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  • Israeli Drones Fallin’ from the Skies Like Flies: Third UAV Sabotaged by Hacking
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/10/09/third-israeli-drone-sabotaged-by-hacking

    Israeli media have announced that the IAF has “lost” (Hebrew and English) yet another of its advanced drones, the Hermes-450, one of the most advanced of its fleet. This marks the third vehicle lost in a similar manner in the past six months. A fourth drone was “lost” two years ago and reported in a post I published here. I note my Israeli source reported originally that the drone was operated by Hezbollah and deliberately crashed into the base. It’s also possible that Hezbollah or Iran took control of an Israeli drone and crashed it into the base; or that its Israeli controllers crashed it purposely because its navigation system had been hacked. I’ve previously reported (and here) on the various crashes.

  • Jordanian Journalist Who Fabricated Syrian Rebel Chemical Weapons Story, Wrote Recent Jerusalem Post Column Lauding Israel Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/09/23/jordanian-journalist-who-fabricated-syrian-rebel-chemical-weapon

    Jordanian Journalist Who Fabricated Syrian Rebel Chemical Weapons Story, Wrote Recent Jerusalem Post Column Lauding Israel

    by Richard Silverstein on September 23, 2013 · 0 comments

    in Mideast Peace

    I’ve been following the story of a few weeks ago, claiming that Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia was shipping chemical weapons to the Syria rebels, which they were using on the battlefield. As so much of the reporting on this subject, this story really stank. But I didn’t give it much thought until I learned more about the professional histories of both Dale Gavlak, the AP reporter who helped birth the story; and Yahyah Ababneh (aka Yan Barakat) who allegedly “reported” it from Syria.

    The quick background on this is that Gavlak, who works for a number of news organizations including AP, recommended that the Mint Press publish a story she’d received written in Arabic, purporting to describe a Syrian rebel chemical weapons attack. After the story had circulated for a week or so journalists began questioning various elements of it. Eventually, Gavlak dissociated herself from the story even though she played a critical role in getting it published. Mint Press was hung out to dry because it hadn’t done due diligence itself and couldn’t say whether the story was true or false. It had relied on Gavlak and trusted her judgment.

    Antiwar.com also republished the story on its website. But it apologized to its readers within a few days of the controversy beginning. That was more than its editors offered me when they yanked my published profile of Meir Javedanfar, under the censorious direction of Justin Raimondo.

  • Israel’s « Prisoner X » provided info to Hezbollah : report
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/israels-prisoner-x-provided-info-hezbollah-report

    Israel’s “Prisoner X,” the former Mossad agent who was found hanging in his jail cell shortly after his arrest in 2010, had provided Hezbollah with the identities of Lebanese informants, helping crack at least two major spy rings in the country, Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed on Sunday.

    Citing an internal Israeli record, the report said that Ben Zygier, an Australian national recruited by the Israeli spy agency in 2003, was suspected of having passed on the names of Ziad al-Homsi and Mustafa Ali Awada prior to his secret arrest and detention in Israel.

    Lebanese authorities arrested the two suspects in 2009 on charges of espionage and sentenced them each to 15 years in prison.

    Je trouve cette info particulièrement douteuse. M’enfin bref, si c’est dans le journal…

    • Voilà ce que publie Haaretz aujourd’hui

      Report: Zygier gave Hezbollah intel about two Lebanese agents working for Mossad

      Der Spiegel expose on Prisoner X affair reveals that the Lebanese agents, Ziad al-Homsi and Mustafa Ali Awada, were subsequently arrested in May 2009 and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for espionage.
      Alleged Mossad agent Ben Zygier, known as Prisoner X before committing suicide while jailed in solitary confinement, handed Hezbollah sensitive information that led to the arrest of Lebanese agents in Israel’s service, according to previews of an expose to be released by Der Spiegel on Monday.

      The German news weekly alleges that before his death in an isolated Israeli prison cell, Zygier managed to transfer to Hezbollah the names of two Lebanese agents also operating at the Mossad’s behest. The two Lebanese agents, Ziad al-Homsi and Mustafa Ali Awada, were subsequently arrested in May 2009 and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for espionage.

      The article, which cites an internal investigative report obtained by Der Spiegel, brands Zygier as “Israel’s biggest traitor” and describes how the “Zionist turned into a defector.”

    • Je trouve l’exposé de Silverstein tout aussi improbable, pour tout dire un scénario fabriqué pour cacher autre chose (je ne sais quoi) :
      – d’abord je ne pige pas pourquoi, parce qu’il aurait commis une énorme « bourde » (et pas une trahison volontaire), le gars serait devenu le nouveau Masque de fer dans une prison israélienne ; Mordechai Vanunu a eu un procès pour tout de même bien plus « grave » ;
      – ça permet de remettre la Hezbollah dans l’histoire, avec un « agent du Hezbollah dans les Balkans » ; hum, et pourquoi pas en Bulgarie tant qu’on y est, en train de prendre des photos des cars de touristes israéliens ?
      – le gars prend contact avec un agent du Hezbollah dans les Balkans depuis Tel Aviv, alors est assigné dans un bureau ? Quoi, il lui a téléphoné ? Skypé ?
      – les réseaux d’agents israéliens qui se sont fait prendre au Liban, ça n’est pas deux types, ça doit avoisiner les 200 ;
      – Silverstein suggère (c’est fait pour ?) que le gars se serait suicidé par sentiment de culpabilité, parce qu’il a trahit son pays (involontairement) et provoqué la mort de deux agents du Mossad. Je comprends que le gars n’a pas été suicidé a l’insu de son plein gré.

      Pour moi, c’est une trop belle « narrative » pour être vraie.

      Sinon, les « fuites » de Der Spiegel impliquant le Hezbollah, c’est justement par là qu’est sortie la première mise en accusation du Hezb dans l’affaire Hariri. Pour moi : pas crédible, sauf si on aime les communiqués de presse du Mossad.

  • Egypt Arrests Israeli Activist Traveling to Gaza Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/12/31/egypt-arrests-israeli-activist-traveling-to-gaza

    Last summer, after leaving IDF service, Andrei Pshenichnikov, age 24, underwent a radical political conversion. He began working with anti-Occupation groups and decided to renounce his Israeli citizenship. Further, he actually moved to the Deheisha refugee camp outside Bethlehem and took up jobs working for a hotel and construction there.

    But the Shabak grew suspicious of him and directed Palestinian security forces to arrest him. The Palestinians transferred him to IDF custody. Under interrogation, they accused him of belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. After his release, with the understanding he would return to his familiy home in Bat Yam, he actually returned to the West Bank.

  • Le Mossad fabrique (à nouveau) un faux document pour accuser l’Iran.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/28/ap-iran-nuclear-bomb

    Uncritical, fear-mongering media propaganda is far too common to take note of each time it appears, but sometimes, what is produced is so ludicrous that its illustrative value should not be ignored. Such is the case with a highly trumpeted Associated Press “exclusive” from Tuesday which claims in its red headline to have discovered evidence of “Iran Working on Bomb”.

    What is this newly discovered, scary evidence? It is a “graph” which AP says was “leaked” to it by “officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon” (how mysterious: the globe is gripped with befuddlement as it tries to guess which country that might be). Here’s how AP presents the graph in all its incriminating, frightening glory:

    • Ça a vraiment l’air d’être n’importe quoi !

      D’après R. Silverstein http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/11/28/irans-nuclear-bomb-diagram-product-of-mossad-hacking, le graphique a déjà été produit il y a un an par une source « non identifiée » à l’AIEA.

      Mais surtout, on voit une superbe courbe de Gauss (enfin, pas tant que ça, puisqu’il semblerait qu’elle soit tracée à la main) ou loi normale avec le temps en abscisses et la puissance en ordonnée et sa courbe cumulative qui donne donc l’énergie.

      Mouais, mouais, mouais. Ben, moi je croyais qu’une réaction en chaine c’était exponentiel ! Je suis déçu, déçu, déçu.

      Et puis, en fouinant un peu, je ne trouve pas de graphique représentant la puissance en fonction du temps, mais ceci, par exemple :


      qui donne l’allure des émissions de radiations thermiques (échelle de temps relative).
      (bon, ce n’est pas toute l’énergie délivrée, mais seulement 70% à 80% dans la première microseconde.

      ou encore ça :
      Décroissance en fonction du temps de l’énergie (par kT) émise par les rayons gamma. (note que l’échelle de temps, comme l’échelle des puissances, est logarithmique).

      Alors, des gentilles gaussiennes obtenues par simulation, si ce n’était pas sinistrement con, ça ferait doucement rigoler ! Mais bon, ça doit être trop technique.

    • J’oubliais ! Ça vient de là :


      sur http://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc sur le site de John Walker, fondateur d’Autodesk et co-auteur d’Autocad.

      Regardez bien la règle à calcul circulaire sur l’image ci-dessus. C’est un calculateur des effets d’une bombe atomique et c’était joint au bouquin The Effects of Nuclear Weapons(3 éditions, 1950, 1962 et 1977, c’est celle là qui est en ligne), que le ministère de la Défense états-unien vendait pour la modique somme de 1 dollar à qui voulait bien se préparer à une phase éventuelle de réchauffement de la guerre froide…

      Walker a été tellement fasciné par cet objet quand il était petit
      • qu’il l’a reproduit en version informatique,
      • qu’il fournit les images pour le reproduire en dur.

  • Iranian Drone Incident Was Unacknowledged IDF Security Debacle Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/10/17/iranian-drone-incident-was-unacknowledged-idf-security-debacle

    Iranian Drone Incident Was Unacknowledged IDF Security Debacle

    by Richard Silverstein on October 17, 2012 · 1 comment

    in Mideast Peace

    I’ve often noted the parallel between the IDF’s public statements and Kabuki-style Japanese theater. Everyone wears a costume (or uniform) and mask, everyone plays a role, no one’s actual role or anything they say bears any resemblance to reality. So the Iranian drone incident is in the same vein. Israel’s leadership high-fived each other over the stellar performance of the air defense command in shooting down the craft without causing injury to any Israeli. Story over, case closed.

    Not so fast. Along with my posts on this subject, Haaretz defense analyst Reuven Pedatzur and Yediot’s defense correspondent Alex Fishman have insisted on telling their Israeli readers that the emperor has no clothes. Here is Pedatzur who, by the way, was an ace IAF pilot during military service:

    When people start praising failures, it’s time to worry. And that’s exactly what happened a week and a half ago: Defense Minister Ehud Barak praised the chief of staff and the air force commander for the “sharp, effective performance in which a drone was intercepted and shot down in the area south of Hebron.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also praised the drone’s interception.

    In reality, this incident was anything but a “sharp, effective performance.” By any professional standard, the penetration of an unmanned aerial vehicle into Israeli territory, apparently after it had flown for more than two hours over the sea, and its subsequent flight clear across the country over the course of another half hour, are an embarrassing failure for the Israel Defense Forces.

    …The UAV made its way over the sea from Lebanon to the coast of Gaza. During its long flight parallel to the coast, it was not discovered by a single one of the various detection devices that “look” westward. If this wasn’t due to negligence on the part of someone manning these detection systems, who wasn’t alert to what was happening out at sea, then it points to gaps in the IDF’s radar coverage of the western sector.

    Moreover, during its flight, the UAV passed over Israeli naval vessels without anyone noticing it. It also passed over the drilling platforms at the Leviathan natural gas site – a point worth noting for those who are supposed to defend our gas production sites in the future. Those who launched it could very easily have loaded it with explosives and then blown it up over one of these platforms.

    According to official IDF sources, the UAV was discovered only as it was about to cross the coastline near the Gaza Strip, and at that point, fighter planes were scrambled. Someone in the IDF needs to explain why it was discovered so belatedly. After all, had the drone been laden with explosives, its operators could have aimed it at the coastal city of Ashkelon, the nearby power plant, or Ashdod port…

    No less…worrying is the description of the air force’s activity after the UAV was discovered…Fighter planes escorted the drone on its flight eastward for about half an hour before launching two missiles at it, one of which hit. If so, it’s hard to understand the considerations that guided those who managed the interception.

    After all, it was impossible to know for sure that the drone wasn’t laden with explosives, turning it into a flying bomb. And if it had been, there was a reasonable possibility that it would suddenly dive and explode over a preplanned target – for instance, the air force base over which it flew. It’s not clear why the IDF decided to take such a risk instead of downing it as soon as it was discovered.

    …It’s not clear why they allowed it to continue flying, thereby enabling it to photograph targets in the heart of the country. The explanation that “operational considerations and considerations of protecting [nearby] communities” led to the army’s decision to down it only after about half an hour is unconvincing.

    But what ought to be most worrisome about the UAV affair is the depiction of this failure as a success. After all, if the IDF and the air force are being praised for a superb performance, it’s clear there is no need to investigate, ask questions and learn lessons.

    Another Israeli report notes (Hebrew) that Israeli Bedouin have found substantial portions of the downed drone in the area where it crashed. In other words, the IDF supposedly retrieved the craft in order to study it. Yet they left almost half of it where it landed and abandoned the area. If you compare this behavior to the way the NTSB investigates an airline crash, in which every piece of a crashed plane is retrieved for purposes of reconstruction, you see the haphazard, slipshod method of the IDF. It claimed it had recovered what it needed from the landing site and didn’t need whatever was left behind. Even if this is so, can you imagine how eager anyone seeking to learn about Iran’s drone capabilities would be to salvage such wreckage, which sits there on the forest floor waiting for anyone to come along and find it?

    Not to mention that the Israeli military censor has prohibited any Israeli media from publishing photos of the drone fragments. Imagine the hypocrisy of this considering that the IDF itself has abandoned these remnants leaving them for anyone to find, photograph, sell, whatever. If anyone has access to such photos, please contact me.

    Iran has made additional claims concerning the drone flight and its aftermath that induce skepticism, but are worth considering. They say that drone photographed Israeli preparations for next week’s missile defense joint maneuvers with U.S. forces and other military facilities in its path. In addition, they claim Israel’s national air defense commander was sacked. That appears false as the supposedly fired officer ended a normal three-year tour in this position and was rotated into a different one.

    Now the question remains: why wasn’t someone sacked over this bungle? As Pedatzur indicates above, there’s no need for questioning a military success. The IDF is not the sort of military organization that understands the difference between success and failure so it will swell its chest with pride, pin a medal on a few uniforms and pretend it conducted itself most excellently. Remember what I wrote about Kabuki theater above?

    Fishman pursues an entirely different tack (and I disagree with some of his approach), but he takes issue with the claim that the Iranian mission failed:

    In Israel, some members of the security establishment have been infected with…blindness. When the Iranian drone was shot down some 30 kilometers from Dimona, Israel cheered: The plot has been thwarted. In Western language, which Israel uses as well, the presence of a hostile drone is supposed to have some sort of operational purpose. Someone had sent it to take pictures, check the alertness of Israel’s defense systems and send back data. In short: It was supposed to carry out a practical mission with tangible results. Since these results were not achieved, the mission failed.

    But in the language of the Iranians and Nasrallah, the fact that the unmanned aircraft penetrated Israeli airspace is a huge achievement on a psychological level. As far as they are concerned, this was the purpose of the mission.

    On a related subject, Fishman’s article got me thinking about another potential danger that drones might pose to a nation like Israel. There are of course armed drones like those of the U.S. and Israel that have killed thousands of Muslim civilians. But imagine if you will a more advanced drone, one that might carry a compact nuclear warhead. It can’t be done now. But who’s to say that it isn’t possible to develop such a craft in future? All any nation would have to do would be to develop the drone and the primitive nuclear warhead and figure out how to fly it to the target, drop it, and detonate it. Even if the defending state shot the object down, as long as it happened over its territory there could potentially still be an aerial nuclear explosion.

    To be clear, I’m by no means claiming that is something that Iran (or Hezbollah) would do. On the contrary, I don’t believe that at all. Everything about Iran’s behavior indicates that it behaves militarily in a relatively pragmatic and measured fashion and acts in proportion to the provocations meted out by its opponents. But can I say the same about North Korea or some unforeseen crazed state that might be motivated to wreak havoc on an enemy in the future?

    My point here is that if the U.S. and Israel continue exploiting their current superiority by terrorizing various nations and groups they consider their enemies, then as they sow so shall they reap. If you kill with drones someone will want to kill you with one. If you sabotage industrial plants with cyber-weapons, someone will do the same to yours. If you assassinate scientists, then someone will do it to yours.

    We have no monopoly on these systems. Remember what happened in 1949? The Russians exploded a hydrogen bomb and all hell broke loose in U.S. military and political circles. How did Stalin get nukes? We were supposed to be the only ones who had them and presumably would ever have them.

    Do we really believe that we can maintain permanent supremacy over our so-called enemies? That they won’t figure out how to hurt us just as we’re hurting them? This is not a game of Monopoly. You don’t buy Park Place and own it forever. Reality has a nasty way of upsetting such illusions.

  • Sanctions Help, Not Hurt Iranian Regime Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/10/07/sanctions-help-not-hurt-iranian-regime

    Sanctions Help, Not Hurt Iranian Regime

    by Richard Silverstein on October 7, 2012 · 16 comments

    in Mideast Peace

    The prevailing narrative among those western nations and media supporting sanctions against Iran is that it is harming the regime by gradually depriving it of support in much the same way that a failing heart eventually deprives a body of oxygen. But what if everything they know about sanctions is wrong? Matthew Boesler has written an incisive analysis of the impact that sanctions are having on Iran. He makes an extremely persuasive case that they are helping, not hurting the regime.

    In order to understand this counter-intuitive argument you have to begin with the pre-sanctions period. During that time, the country sold oil and amassed considerable foreign currency reserves including dollars. The argument by those who do not understand the Iranian economy is that hyperinflation will make the value of the rial worthless. Eventually people will be pushing wheelbarrows full of cash in order to buy a loaf of bread as they did in Weimar Germany.

    But this is wrong for a number of reasons. First, Iranians do not buy bread in dollars. They buy them in rials. The price of bread in native currency isn’t increasing. It is stable. There are massive subsidies for those items deemed necessities. Those subsidies protect the working class base of the regime’s support. But they leave one major part of society vulnerable. The middle classes.

    The middle class wants more than bread. It wants iPads, smartphones, and other desirable foreign goods. It wants to buy them for personal use and it wants to import them to sell to others inside Iran. This is the sector that is being devastated by sanctions. These are the things Iranians will no longer be able to afford.

    But the regime has never relied on the support of the middle class. The merchants in the bazaar and the money changers are emblems of the middle class. They are the ones who rallied in 2009 to bring down the regime. They funded the protests. They hate the ayatollahs. So the regime does not need them. It only needs the votes of the poor working class to stay in power.

    So when you read the wishful thinking of Israeli leaders who crow about the coming downfall of the Islamist government, when you read the unsupported claims of David Sanger that sanctions are forcing the leadership to consider the price it is paying for its nuclear program–remember this article. And tell the world that the prevailing narrative is all wrong, as it often is. Sanctions don’t kill the regime. They strengthen it.

    If there is any theme to this blog it is that just about everything that the Israeli and U.S. leadership believes about its approach to the Muslim-Arab world is wrong. It is based on assumptions that reflect our needs and prejudices rather than reality. When we conduct policy based on what we want to happen rather than what will happen, then we’re headed for a fall.

    The only threat to Iran that Boesler notes is that it can maintain this system just as long as it maintains its foreign currency reserves to pay for whatever basic necessities it does need to import. If that runs out, then the game’s up. But one should ask the west, do you trust that you can starve and strangle Iran long enough for that to happen? And if you can’t, you’ve further cemented the ayatollahs’ ironclad domination of Iranian society for years, if not generations to come.

  • IDF Failure Allows Hezbollah-Iranian Drone to Overfly Israeli Cities, Military Bases Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/10/08/idf-failure-involving-hezbollah-iranian-drone

    IDF Failure Allows Hezbollah-Iranian Drone to Overfly Israeli Cities, Military Bases

    by Richard Silverstein on October 8, 2012 · 0 comments

    in Mideast Peace

    The IDF displayed yet another embarrassing failure in defending the homeland yesterday regarding the Iranian drone launched under the auspices of Hezbollah from Lebanon. Yediot’s Alex Fishman, one of the few forthright Israeli defense reporters notes (print only) that the aerial vehicle was allowed to fly over Israeli airspace for 20 minutes before it was downed. If you take into account IDF spokesperson Avital Leibovich’s claim that the army was tracking the drone for 20 minutes, that means it hadn’t a clue about the drone until it crossed into Israeli airspace. Imagine the most advanced army in the Middle East cannot track a slow-moving drone launched from Lebanon and flown for a long distance over the Mediterranean. Among the Israeli sites it overflew were population centers and military bases. It was only 18 miles (he calls it “spitting distance”) from Dimona when it was felled. Several years ago, a Hezbollah balloon flew directly over Dimona before it too was shot down. Note that this is supposed to be restricted airspace.

    Fishman, whose IDF sources are excellent reports that the drone was manufactured by the Iranian aviation industry and used Iranian technology.

    So despite the praise offered by Ehud Barak, reassuring the population that the army had the nation’s back and that there was nothing to worry about–there is very much to be worried about. The IDF, like most armies, isn’t just fighting the last war, it’s fighting the war before that. When Sinai militants attacked Eilat last year, Israeli intelligence hadn’t a clue that this might happen. The only terror attack it planned for was from Gaza. That the attack was launched from Egypt caught the IDF with their pants down. The Israeli response was so haphazard that one of its units invaded Egypt and killed five Egyptian police officers. Similarly, last month’s Sinai attack that killed 16 police officers and brought an Egyptian armored personnel carrier a mile into Israel also represented an intelligence failure.

    Israeli intelligence is afflicted with a failure of imagination. It always underestimates the enemy. It rarely anticipates what it will do, where and how it will attack. Israel is so used to fighting battles and wars on its terms, that it has stopped trying to understand the enemy in any more than a superficial way. This failure not only sells the nation’s defense short, it characterizes Israel’s inability to understand the needs and interests of its erstwhile enemies.

    Israel is like a fish out of water. It sees itself, in Ehud Barak’s infamous phrase as a “villa in the jungle.” That is, an advanced western country plopped down in the middle of the Middle Eastern jungle. Yet it is nothing of the sort. Israel is rather a schizoid country with an economy that apes the west in some ways, but structurally is closer to that of the oligarchic capitalism of Russia. It fancies itself a western democracy, but behaves little better than the Iranian Islamist theocracy.

    Israel as presently constituted can never integrate into the region. In fact, it doesn’t want to integrate. It believes it can maintain this charade of specialness and separateness forever. Until it can’t. These military-intelligence failures are only a symptom of that.

  • Israeli Palestinian Physics Prize Winners “Disappeared” by Israeli Media Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2012/10/03/israeli-palestinian-physics-prize-winners-disappeared-by-israeli

    Israeli Palestinian Physics Prize Winners “Disappeared” by Israeli Media

    by Richard Silverstein on October 3, 2012 · 1 comment

    in Mideast Peace
    youth physics competition winners

    Israel’s youth physics competition winners: Tamar Namir,Yuval Katsnelson, May Alon, , Dor Shmuel, Shlomi Shvartzman, Adi Kadar-Levi, , Ran Zitaiat (there are several teachers in this photo)

    One of the more popular memes Jewish triumphalists use to prove religious-ethnic superiority is how many Nobel Prizes have Jewish names attached to them. This supports the claim of genetic and racial superiority of Jewish DNA, I presume. Pro-Israel advocates use the same technique to pump up the volume on behalf of their nation. Entire websites and organizations exist whose sole purpose is to trumpet Israeli achievements, whether deserved or not.

    The triumphalists were out in full force to sing the praises of the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center at Ben Gurion University, which supplied many of the Israeli competitors for an international student physics competition, First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics, recently held in Poland. However, the achievement has been marred by overtly racist comments from the Ramon Center academic coördinator:

    “We succeeded in showing the world the potential of the Jewish mind,” said Professor Victor Malamud, the head of the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center at Ben Gurion University, which works with students who wish to enter physics competitions.

  • Tikun olam
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam

    In the past few days, I received an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel’s war plans against Iran. The document was passed to me by a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer. My source, in fact, wrote to me that normally he would not leak this sort of document, but:

    “These are not normal times. I’m afraid Bibi and Barak are dead serious.”

  • Captain George (aka Doron Zahavi) Rides Again (via @angryarab)
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/12/18/captain-george-aka-doron-zahavi-rides-again

    One thing you have to say about Israeli torturers, you can’t keep a good one down. I reported here some time ago about one Doron Zahavi aka Captain George, an infamous commander of the IDF intelligence unit 504. Until my report, his real name was secret and no publication has reported it. I was delighted to bring his brutal acts into the public light and attach a real name to the torturer. Zahavi and his boys specialized in “interrogating” (i.e. torturing) foreign security suspects captured by the IDF abroad.

    One of them was Mustafa Dirani, who Israel suspected of having held the MIA airman, Ron Arad. Zahavi subjected Dirani to the “royal treatment” which included sodomizing him with a billy club. We know this because Dirani sued the State and is attempting to hold it accountable for what its represenative did to him. One of the reasons Dirani exposed methods of torture used by Unit 504 is that the Supreme Court forced the State to allow him to proceed with his claims against it. In the process, Zahavi’s commander, a colonel whose first initial is Het, had a bout of conscience and spilled the beans.

  • MOSSAD-MEK MAY HAVE BOMBED IRANIAN MISSILE BASE, 40 DEAD AND WOUNDED
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/11/12/mossad-mek-terror-bombing-at-irg-base-causes-massive-explosion-a

    Ynet raises the possibility that it was a deliberate act of sabotage on not just a missile base, but an intelligence facility. Teheran Bureau says the IRG is telling the Iranian media that the incident was not an act of terror, but purely an industrial accident. An Iranian who worked at the base for several months and was interviewed by Iranian media discounted the likelihood of an act of sabotage since security at the base was extremely strict.

    However, an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience provides an exclusive report that it was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK. Israeli media is humming with similar reports and Channel 10′s intelligence correspondent went so far as to say, a bit coyly perhaps:

    If it was the work of western intelligence it was a high successful and impressive achievement.

  • Yediot : IDF Investigation Confirms All Eilat Attackers Were Egyptian, Not Gazan – Tikun Olam
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/09/21/yediot-idf-investigation-confirms-all-eilat-attackers-were-egypt

    It was Fishman (along with myself and Idan) who asked where the bodies were and why they weren’t identified by Israel. The reporter claimed that the IDF was playing a strange game of poker with Hamas, demanding that the latter acknowledge the dead were Gazan before Israel would release the bodies.

    This explains why there were no mourning tents in Gaza and no reports there of any fighters killed by Israel. Ehud Barak knew the knowledge that the attackers were not Gazan, as he claimed, would sink Israel’s entire plan to blame Gaza on the attack and its plan to take vengeance on it instead of the source of the attack, Egypt.

    Quand il s’agit de tuer des palestiniens, il semble que tout mensonge israélien est pardonné par avance.

  • Netanyahu Gags Shabak Director, Subverts Knesset Oversight Regarding Eilat Attack – Tikun Olam
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/09/04/netanyahu-gags-shabak-director-subverts-knesset-oversight-regard

    For those of you who harbor quaint notions about Israeli democracy, tonight’s post should further disabuse you of your illusions.

    [...]

    I’ve reported in the recent past, that Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to allow chief of staff Benny Gantz to testify to a Knesset committee about Israel’s covert programs to contain Iran. Now, none other than the prime minister himself has directed the Shabak chief to refuse to appear before the same committee to address questions about the Eilat terror attack. Yoram Cohen, Shabak director, sent an underling in his place who also refused to discuss the terror attack when asked point-blank by the committee, which is chaired by former chief of staff Shaul Mofaz.

    Haaretz has only reported the latter fact, that a Shabak officer refused to answer questions about Eilat. In truth, my own well-placed source confirms that Netanyahu refused to allow Cohen to even appear before Mofaz’ committee. Perhaps one should even question the Israeli media itself as to why it hasn’t reported that Netanyahu actually refused to allow Israel’s most senior intelligence officer to testify before the Knesset.

  • Mon nazi chez les Israéliens.

    Settler MKs Welcome Russian Neo-Nazi Holocaust Deniers to Knesset, Yad VaShem – Tikun Olam
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/07/28/rightist-knesset-members-welcome-russian-neo-nazis-to-knesset

    When an Israeli reader sent this story to me I couldn’t believe the headline summarized above. Further, in this day and age of Norwegian neo-Nazi, anti-jihadi attacks which wrap themselves in the Israeli flag, this story is simply mind-blowing.

    Russian neo-Nazis parade displaying Hitler salute before their settler-organized visit to Knesset and Yad VaShem.
    It begins with a visit from a Russian neo-Nazi delegation to Israel. Under the auspices of Tuvia Lerner, editor of the Russian edition of Arutz 7, the media voice of the settler movement, they inveigled themselves an invitation to meet with far-right MKs Aryeh Eldad and Ayoob Kara. They also toured Yad VaShem without telling anyone there that they were Holocaust deniers. Like I told you, this story has to be read to be believed. The two Russians have been photographed giving Nazi salutes, celebrating Der Fuhrer’s birthday, and they published songs of praise to Adoph Hitler on their website.

    • Ça n’est pas la première fois qu’un suprématiste blanc est accueilli à Yad Vashem.

      John Vorster - Wikipédia
      http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vorster

      En 1976 pour redresser l’image de son pays et pailler les condamnations internationales suite à la répression des émeutes de Soweto, John Vorster entreprit une série de visites en Europe (France, Allemagne de l’Ouest) et au Moyen-Orient, sa visite d’état en Israël au cours de laquelle la coopération nucléaire et militaire entre les deux pays fut relancée fut son plus grand succès diplomatique, accueilli par le premier ministre israélien Yitzhak Rabin comme un défenseur des libertés au nom des valeurs communes aux deux états, Vorster s’inclina devant le mémorial dédié à l’Holocauste et devant le Mur des Lamentations à Jérusalem 21.

      Pour la photo officielle :
      http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/5880232_61620.html

  • Iranian Assassination: Israeli TV Report Hints of Mossad Culpability - Tikun Olam
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/07/25/iranian-assassination-israeli-tv-report-implies-mossad-culpabili

    As Prof. Sahimi writes:
    If Iran does want to develop the bomb – and I still doubt it does – nothing, certainly not terrorism of this type, will prevent it from happening, short of occupying Iran with military force. Iran is finally waking up to the fact that Israel and the U.S. have decided to decapitate its nuclear program by a program of state-sponsored terrorism. If anything, it will make the mullahs and IRGC more determined than ever.

  • Clinton Threatened to Withhold U.S. Aid to PA, Israeli Officials Fear Increasing European Isolation - Tikun Olam
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/02/20/clinton-threatened-to-withhold-u-s-aid-to-pa

    Ynet reports that among the bullying tactics the U.S. used in a vain attempt to force the PA to withdraw the UN Security Council resolution opposing Israeli settlements, Hillary Clinton threatened to halt U.S. aid. Now how stupid can you get? The U.S. already looks lame through the role it’s played as outlined by the Palestine Papers in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. We dissed the Palestinians every chance we got. We spoke ill of them behind their backs. We stiffed them on issues that were crucial to their interests. We all but threw in our lot with Israel.
    And now Hillary thinks she’s going to withdraw the only leverage the U.S. has with the Palestinians? Who does she think she’s kidding? This actually sounds like something cooked up in Dennis Ross’ kitchen. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your Palestinian homeland down.

    #États-Unis #Palestine #Israël

  • L’armée israélienne exécute un palestinien de 65 ans dans son lit, sous les yeux de sa femme. Oups, mauvaise personne.
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/01/07/palestine-death-of-the-innocents-continues

    Today, the IDF Central Command has blood on its hands with the execution of a 65 year-old Palestinian man in his bed while they held a gun to his wife’s head and told her to shut up. Ynet: Victim shot to death for “unknown reasons”

    #Israël #Palestine

  • State Department Lied, Denying Dubai Asked for Assistance in Tracking Mossad Assassins | Tikun Olam-תקון עולם : Make the World a Better Place
    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/12/26/wikileaks-state-department-lied-denying-dubai-asked-for-assistan

    On February 25, 2010, State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley lied when he told a press conference that he wasn’t aware of any request from Dubai for assistance in tracking the Mossad killers of Mahmoud al-Mabouh. To those who say that Wikileaks hasn’t told us anything we didn’t already know–think again.
    Wikileaks has just released a February 24, 2010 cable in which the embassy relays the specific credit card numbers used by 14 of the 27 known Mossad suspects to State with a request for assistance from authorities investigating the killing, and confirms that the UAE foreign minister made the exact same request directly to Secretary Clinton on February 23rd:

    Le câble en question :
    http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Cable/Dubai/pide/ayuda/EE/UU/investigar/asesinato/lider/Hamas/elpepuint/20101225elpepuint_5/Tes

    On the margins of a meeting with visiting Secretary Chu, on Feb 24 MFA Minister of State Gargash made a formal request to the Ambassador for assistance in providing cardholder details and related information for credit cards reportedly issued by a U.S. bank to several suspects in last month’s killing of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai. According to a letter Gargash gave the Ambassador (which transmitted details of the request from Dubai Security authorities to the UAE Central Bank), the credit cards were issued by MetaBank, in Iowa. Embassy LEGATT is transmitting the request and associated details to FBI HQ. Gargash asked that Embassy pass any reply to the director of the General Directorate of State Security (GDSS) in Dubai.

    Silverstein fait également remarquer que, si depuis quelques jour il y a une rumeur insistante selon laquelle le nouveau chef du Mossad s’apprêterait à reconnaître la responsabilité israélienne et à présenter ses excuses à la Grande-Bretagne (et promettre de ne plus utiliser de passeports britanniques, ah ah ah), cela est certainement plus lié à la sortie annoncée des câbles de #Wikileaks qu’à une bonne volonté du nouveau chef des coups tordus.

    Yesterday, I reported that incoming Mossad director Tamir Pardo was prepared to concede Israeli responsibility for the Dubai hit. To any who might view this as an Israeli official seeking to take responsibility for Israeli misdeeds or some such…Wikileaks is rumored to be about to publish cables in which the lid is blown on Mossad involvement. So it’s no skin off Pardo’s back if he admits to a crime which was about to be exposed anyway by others.

    #Mossad #Israël #cablegate #Dubaï