspiracy and substantive violations of the corrupt practices act and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

The charges relating to the corrupt practices act carry a maximum five-year prison sentence on conviction. The maximum sentence for money laundering conspiracy is 20 years.

The case is the largest single investigation and prosecution of individuals in the history of the 1977 U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars bribery of foreign government officials. It is also the first large-scale use of an undercover operation in enforcing the corrupt practices act

Source/Full Story: Haaretz

Foreword

This report compares United States and Israeli homeland security
practices. Its purpose is to determine whether there are lessons from
Israeli experience that might enhance U.S. homeland security efforts. 
The research for this study included a literature review as well as
field interviews with American and Israeli elites in Washington, D.C.,
and Israel during the summer of 2005. The principle investigator met
with key Israeli homeland security and counterterrorism experts in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramla, and Hertzilya.

This report sets the stage for a comparison of United States and
Israeli homeland security issues and policies by addressing the common
and unique threats facing each state. It then looks at how each state
has organized its governmental response to those threats, its policies
for preventing terrorist attacks, and its response capabilities should
an attack occur. In the final section it lists lessons from Israeli
experience that might be considered by the United States, along with a
discussion of the reasons the United States will likely be unable or
unwilling to implement those lessons.

Source/Full Story: Public Intelligence

A general who was once in charge of Israel’s nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a “very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability.”

Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defense establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in prison after he revealed Israel’s secret nuclear programme, has been placed under house arrest pending criminal charges for allegedly breaching the terms of his 2004 release, which includes a ban on contacts with foreigners.

A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said Vanunu was accused of meeting with “a number of foreigners”. The spokesman, however, did not specify who the foreigners were or where they came from.

Vanunu’s lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, said his client had been arrested because his romantic attachment to an unnamed Norwegian woman had come to the attention of the authorities.

“Vanunu was arrested [for] a relationship between a man and a woman, with a Norwegian citizen,” he told Reuters. “He is not being accused of giving any secrets. She is not interested in nuclear business – she’s interested in Mordechai Vanunu [and he] is probably interested in her.”

The woman has reportedly been interrogated by police but has not been charged with any offence.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

Yea, I hate it when that happens.

A trainee spy for Israel’s secret service agency Mossad was arrested by Tel Aviv police while taking part in a training operation, media reports say.

The young trainee was spotted by a female passer-by as he planted a fake bomb under a vehicle in the city.

He was only able to persuade police he was a spy after being taken in by an officer for questioning on Monday.

The authorities have refused to comment on the story although Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise.

Source/Full Story: BBC News