beta- - Haaretz Daily Newspaper

’Israel Would Be Embarrassed if It Were Known It’s Selling Arms to These Countries’
Itay Mack, a Jerusalem-based human rights lawyer and activist, seeks greater transparency and public oversight of Israel’s military exports.

Ayelett Shani Aug 07, 2015
read more: ►http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.669852 Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News
►http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.669852

Analysis Who does Israel sell arms to? The Defense Ministry won’t tell
Sisters in arms: The burgeoning defense trade between Israel and India
Israeli arms exports down $1 billion in 2014
Israel is known to be a powerhouse in military exports, but what does “military exports” actually mean?
It’s a very broad term, encompassing arms and security equipment, as well as know-how, such as that involving combat doctrines or the training of militias and regular forces.
As I understand it, we’re among the top 10 in the world in this regard.
All countries engage in military exports. The problem is that Israel is involved in places that the United States and Europe decided to avoid exporting weapons to. We know Israel is selling arms to Azerbaijan, South Sudan and Rwanda. Israel is training units guarding presidential regimes in African states. According to reports, this is happening in Cameroon, Togo and Equatorial Guinea – nondemocratic states, some of them dictatorships, that kill, plunder and oppress their citizens.
What is clear is that military exports are perhaps identified with Israel, but it’s not just government companies that are involved.

Itay Mack.Gali Eytan
There are a few huge government corporations that are active in this field, such as Rafael [Advanced Defense Systems]. The others are completely private companies, created to make money. There are more than 1,000 firms and more than 300 individuals licensed to deal with sales. All the companies are under the umbrella of the Defense Ministry, which must authorize their activity.
I understand that there are several types of permits.
There’s a budget “pie” that’s made up of states and others that want to buy arms. The Defense Ministry decides who gets the permits and how to divide the pie. Naturally, that’s done in accordance with its interests and those of its cronies. There’s concern about partiality here, as some of those involved [in requesting permits] are [former] senior Israel Defense Forces officers, former Defense Ministry employees and ex-politicians, or politicians who are taking a break from politics. In the end, the pie is divided among the old-boy network.
So we can assume that supervision and enforcement are not strict.
Out of a staff of some 30 employees at the Defense Export Controls Agency, there are only people in charge of examining the 400,000 annual permits. They are also responsible for ensuring that the recipients of the permits do not violate the terms. They are also supposed to oversee real-time developments on the ground, such as violent conflicts that might require the annulment or suspension of permits.
So, does anyone know if there are violations?
The state comptroller found that most of the enforcement of the terms is the result of companies informing on one another. There are about 160 violations [reported by the Defense Ministry] each year, of which only a few are investigated. There is administrative enforcement with negligible fines imposed. Criminal sanctions are not imposed and permits are not revoked – according to the information the ministry delivered to the Knesset. Effectively, DECA is customer service for exporters.
For the same exclusive club.
Right. Who has the courage to stand up to any of these former generals? And even if someone were to do this, the general would simply call someone higher up in the Defense Ministry and arrange things. Besides which, you can make money from arms exports without a permit, by being a go-between, as [former Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert claimed was done by [former Prime Minister] Ehud Barak. That’s where the really big money is.

What is the Palestinian Authority for? | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21660493-authority-unable-protect-its-people-or-deliver-peace-what-it-goo

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/2015/08/articles/main/20150808_blp513.jpg

Jewish Terror Attacks Tighten the Noose Around the Palestinian Authority Diplomacy and Defense Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News
▻http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.669243

During the first intifada, settlers didn’t dare enter the village of Duma, the site of last weekend’s deadly arson attack. But for two decades the locals have been unprotected.

#collaborateurs #Palestine

#Migrants Wounded by Israeli Army Fire While Crossing Egypt Border Israel Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News
▻http://www.haaretz.com/beta/1.669748

http://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.641744!/image/911515574.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_474/911515574.jpg

The IDF said that it treats every fence crossing as a “hostile terror incident,” although in this case there were clear signs that the infiltrators were migrants. They arrived in a large group, in the evening, and the armed man who was with them at the crossing did not open fire in the direction of the Israeli border, and didn’t cross the fence with them. The army also admitted that the armed man was in effect accompanying the migrants to the fence and was not harmed by the gunfire.

#Israel_et_ses_quarante_versions

All Israelis Are Guilty of Setting a Palestinian Family on Fire
Gideon Levy Aug 02, 2015
▻http://www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.669005

It’s simply not possible to cheer for the brigade commander who shoots a Palestinian teenager, and then be shocked by settlers who throw a firebomb at an inhabited house.

Israelis stab gay people and burn children. There isn’t a shred of slander, the slightest degree of exaggeration, in this dry description. True, these are the actions of a few. True, too, that their numbers are increasing. It’s true that all of them – all the murderers, everyone who torches, who stabs, who uproots trees – are from the same political camp. But the opposing camp also shares the blame.

All those who thought that it would possible to sustain islands of liberalism in the sea of Israeli fascism were shown up this weekend, once and for all. It’s simply not possible to cheer for the brigade commander who shoots a teenager, and then be shocked by the settlers who set a family on fire; to support gay rights, and hold a founding conference in Ariel; to be enlightened, and then pander to the right and seek to partner with it. Evil knows no bounds; it begins in one place and quickly spreads in every direction.

The first breeding ground of those who torched the Dawabsheh family was the Israel Defense Forces, even if the offenders didn’t serve in it. When the killing of 500 children in the Gaza Strip is legitimate, and doesn’t even compel a debate, a moral reckoning, then what’s so terrible about setting a house on fire, together with its inhabitants? After all, what’s the difference between lobbing a fire bomb and dropping a bomb? In terms of the intention, or the intent, there is no difference.

When the shooting of Palestinians becomes an almost daily occurrence – two more have already been killed since the family was burned: one in the West Bank, another on the border of the Gaza Strip – who are we to complain about the fire throwers in Duma? When the lives of Palestinians are officially the army’s for the taking, their blood cheap in the eyes of Israeli society, then settler militias are also permitted to kill them. When the IDF’s ethic in the Gaza Strip is that it is permitted to do anything in order to save one soldier, who are we to complain about right-wingers like Baruch Marzel, who told me this weekend it was permissible to kill thousands of Palestinians in order to protect a single hair from the head of a Jew. Such is the atmosphere, such is the result. Original responsibility for it goes to the IDF.

No less to blame, of course, are the governments and politicians who vie with each other over who can suck up the most to the settlers. Whoever gives them 300 new homes in exchange for their violence at the flagship settlement of Beit El is telling them not only that violence is permissible, but also that it pays. It is already hard to draw the line between throwing bags of urine at police officers and fire bombs into people’s homes.

Also to blame, of course, are the law enforcement authorities, starting with the Judea and Samaria District Police – the most ridiculous and scandalous of all police districts, and not by chance. Nine Palestinian homes were torched in the past three years, according to B’Tselem. How many people have been prosecuted? None. So what happened in Duma on Friday? The fire was simply better, in the eyes of the arsonists and their minions.

Their minions also include the silent, the forgiving and all those who think the evil will remain forever within the confines of the West Bank. Their minions also include the Israelis who are convinced that the People of Israel is the chosen people, and as a result is permitted to do anything – including torching the homes of non-Jews, with their inhabitants inside.

So, too, many of those who were shocked by the act, including figures who have visited the victims in Sheba Medical Center, outside Tel Aviv – the president, the prime minister, the opposition leader and their aides – imbibed the racist, infuriating “You have chosen us from all the peoples” with their mothers’ milk.

At the end of a terrible day, it is this that leads to the burning of families whom God did not choose. No principle in Israeli society is more destructive, or more dangerous, than this principle. Nor, unfortunately, more common. If you were to examine closely what is concealed beneath the skin of most Israelis, you would find: the chosen people. When that is a fundamental principle, the next torching is only a matter of time.

Their minions are everywhere, and most of them are now tsk-tsking and expressing dismay at what happened. But what occurred couldn’t have not happened; what happened was dictated by the needs of reality, the reality of Israel and its value system. What happened will happen again, and no one will be spared. We all torched the Dawabsheh family.