Week’s End- - Israel News

’Someone has to keep Israeli Arabs on the map’ -
scènes du racisme ordinaire en Israël
Haaretz
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A few months ago, Mira Awad stepped into a taxicab in Tel Aviv and found herself in a familiar situation: The driver wanted to settle on a price in advance, but she insisted that he run the meter, which would compel him to issue a receipt and pay tax. “It’s impossible to make a living in this country, I tell you,” the driver tried to persuade her, nonetheless. “Income tax, national insurance, VAT. These Arabs that take national insurance and don’t pay taxes are exploiting the state, I tell you.”

“So the Arabs are to blame?” Awad tried to understand.

“Who else?” he replied. “You go into their villages, I tell you, each one’s got a villa like you wouldn’t believe. I get the car fixed in Taibeh, I tell you. You don’t understand what’s going on there.”

Awad: “You travel all the way to Taibeh to get the car fixed?”

Cabdriver: “Why not? Do you know how much it saves me? They give me a price there like you wouldn’t believe. Besides, the hospitality – it’s hospitality, the coffee, the baklava. Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Awad: “Wow, sounds terrific.”

Cabdriver: “Yes. But they’re thieves, I tell you. I know their type. Don’t pay taxes. Freeloaders.”

Awad later posted this episode on her Facebook page. The post was very popular and prompted a lively discussion, as have other posts of hers that recount similar experiences from the daily life of the singer and actress – nothing of whose appearance, singing and acting career and residence in the heart of Tel Aviv gives away the fact that she is Arab.

Hamas is alive and kicking in the West Bank - but in remote control -
By Amos Harel | Dec. 21, 2013
Haaretz
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regularly dubbing somebody else as head of Hamas’ military wing in the West Bank. The particular individual’s true status or abilities as a handler of terrorists were not always commensurate with the title conferred on him by Israeli intelligence.

In some cases, such people were killed without even knowing themselves that they were what Israel claimed they were. But veterans of the Shin Bet security service and of the Israel Defense Forces still remember the names: Adel Awadallah ‏(who was killed with his brother, Emad, in an operation by the Border Police’s Yamam unit for counter-terrorism in 1998‏), Mahmoud Abu Hanoud ‏(assassinated in 2001 after eluding several previous attempts to kill him‏), and Ibrahim Hamed ‏(who was finally arrested, by the Yamam, in 2006‏).

Some of the terrorists also left a lasting impression on those who tried to capture them. Hamed, convicted of planning terrorist attacks in which a total 46 Israelis were murdered during the second intifada, eluded arrest for more than a decade. Israeli intelligence personnel, who periodically visited his family’s modest home, were impressed by his astonishing tidiness. In one of the apartment’s two rooms, Hamed kept his notebooks from university, “every letter in place, straight lines, meticulous handwriting like that of a German engineer.”

Hamed had no true successor in Hamas. The systematic preventive actions on the part of Israeli forces, along with the work of the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus, undid the relatively orderly hierarchical structure of Hamas’ military headquarters in the West Bank. What remained was a looser alignment of regional organization: Nablus no longer issued orders to Tul Karm, Hebron did not coordinate positions with Ramallah. Every activist who tried to spearhead broader actions was quickly arrested or assassinated by the Israelis. The junior operatives with limited experience maintained a low profile in order to survive.

Kissinger wants Israel to know: The U.S. saved you during the 1973 war
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The battle for the home front: Who will be responsible for Israel’s citizens in the next war? - Week’s End - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
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GOC Home Front Command Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg is very worried these days. In HFC, worry is a job requirement. While the other generals plan battle-winning maneuvers and surprise, in-depth attacks on the enemy, Eisenberg has to think about more prosaic matters, such as ensuring that the civilian population has food and a power supply when under fire.

These days, however, Eisenberg’s worries have a different cause. Behind the scenes, he is waging a rearguard action to prevent responsibility for the home front from being divided among a number of authority-hungry government ministries. If he fails, the implications for the quality of protection offered the Israeli public in wartime could be far-reaching.

The limitations of the Israeli home front were first exposed in the Gulf War of 1991. Again in 2006, in the Second Lebanon War − as depicted in the State Comptroller’s Report − Israel was caught with its pants down. For 34 days, rockets rained down on a third of the country, and the authorities were helpless.

A bureaucratic battle, one about which the public is unaware, is currently raging. Eisenberg isn’t talking about it in public, and the army, too, remains tight-lipped. If the issue is coming to the attention of the public, it is thanks to a number of people who have accumulated many years of experience in dealing with emergency situations.

“In principle, it makes a great deal of sense to rearrange the way the home front is dealt with, and even to remove some powers from the Israel Defense Forces,” one of these people tells Haaretz. “But what’s taking place now is a kind of coup, and the results in a war could be disastrous. Everyone who understands something about the home front understands that this is an insane move. My hair stands on end when I think about it.”

Since the unexpected summer of social protest in 2011, Israelis have become more aware of the tortuous and untenable way in which decisions are made in government ministries. Just this week, social activists took to the streets to demand that greater restrictions be placed on the export of the yield from Israel’s natural gas reserves. The question of who will manage the civilian rear in a war − a question with implications for hundreds of lives − is not getting similar attention, for the time being.

This week the IDF again ran an exercise simulating a total, multi-arena war, in which the air force and elements of the ground forces took part. As usual in recent years, much of the drill was devoted to ways of coping with the threat to Israel’s civilian population. Even if the slew of enemies − Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas − are no longer as coordinated among themselves as they used to be, because of the rift between Shi’ites and Sunnis generated by the ongoing Syrian civil war, they share a common understanding: that Israel’s great advantage in a war situation lies in the attack capability of its air force. Accordingly, the enemy will have to act quickly and powerfully to offset that advantage.

L’écrivain espagnol Antonio Munoz Molina explique pourquoi il n’a aucun problème à recevoir le Prix Jérusalem 2013.

In defense of my visit to Jerusalem - Week’s End - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
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Antonio Munoz Molina is the internationally renowned author of “Winter in Lisbon” and “Sepharad,” and the recipient of the 2013 Jerusalem Prize at the recent Jerusalem International Book Fair.

Egypt’s political, military leadership divided over support for Hamas -

Zvi Bare’l

Haaretz Daily Newspaper

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J’envoie ce lien à partir de Riyad (Arabie saoudite). Alors que le site de Haaretz est en accès libre, celui du quotidien libanais Al-Akhbar est censuré

Khaled Meshal’s reinstatement this week as head of the political bureau of Hamas did not come as a surprise, at least not to Egyptian intelligence, whose head, Gen. Raafat Shehata, exerted heavy pressure in favor of the move. The ruler of Qatar − a country that has become one of Hamas’ financial bulwarks in the wake of the Islamist organization’s break with Syria − as well as Jordan’s King Abdullah, who in recent months forged new ties with Meshal, both worked to ensure that the Hamas leader would retract his declared intention to step down. ‏(It is still not clear how serious he was about retiring.‏)

According to one Egyptian source, “Meshal has become a figure who is indispensable at this time. He has displayed leadership and an ability to control the events on the ground. He has charisma that his rivals, such as [Meshal’s deputy] Mousa Abu Marzouk and [Hamas Prime Minister] Ismail Haniyeh, lack and he is committed to the Arab line and not to Iran.”

#censure

’Israel’s enemies have put the entire civilian population on the frontline’

Haaretz Daily Newspaper

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In practical terms, this means that in the event of a war with Hezbollah, the metropolitan Tel Aviv region “will come under a massive missile barrage. Hezbollah has at its disposal about 5,000 warheads, weighing between 300 and 800 kilograms each. In my estimation, the first days will be extremely difficult. I am preparing for a scenario in which more than a thousand missiles and rockets a day are fired at the civilian rear.”

Israel is not looking for this confrontation, Eisenberg says. “That kind of war will not be worthwhile for the other side,” he says. “Israel is capable of inflicting serious damage on its enemies on a scale of hundreds of percent more than they are capable of inflicting on us,” with the use of the far more destructive and precise munitions in the Israel Air Force’s possession. “The adversary will have to choose if he wants to see heaps of rubble when he comes out of the bunker at the end of the war. The problem is that, in the end, both sides will emerge bruised from the event, though we can rehabilitate faster.”

The new frontline

A year and a half ago, at the height of the public debate over the necessity of an attack on Iran, then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Army Radio that “in no scenario will there be even 500 civilian casualties” following a missile war. Even though the collective public memory is that Barak was referring to the number of Israelis who would be killed, he was actually talking about killed and wounded together, and drawing on estimates of operations research in the defense establishment. “We are examining whether to reevaluate this,” Eisenberg admits. “The threat is changing before our eyes. In the next war, for the first time, we might have more civilians killed on the home front than soldiers on the combat front.” (In fact, this was already the case in the second intifada, because of the Palestinian suicide bombings against the civilian population in Israel. )

To some degree, the HFC says, this will amount to "breaking the state’s pact with the citizen - who always knew he was in the rear, and suddenly will find himself on a second front. We will not be able to sustain the war with military means alone. We have to do much in the way of ensuring steadfastness, the ability of people to stand firm for the long haul. I prefer not to engage in frightening people, but in training and drills that provide civilians with knowledge, instill confidence and generate the ability to cope with the challenge.

“In the south of the country,” he continues, “people have learned how to cope with the rocket threat from Gaza. I don’t say they have learned how to live with it, heaven forbid - it’s not sane to live with missiles. But they are able to cope in moments of crisis. If a war breaks out, it can be ended with fewer than the hundreds of dead being talked about in the scenarios, given the right behavior by the civilian population. Obedience to instructions in the past, in previous confrontations, saved many lives. Today, after missiles were fired at Tel Aviv during Operation Pillar of Defense last November, I think that people in the center of the country grasp just how concrete the threat is.”

When racist expressions are no longer the exception

Haaretz

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“I am a proud racist,” said a teenage boy at Jerusalem’s Malha mall, draped in a Beitar Jerusalem scarf, shortly before last week’s game against Maccabi Haifa. “The menorah of Beitar symbolizes the Jewish people. The menorah is holy, Jerusalem is holy, and we are holy. That is why no Arab may set foot [on the field] in Teddy Stadium. This is a team of Jews and only Jews.”

His friends, standing around him - all high-school students from the capital’s northern Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood - blurted out that they, too, hate Arabs and are proud of it. Added one, “an Arab is preferable to a leftist. The worst of all are those from among your own people who defend people whose object in life is to slaughter you.”

These statements cannot be considered merely harsh rhetoric spewed out prior to a soccer game (incidentally, one that Beitar lost ). Hatred of Arabs is constant; it is categorical.

Toujours pas de perspectives d’un nouveau gouvernement en Israël. Un scénario qui commence à se répandre... Obama annulerait sa visite en Israël si le gouvernement n’est pas formé d’ici là.

The headaches of forming Israel’s new government - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
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What killed Arafat Jaradat ? -
Qui peut douter que la torture est une pratique « normale » dans les prisons israéliennes ?

Haaretz
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The Palestinian pathologist who participated in the autopsy told the family members that he had no doubt that Arafat Jaradat did not die as a result of a heart attack, as Israel had tried to claim.

In Sa’ir this week, they asked why a detainee who was suspected of the relatively minor offense of throwing stones during the course of Operation Pillar of Defense, in November, was taken from his home in the middle of the night a few months after he committed the offense - straight to a Shin Bet security service interrogation facility at Jalameh.

Is it possible that a person suspected of a relatively minor offense was tortured to death under interrogation? Did he really die in the solitary confinement cell at Megiddo Prison, or had he been transferred there after his death in Jalameh in order to blur the fact that he had died under interrogation, as his family suspects? There are even those in Sa’ir who are convinced Israel wanted to kill him.

The last person to see Jaradat alive, apart from his interrogators and jailers, was attorney Kamil Sabbagh of Nazareth, from the public defender’s office. He met his client for the first time in the Samaria Military Court in Jalameh on Thursday, February 21, two days before he died.

DE LA POLITIQUE D’"EMPREINT" DE PASSEPORTS DE NOUVEAUX IMMIGRANTS ISRAELIENS PAR LE MOSSAD... A LIRE INTEGRALEMENT.
Mossad identity crises - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
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‘Lending’ passports

We now know that one of those Australians being investigated was Prisoner X, Ben Zygier, who changed the name on his passport at least three times. However, it seems that these were not the Australian passports used in Dubai at the time of the Mabhouh assassination. In June 2010, the Polish police arrested in Warsaw a man travelling with a German passport under the name of Uri Brodsky, who was identified by German media as a Mossad agent. A year earlier, the same man, identifying himself as Alexander Verin, had allegedly obtained a German passport along with an associate named Michael Bodenheimer; both claimed their parents were Holocaust refugees born in Germany.

The Bodenheimer passport was one of those used by the alleged Mossad agents during the Mabhouh assassination in Dubai. Brodsky-Verin was deported from Poland to Germany and from there transferred to Israel. He was tried in Germany in absentia and fined 60,000 euros. In January 2011, the German police issued an international arrest warrant for Brodsky. The fact that an alleged Mossad agent was traveling with a passport that was apparently part of the same batch of German passports used in Dubai points to a major security failing on the part of those preparing identities and passports for agents
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Exactly a year ago, the Times of London published accounts of two anonymous young men, one of whom had emigrated to Israel from Britain and the other from France. Both young men, during their service in the Israel Defense Forces, were approached by a woman who identified herself as a Mossad official, who asked them to “lend” their passports to her for about 18 months while they were still in the army. When the passports were returned, they contained stamps from a variety of countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. The two men were advised not to visit those countries over the next few years.

There is a long and glorious tradition of Diaspora Jews aiding Israeli intelligence, albeit occasionally without being aware they were doing so. In the 1970s and 1980s, the semi-secret Lishkat Hakesher ‏(Liaison Unit, also called Nativ‏), which was under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office ‏ and promoted ties between Israel and the Jews of the Soviet Union, sent Jewish citizens from Western countries to meet Soviet Jews, and among other things to bring them Hebrew textbooks. Many new immigrants to Israel have said they were apparently approached by the Mossad to “lend” it their passports for a while; in some cases their identities were used without their knowledge.

The illegal use of the passports of citizens from friendly nations stands in clear contradiction to assurances Israel has repeatedly given these countries. For agents operating in enemy territory, passports of real live citizens have a major advantage over fake travel documents. Many countries have the capability of easily detecting the latter; most large airports are equipped with computer systems connected to databases that can ascertain within seconds whether a passport has indeed been legally issued. For a serious intelligence organization committed to the safety of its operatives, even the best forged documents are no longer an option.

When Meir Dagan became Mossad chief, in September 2002, he was charged by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with expanding the agency operational portfolio substantially, and targeting mainly Iran’s nuclear program and its arms-smuggling networks to Hamas and Hezbollah. This necessitated a rapid influx of agents into the field, with each operation necessitating creation of new identities. It would seem that in the rush to acquire new documents too many corners were cut in security procedures. Now someone at the highest levels of Israel’s political and security establishment will need to ask the question whether the damage caused to Jewish citizens in friendly countries and to Israel’s diplomatic relations was worth the trouble.

How goodly are thy tents - Haaretz
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People in the corridors of politics are wondering how Netanyahu will regain control of the media agenda. One possibility: In about a month, the government committee investigating the phenomenon of economic concentration is due to publish its report. It is supposed to include recommendations that would cause serious financial harm to tycoons like Nochi Dankner, Yitzhak Tshuva, Ilan Ben-Dov and their pals. Netanyahu intends to put himself at the forefront of the battle against the magnates.

Another scenario under discussion involves the return of captured soldier Gilad Shalit. If that deal starts rolling, the middle-class revolt will drop out of the headlines. Who would dare complain about Netanyahu after he returns our collective native son to his parents?

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.”

Oui, hein, pour regagner des points dans l’opinion publique israélienne, que va faire Bibi ? S’attaquer aux plus puissants magnats israéliens, ou faire de l’agitation sécuritaire ? Hum... on ne sait que choisir...

Just a tool in the war machine - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
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“I only wish to present the truth as I know it, which in my view is the factual truth. The Mossad is simply an instrument. Our job was to provide intelligence and to create contacts with the Christians in Lebanon. These contacts began as far back as the 1950s and 60s, as part of an all-encompassing policy conceived by David Ben-Gurion.”