position:lt. col.

Upgraded Russian SPY PLANE makes maiden flight over US nuclear & military sites – report — RT World News
▻https://www.rt.com/news/457679-russian-spy-plane-us

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A Russian Tu-214ON spy plane has reportedly made a reconnaissance tour over the southwestern US, taking a glimpse at an array of military bases as well as nuclear and chemical weapons depots as part of the #Open_Skies treaty.

The Drive reported, citing FlightRadar 24 tracking service data, that the newest version of the Tu-214 observation aircraft graced US skies after taking off from Rosecrans Air National Guard Base in St. Joseph, Missouri on Thursday.

The flight reportedly lasted six hours and saw the surveillance aircraft fly over a series of US defense and storage facilities scattered over the territory of West Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. The plane is reported to have flown over the Kirtland Air Force Base, which hosts the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and functions as a nuclear storage site. In Colorado, the plane passed over the Pueblo Chemical Depot, one of the last two sites in the US with chemical munitions and materials.

The flight itself had been authorized by the US under the Treaty on Open Skies, which allows its signatories to conduct short inspections of each other’s territory. The treaty was signed in 1992, but did not come into force until 2002. The US and Russia are among its 34 members.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not commented on the details of the mission. Earlier, Sergey Ryzhkov, head of the Russian Center for Reduction of Nuclear Threat, announced that the Tu-214ON would be conducting surveillance from Missouri Airport between 22 April and April 27. Under the treaty, the flight has to be monitored by US specialists on board the plane.

Washington eventually greenlighted the Tu-214ON flyover after initially refusing to certify the Russian “spy eye,” claiming that its digital surveillance equipment was more advanced than Moscow had declared and might manipulate digital data. After some back-and-forth, the US approved the plane for the flights over its territory in September last year.

Tu-214ON is an updated version of the regular Tu-214. Its cockpit can fit two more people, which allowed the manufacturer to install more modern electronics. Its range has increased to a reported 6,500km (4,040 miles). The aircraft boasts three sensor arrays that include a digital photo camera, an infrared camera, and a TV camera complete with a sideways-looking synthetic aperture radar.

Israel Sabotages Ceasefire Talks, Assassinating Hamas Commander, IDF Senior Commander Also Killed - Tikun Olam תיקון עולם

▻https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2018/11/12/israel-sabotages-ceasefire-talks-assassinating-hamas-commander-i

Today, IDF commandos invaded Gaza in a night-time raid and murdered seven Hamas operatives, including the commander responsible for the tunnel defense system maintained by the Islamist rulers of the enclave. According to various media sources, the raid was exposed and Palestinian militants fought back fiercely. In order to free the IDF forces, the Israelis had to lay down a massive drone and air attack which permitted them to withdraw back to Israel.

Israeli senior IDF officer killed Gaza
The Israeli military censor has prohibited domestic media naming the Israeli commando who was killed. But an Israeli source has informed me he is Lt. Col. Mahmoud Kheireddine from the Druze village of Hurfeish. Another officer who was wounded is from Isfiya. They both served in Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s equivalent of the Navy SEALs. Kheireddine was deputy commander of the unit. Given the death of so high-ranking an IDF officer, something went terribly wrong on this mission.

In response, Hamas has launched missiles into southern Israel and driven hundreds of thousands into air raid shelters. Once again, just as both sides thought they might be close to a ceasefire and/or a prisoner exchange, Israel rescued defeat from the jaws and victory and almost guaranteed a new escalation, if not war, against Gaza.

A former IDF general has suggested that the raid was not an assassination attempt, but an attempt to capture the Hamas commander:

Maj. Gen. (res.) Tal Russo, a former commander of the IDF Southern Command, indicated that the operation was likely an intelligence-gathering mission gone wrong, rather than an assassination.

» Updated: “Seven Palestinians, One Israeli Undercover Soldier, Killed In Gaza”
November 12, 2018 6:02 AM - IMEMC News
▻http://imemc.org/article/six-palestinians-killed-in-gaza-by-israeli-gunfire-in-southern-gaza

http://imemc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/sevenkilled-e1541985650933.jpg

After undercover Israeli soldiers infiltrated into the Gaza Strip, on Sunday at night, and assassinated two senior leaders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, the army initiated a series of air strikes, the army fired missiles and shells to secure the retreat of its undercover soldiers, killing five other Palestinians. Hamas fighters exchanged fire with the soldiers killing one of them, Israeli sources have confirmed.

Updated: The undercover soldiers were driving a Volkswagen car, and drove towards the home of Noureddin Baraka, in Bani Suheila area in Khan Younis, before stopping near the property, the al-Quds News Agency has confirmed.

Fighters of the Al-Qassam Brigades then noticed the car and stopped it near a kindergarten in Abasan al-Kabeera town, and asked the passengers to step out of the vehicle and show their ID cards.

It added that the undercover soldiers, who were in the backseat of the car, then opened fire at the fighters, after realizing their cover-up has been exposed.

Al-Quds also stated that some of the undercover soldiers were wearing veils, pretending to be women.

The senior fighter, Noureddin Baraka, was instantly killed in the initial shooting, while other fighters called for help, before chasing the car that carried the undercover forces.

The Israeli army, stationed across the perimeter fence, started firing shells at cars and Palestinians who chased the undercover officers’ vehicle, before it crashed against a wall, and then headed toward the perimeter fence.

So far, the Israeli soldiers who was killed in the Gaza invasion, has only been identified as (Lt. Col. M.). The army is still keeping other information classified, but his family has officially been notified.

The Al-Qassam Brigades said the undercover soldiers who infiltrated into an area, east of the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, assassinated one of its senior leaders, identified as Noureddin Mohammad Salama Baraka, 37.
(...)
The Palestinians who were killed in the Israeli offensive have been identified as:

1 Noureddin Mohammad Salama Baraka , 37.
2 Mohammad Majed Mousa al-Qarra , 23.
3 Khaled Mohammad Ali Qweider , 29.
4 Mustafa Hasan Mohammad Abu Odah , 21.
5 Mahmoud Atallah Misbih , 25.
6 Ala’eddin Fawzi Mohammad Fseifis , 24.
7 Omar Naji Musallam Abu Khater , 21.

It is worth mentioning that al-Qarra just got married a few days ago. Both Baraka and al-Qarra are senior leaders of the al-Qassam Brigades.

#Palestine_assassinée

Top IDF spokesperson tells U.S. Jews: Israel failed to minimize Gaza casualties, Hamas won PR war by knockout

Israeli military’s international spokesman says some Palestinians ‘that weren’t the target’ were hit, but fiercely defended the military’s response
Uri Blau | May 17, 2018 | 3:28 PM

▻https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-hamas-won-pr-war-we-failed-on-gaza-causalities-admits-israeli-spok

https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6094593.1526472835!/image/1819306010.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/1819306010.jpg

A senior Israeli army spokesman admitted Tuesday that Israel failed to minimize the number of Palestinian casualties during the recent deadly protests on the Gaza border, and that some were hit by mistake. He added that Hamas won the PR war by a “knockout.”

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, the international spokesman and head of social media for the Israel Defense Forces, made the comments during a Jewish community briefing organized by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).

The officer fiercely defended the military’s response to the recent protests along the Gaza border, in which more than 100 Palestinians were killed and thousands more wounded, most of them by live fire.

Many commentators have said Hamas won a PR victory following the worldwide media coverage given to the bloody scenes, especially following Monday’s juxtaposition of scenes on the Gaza border and the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Conricus said Israel hasn’t been able to explain the situation on the border well enough to the international media.

“We haven’t been able to get that message out of how it is from our side, what we are defending – and the ‘winning picture’ overwhelmingly, by a knockout, unfortunately, have been the graphics from the Palestinian side. The amount of casualties has done us a tremendous disservice, unfortunately, and it has been very difficult to tell our story.”

Conricus acknowledged that the IDF had failed to minimize the number of casualties. However, he noted that “Hamas wanted the casualties. Hamas wanted people to die. Hamas wanted the pictures of the wounded and the overflowing hospitals ... and they had no problems sending the human shields forward. That is the sad reality of what we have been facing,” he said.

While blaming Hamas for sending “rioters” to the border area and using civilians as human shields, Conricus also conceded that the army snipers didn’t always hit their intended targets.(...)

You bet it’s apartheid

With Ahed Tamimi’s sentence to jail, the truth has come out about Israel

▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-you-bet-it-s-apartheid-1.5939683

They might not have intended it – this is too big for them, and perhaps even too big for their arrogance, but they are the initiators of the regime, or at least its harbingers. They studied law and went to work (“to serve”) in the military courts. They were promoted and became military judges. That’s what they call the clerk-officers who work for the moral army as judges of the occupied in the occupied territories. They work in a military unit with a biblical name: the “Judea Military Court,” and they decide people’s fate. No doubt they’re certain they’re working in a legal system, like they were taught at university. There are, after all, prosecutors and defense attorneys in it. There’s even a translator.
Most of the work attracts no attention. In Israel, who cares what happens in the prefabs at the Ofer military base? They have sent thousands of people to an aggregate tens of thousands of years of imprisonment, and almost never exonerated anyone; at their workplace, there’s no such thing. They have also approved hundreds of detentions without hearings, even though there is no such thing in a country of law. Day after day, it’s just another day at the office.
And then Ahed Tamimi came to them. Almost 2 million people around the world signed a petition calling for her release. And the forces of Israeli military justice just kept at it, clerks devoted to the system. Now they must be thanked. This time they exposed to the world the naked truth: They are working for an apartheid system. They are its harbingers. They are its formulators. They are its contractors, small cogs in a big machine, but reflective of reality.
The three officers who judged the teenage girl in various military courts, Col. Netanel Benishu, president of the Military Court of Appeals (there’s no shortage of titles here), who approved the hearing in the dark behind closed doors; Lt. Col. Menahem Lieberman, president of the Judea Military Court, who approved the plea bargain by which Tamimi and her mother would serve eight months in prison for nothing, or for her heroism, and Lt. Col. Haim Balilty, who approved her remaining in custody throughout the trial. One day they’ll be appointed to the Supreme Court. A colonel, and two lieutenant colonels who told the world: There’s apartheid here.
Only by chance were the three all religious, a kind of innocent coincidence. We don’t know who among them is a settler, but that of course means nothing either. They went to work in a military court of the occupation to protect human rights in the territories, in the name of the Lord of Hosts.After their rulings on Tamimi, there are no fair-minded people left in the world, not even in brainwashed Israel, who can seriously claim that an apartheid regime does not exist in the territories. The BDS movement should congratulate the officers who lifted all doubt from those who still had any doubts. The legal system that has one law for Jews and another for Palestinians, without apology, without whitewashing, should be appreciated for its honesty. A legal system that sentenced a soldier who shot a wounded man to only one more month than its sentence for a teenage girl who slapped a soldier – this is a system that openly admits it considers slapping the occupier equal to the murder of a person under occupation. Only one month separates the two.

Stalingrad diaries: The battlefield transcripts that Stalin deemed too true to publish -

During the most ferocious battle in human history, in 1943, Soviet historians interviewed over 200 Red Army soldiers about the fighting that helped seal Nazi Germany’s fate. Decades later, Prof. Jochen Hellbeck became the first historian to read their stories
By Michal Shapira Sep 06, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.810966

The book is based on interviews with Red Army soldiers that you found in the archives. They describe shocking violence. Can you talk about the nature of the violence?
The interviews were recorded in Stalingrad, during the final stage of the battle and its immediate aftermath. They resonate with the din of the battlefield, and violence is everywhere in the picture. Red Army soldiers describe how they fought their way into the city center, blowing up basements and entire buildings filled with Germans after at least some of them refused to lay down their arms. What becomes very clear is the extent to which the Soviet defenders were driven by hatred toward the Germans. In the interviews I was surprised to discover the source of this hatred.
Take Vassily Zaitsev, the famed sniper at Stalingrad, who killed 242 enemy soldiers over the course of the battle, until he suffered an eye injury, in January 1943. Asked by the historians about what motivated him to keep fighting to the point of exhaustion and beyond, he talked about scenes he had personally witnessed: of German soldiers dragging a woman out of the rubble, presumably to rape her, while he helplessly listened to her screams for help. [Quoting Zaitsev]: “Or another time you see young girls, children hanging from trees in the park. Does that get to you? That has a tremendous impact.”
German atrocities, which many Soviet soldiers were familiar with, certainly played an important role in mobilizing them to fight, and fight hard. There was in addition ample violence within the Red Army, perpetrated against soldiers who were unwilling to risk their lives. In his interview, Gen. Vassily Chuikov described how he shot several commanders, as their soldiers watched in line formation, for retreating from the enemy without permission.

Maj. Gen. Ivan Burmakov and Lt. Col. Leonid Vinokur, two of the Russian officers interviewed after the Battle of Stalingrad. Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad
Until your book came out in Russian translation, in 2015, these interviews had never been published. Why is that?
The testimonies were too truthful and multifaceted for their times, and Stalin forbade their publication, not least because he alone claimed full credit for the victory at Stalingrad. Little changed after Stalin’s death. Yes, leading generals of the Stalingrad battle, like Chuikov, were able to publish accounts of their role in the battle, but they carefully omitted any reference to executions within the Red Army. In his memoirs, Chuikov writes that he issued “a sharp rebuke” to his cowardly officers.
Archival documentation tells me that at least some Soviet historians read the interviews, but it seems that they were at a loss about how to integrate individual, “subjective” voices, as they called them, into a mandated “objective” (communist) history of the war, and so the documents were overlooked and forgotten. I was extraordinarily lucky to have been the first historian to fully explore the 215 interviews conducted with Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, and publish them. I found them in the archive of the Institute for Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
‘Edge of Europe’
Who was conducting the interviews and why? Who were the interviewees of these “Stalingrad transcripts”?

Josef Stalin in 1950. AP
The interviews were conducted by historians from Moscow who responded to the German invasion in 1941 with a plan to document the Soviet war effort in its totality, and from the ground up. From 1942 to 1945, they interviewed close to 5,000 people – most of them soldiers, but also partisans, civilians who worked in the war economy or fought in the underground, and Soviet citizens who had survived Nazi occupation. These historians hoped that the published interviews would mobilize readers for the war. They also wanted to create an archival record for posterity. I was struck by how they made this decision as early as fall 1941, when the Soviet Union seemed to be teetering under the German assault. But the historians drew confidence from history, notably the War of 1812, when the Russian people had been able to defeat a technologically superior invader. Hitler, they were certain, would meet Napoleon’s end.
Why did Stalingrad become important to the Nazis and the Soviets in 1942? In what way was it a battle that changed world history?
When the Germans resumed their offensive, in spring 1942, their strategic target was the oil fields of the Caucasus. Only as Army Group South advanced toward Maikop and Grozny did Hitler order a separate attack on Stalingrad. He banked on the psychological blow that the fall of “Stalin’s city,” which is what Stalingrad literally means, would deliver to Stalin. It was largely because of its symbolic charge that the battle for Stalingrad turned into a decisive showdown between the two regimes.

Iraqi troops torture and execute civilians in secret videos - ABC News
▻http://abcnews.go.com/International/deepdive/brian-ross-investigates-the-torture-tapes-47429895

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/ht-torture-tapes-BRI_TortureTapes_BRI-ps-170515_16x9_992.jpg

Officers of an elite Iraqi special forces unit, praised by U.S. military commanders earlier this year for its role in fighting ISIS, directed the torture and execution of civilians in Mosul in at least six distinct incidents caught on tape.

“That’s a murder,” retired Green Beret Lt. Col. Scott Mann told ABC News after reviewing the graphic footage. “There should be punishment for anyone doing it. It’s reprehensible and it shouldn’t be allowed on any modern battlefield."

The alarming footage was smuggled out of Iraq by a prize-winning Iraqi photojournalist, Ali Arkady, who spent months embedded in combat with the elite Iraqi troops leading the fight against ISIS late last year. Since turning over his cache of photos and videos to ABC News, he says he has received death threats from the soldiers he once considered friends and has now fled Iraq to seek asylum in Europe.

“This is happening all the time,” Arkady said of the war crimes he documented, which he recounted in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Brian Ross to be broadcast tonight on ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and Nightline.

Iraqi officials are now launching an investigation into Arkady’s allegations.

“Arkady, 34, is an Iraqi Kurd and Sunni Muslim working with VII, a news agency that specializes in coverage of conflict. Based in Iraq, his work has focused on war orphans and Iraqi soldiers disabled by the ongoing violence that has engulfed his home country since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Last year, he followed Iraqi soldiers as they swept through Fallujah, liberating the city from ISIS control. The E.R.D. special forces unit impressed him, he said, not only because they were “strong” but also because its leaders — Capt. Omar Nazar, a Sunni, and Cpl. Haider Ali, a Shi’a — worked together despite the religious divide that had torn Iraq apart.

From these first embeds with Nazar and Ali’s detachment, Arkady produced a different type of story, one he later described as a mix between journalism and art, as an attempt to show a softer side of a place he felt was too often defined by more than a decade of grim headlines. “Happy Baghdad” would garner nearly 100,000 views on Facebook, and it featured Nazar and Ali drawing clear distinctions between themselves and the ISIS enemy.

“We are liberators not destroyers,” Capt. Omar Nazar said. “All of ISIS are criminals and psychopaths. Don’t expect us to be cruel to you. We are one of you and more merciful than those strangers and intruders.”

“We came to free you and to save you from ISIS,” Cpl. Haider Ali added. “Be happy. Have fun. Go out. Study. Love. Get married. We are here for you.”

For Nazar and Ali, the film gave them folk hero status in Iraq, and for Arkady, it opened the door to more combat embeds with the E.R.D. men as they joined the fight last fall to liberate Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. They hoped, Arkady said, that he would make another film, like “Happy Baghdad,” which would show them in a new light.

Arkady’s effort to film an upbeat documentary about the two soldiers putting aside sectarian differences to defeat ISIS together took a dark detour last fall when the soldiers conducted a night raid on Nov. 22, pulling a man out of the bed where he slept with his family in the village of Qabr Al-Abed.”

When the rapist is also the judge
Haaretz.com | Amira Hass Apr 09, 2017 9:58 PM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.782624

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.666068.1491764675!/image/268725878.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/268725878.jpg

The entire Israeli military legal system that operates in the West Bank is corrupt

Agents nicknamed Niso, Herzl and Arye signed an almost identical document, on different dates. Its heading reads: State of Israel, General Security Service [Shin Bet], unclassified. Under that it says: to the Israel Police’s crime investigations unit in Judea and Samaria. The subject: denial of a detainee’s request to meet a lawyer. The name of the detainee comes next. In this case it’s Kifah Quzmar, with his identity number included. (The word “nicknamed” the quotation marks around the names appear in the original document.)

The one nicknamed Niso was in charge of the investigation. He heads the Ramallah team of investigators, and was the one who signed the first three orders prohibiting the 28 year-old Quzmar from meeting his lawyer. The first one was signed on March 8, a day after Quzmar was arrested at the Allenby border crossing, and was valid until March 13, at 11:59 p.m. The second and third orders were signed on March 13 and 16, respectively. The one nicknamed Herzl, who heads another investigations unit, signed an identical order on March 21 while Arye, who heads yet another unit, signed such an order on March 23, valid until 11:59 p.m. on March 26.

This is what the order says: “By my authority … having examined the circumstances I hereby order that the detainee not be allowed to meet a lawyer for a further period … since I believe this is necessary for the following reasons …” In the first two documents signed by Niso the reason given is “for the area’s security” and that’s all. The third document bearing his signature and the other two documents give the same reason, as well as one stating “for the benefit of the investigation.”

In other words, from March 16 the investigators admit the investigation ran into serious trouble. It did not yield what was expected. Advancing the investigation required the continued violation of basic principles of jurisprudence and detainee rights. A bit more pressure, somewhat less moderate, a few more painful positions and sleep deprivation, threats and insults and who knows, maybe a shred of evidence would pop up.

On March 16 the detainee was brought before the president of the military court, Lt. Col. Menachem Lieberman. His lawyer, Anan Odeh, waited outside while the investigator told the judge that “Quzmar was suspected of activity that would endanger the security of the area.” How original. Quzmar, who is studying business administration at Bir Zeit University, said (according to the minutes of this hearing) that “the investigators are trying to find something to pin on me and destroy my future. They have no proof and I constitute no danger.”

Quzmar was led out of the courtroom trailer and his attorney went in. He asked questions and the investigator said he couldn’t answer them. He was asked if Quzmar was cooperating with the investigation and replied that he wasn’t. When asked if there were any criminal charges against Quzmar he referred to a “secret report.” Was police testimony taken from the detainee? “No.” How many times has he been questioned since his arrest? “Nine times.” For how many hours? “Yesterday (March 15) he was questioned for four hours, with breaks.” Is he subjected to pressure? The investigator replied that “the report would refer to that issue if that was the case.”

Lt. Col. Lieberman did a copy and paste from innumerable previous rulings and wrote that “there are grave suspicions against the detainee, which require detention and interrogation. … I’ve taken into account the fact that the suspect is not allowed to see his attorney, but due to the severity of the transgressions and the need to reach the truth there is justification in extending his remand for the entire requested period, in order to give investigators a continuous detention period.” Lieberman extended detention until March 27.

On March 24 attorney Odeh submitted an urgent petition to the High Court of Justice, asking that his client be allowed to meet with a lawyer. Without waiting for a ruling the investigators removed their objection to such a meeting.

Up to then Quzmar had been questioned by the Shin Bet in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem and at Hashikma Prison in Ashkelon. He was also put in a cell with collaborators disguised as prisoners, which was meant to induce him to talk. He was later transferred to the Ofer Prison in the West Bank. He went on a hunger strike for a few days as a protest against being denied a lawyer’s visit. On April 3, a final hearing regarding the last extension of his detention was scheduled, to decide whether he would be charged or sent home.

On that sunny morning, Quzmar’s brother and cousin walked along the fenced path linking the Bitunya commercial checkpoint to the military courtroom. The 800 meters separating the two were lined with spring’s greenery and chirping birds. They crossed rotating iron gates that open and shut at the press of a button. They sat in the waiting yard, smoking many cigarettes and waiting. Who didn’t arrive? Kifah. Their guess was that he’d been sent to administrative detention.

Indeed, the administrative order for a six-month detention is signed by Col. Yossi Sariel, Central Command’s intelligence officer. The Shin Bet failed to extract some hint of an offense, so the simple solution is unlimited administrative detention, based on no evidence, no charges, defense or trial. What else is new?

The entire Israeli military legal system that operates in the West Bank is corrupt. The serial rapist arrests the victim simply due to her principled or active resistance to the rape. He charges her, tries her and then sentences her. That is it in a nutshell. Denying the right to meet an attorney and administrative detention are but two of the more common practices in the foreordained process of punishing Palestinians for being Palestinians who object to our foreign rule.

En mars de cette année, une mystérieuse « New Syrian Army » annonçait avoir pris le contrôle du poste-frontière d’al-Tanf, aux confins des frontières syrienne, irakienne et jordanienne, jusque là détenu par Da’ich. Al-Tanf, c’est là : ▻https://www.google.fr/maps/place/At+Tanf,+Syrie/@33.745316,36.4217732,7z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x153e0a85826f8d3f:0xfbaab842977dcbd6!8m2!3d33.48959!4d38.663
Ce groupe sans aucun fait d’armes connu jusqu’ici semblait être soutenu par la Jordanie et les USA, voire servir de couverture à des forces spéciales de ces deux pays : ►http://seenthis.net/messages/474150 et ►http://seenthis.net/messages/468261

Dans un récent article, le Washington Post nous donne des nouvelles de la "New Syrian Army"et décrit un groupe, armé et formé par le programme du pentagone sur une base en Jordanie, et qui connaîtrait désormais des difficultés, malgré l’appui aérien américain, du fait d’un attentat suicide de Da’ich qui aurait décimé ses rangs :
The last remaining Pentagon-trained rebel group in Syria is now in jeopardy WaPo 27.05.16
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-last-remaining-pentagon-trained-rebel-group-in-syria-is-now-in-jeopardy/2016/05/27/91de194a-1c5f-11e6-82c2-a7dcb313287d_story.html

The New Syrian Army completed the U.S. training course in Jordan, infiltrated into Syria and then, in March, without fanfare or publicity, seized a pinprick of territory from the militants at the remote Tanaf border crossing with Iraq in the far southeast corner of the Syrian province of Homs.
There they have remained, holding their ground without deserting, defecting or getting kidnapped, unlike many of the other similarly trained rebels whose mishaps prompted the temporary suspension of the program last year.
Even this modest success is now in jeopardy, however, following an Islamic State suicide attack this month. An armored vehicle barreled into the rebels’ base shortly before dawn on May 7, killing a number of them, said Lt. Col. Mohammed Tallaa, a Syrian officer who defected and is the group’s commander.

Avec les échecs du nouveau programme du Pentagone, au sud avec les difficultés de la New Syrian Army et au nord où ces groupes sont en situation difficile dans la poche d’Azaz, il ne reste plus pour les USA pour combattre Da’ich que le YPG kurde qu’on essaie d’enrichir d’arabes au sein des SDF (dans le contexte d’une avancée rapide des SDF au nord de la province de Raqqa) :

In March, the training was restored, with the less ambitious goal of working with existing rebel groups in northern Syria’s Aleppo province. Those groups are now battling for their survival against Islamic State fighters advancing in the area around the town of Azaz near the border with Turkey.
In the meantime, however, the Pentagon has forged ahead with a different alliance, with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is seen as a rival or worse by many Arab rebel groups. The YPG is responsible for almost all of the territorial gains made so far against the Islamic State in Syria, and its close coordination with the U.S. military is a source of deep resentment among other Syrian rebels. An effort to rebrand the YPG as a coalition with Arab rebels called the Syrian Democratic Forces has brought only a small number of Arabs into the force so far.

Israël : une députée palestinienne condamnée à 15 mois de prison - Moyen-Orient - RFI - Publié le 07-12-2015
▻http://www.rfi.fr/moyen-orient/20151207-israel-une-deputee-palestinienne-condamnee-15-mois-prison

http://scd.rfi.fr/sites/filesrfi/imagecache/rfi_16x9_1024_578/sites/images.rfi.fr/files/aef_image/000_Nic6475648_0.jpg

La députée palestinienne Khalida Jarrar, accusée d’incitation à la violence et au terrorisme, a été condamnée ce lundi à 15 mois de prison par un tribunal militaire israélien. Les Palestiniens, qui se sont beaucoup mobilisés pour cette personnalité connue, dénoncent un jugement purement politique.

Avec notre correspondante à Jérusalem, Murielle Paradon

Khalida Jarrar avait été arrêtée chez elle, en Cisjordanie occupée le 2 avril dernier, dans un raid de l’armée israélienne. Cette députée palestinienne était accusée d’incitation à la violence et d’appartenance au Front populaire de libération de la Palestine, un mouvement d’extrême gauche considéré comme une organisation terroriste par Israël.

Le sort de Khalida Jarrar a beaucoup mobilisé. Féministe, militante des droits de l’homme et en particulier des droits des prisonniers, c’est une personnalité connue. Les Palestiniens ont aussitôt vu dans son arrestation par Israël un geste politique.

Le jugement rendu ce lundi, 15 mois de prison fermes et 2 500 euros d’amende, est dénoncé comme totalement arbitraire, venant d’un tribunal militaire israélien. Khalida Jarrar a déjà passé huit mois en détention, elle devrait donc sortir de prison l’été prochain. Selon une association de détenus, cinq députés palestiniens sont actuellement emprisonnés dans les geôles israéliennes.

#Khalida_Jarrar

Israel Says Its Forces Did Not Kill Palestinians Sheltering at U.N. School - NYTimes.com

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-strip.html?emc=edit_th_20140728&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=6761714

On Sunday, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, acknowledged that an errant mortar round fired by Israeli troops had exploded in the school’s courtyard that afternoon but said the yard had been empty at the time. He provided a video with 10 seconds of black-and-white footage shot by an Israeli drone that showed a blast in what appeared to be an empty courtyard. “It is extremely unlikely that anyone was killed as a result of that mortar,” he said.

Comme en 2009, la bataille sur les responsabilités commence. L’armée israélienne commence subtilement à semer le doute (notre obus a été tiré dans une cour vide, il n’y avait personne, ces morts ne sont pas nos morts - sans préciser « c’est les morts de qui »). Et une enquête indépendante pour identifier l’origine du tir, la nature ds munitions va être rendue difficile ou impossible par les autorités israéliennes, etc...)

JERUSALEM — Israel and Hamas went back and forth on Sunday over proposals for a new cease-fire in the fighting in the Gaza Strip, and Israel sought to bolster its claim that its forces were not responsible for the deaths of 16 Palestinians reportedly killed in an attack on a United Nations school.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/07/28/world/middleeast/28ISRAEL-UN/28ISRAEL-UN-master675-v2.jpg

Palestinians who brought their dead and wounded relatives to a Gaza hospital after the attack on Thursday said that hundreds of people who sought shelter in the school had gathered in its courtyard, believing that buses were on the way to take them somewhere safer. Then a number of munitions fired by Israeli forces hit the school, they said, killing and wounding scores of people.

#gaza #israël #massacre #responsabilités

Revealed: The deceptions by Begin, Sharon and Eitan behind the first Lebanon war
Haaretz, By Amir Oren | May 5, 2014
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.588972

Lt. Col. Meir Mintz was killed during a stakeout operation in Gaza in December 1993. At the time he was serving as head of the IDF’s special forces in the Strip. Some two decades after his death, a concise yet important study has been discovered – written by Mintz, while he was a student at the National Security Academy, and intelligence officer Eitan Kalmar, now a retired colonel.

The study uncovers the “iceberg” of lies that acted as the fraudulent war plan for the first Lebanon war, meant to create an alibi for the investigations that would ultimately follow. The military plan was written as if the true intention was to prevent taking steps that would escalate the conflict (entering Beirut, clashing with Syria), but took into account that such developments might be unavoidable “in the moment.”

The short study is seemingly the Israel Defense Forces’ most daring attempt to denounce the fraud perpetrated by then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Rafael Eitan during the war itself in 1982.

The outrageous Israeli tactic was to leave generations of the nation’s sensitive raw materials in the hands of the army and intelligence agencies. The documents were labeled “top secret,” kept away from civilians, and thus a skewed, even false perception of the events was fostered.

The motivation for keeping things secret could have been fear of clashing with senior political and military leaders, both past and present, along with the hope that future embarrassing acts perpetrated by current leaders making their way up the ranks might also be covered up.

Military sex assault monitor accused of sex assault
▻http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/06/air-force-sexual-assault-watchdog-arrested-for-sexual-assault/2139325

WASHINGTON — An Air Force officer in charge of sexual assault prevention was arrested in Arlington early Sunday for drunkenly groping a woman, according to police.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, 41, was arrested and charged with sexual battery. He allegedly grabbed the woman’s breasts and buttocks. When he attempted to grope her again, she fought him off and called police, according to the police report. The victim did not know Krusinski, said Dustin Sternbeck, an Arlington County Police spokesman.

Krusinski is the chief of the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response branch at the Pentagon, according to the Air Force.

Dubious Evidence Israeli Bus Attackers Based in Gaza - YouTube
►http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHewp5PkjJ8&feature=player_embedded

In an interview with The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky, Lt. Col. Avital Liebovitz admits the army does not connect the attack to the Popular Resistance Committee, whom the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames.

Je vous préviens, ça n’est pas transcendant. Mais il y a des passages qui valent le coup.

Où l’on voit que certains en Israël suspectent qu’on soit arrivé au point pressenti dans un article de Haaretz il y a trois semaines :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/29527

There is also the option raised by MK Zehava Gal-On of Meretz. “I don’t totally discount the possibility that Netanyahu, in his cynicism, will replace the Rothschild protest tents with reservist encampments,” she suggested.

Would he start a war? Would he attack Iran?

Gal-On: “A war is a major thing. But he may heat things up, call up reservists and create hysteria around the Palestinians. He will try to scare people. Look what he did before the flotilla and the fly-in - and, it goes without saying, the United Nations General Assembly.”