person:arnon milchan

    • U.S. Ambassador Dean Ambushed in Lebanon, Escapes Attack Unhurt - The Washington Post
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/08/28/us-ambassador-dean-ambushed-in-lebanon-escapes-attack-unhurt/218130c3-6d7e-438f-8b0c-a42fc0e5eb57

      1980

      U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean escaped unharmed tonight after gunmen in a speeding Mercedes attacked his bulletproof limousine as he was leaving his Hazmieh residence in a convoy.

      The ensuing battle between the ambasador’s bodyguards and the gunmen left the embassy car demolished on the passenger side, with window glass shattered and tires flat, embassy sources said.

      Later this evening, Dean appeared at the gate of the embassy and waved to bystanders but refused to make a statement on the incident. He showed no signs of injury. [The Associate Press, quoting security sources, said Dean’s wife Martine and daughter Catherine also were unharmed.]

      It was the first attempt on an American ambassador’s life in Lebanon since June 16, 1976, when ambassador Francis E. Eloy, economic counselor Robert O. Waring and their chauffeur were kidnaped and killed on their way from West Beirut to East Beirut during the civil war.

      [Several hours after the attack on Dean, gunmen with automatic rifles dragged the Spanish ambassador and his wife from their car and drove away in the embasy vehicle. Ambassador Luis Jordana Pozas told the Associated Press. Jordana said five men pushed them from the car in mostly Moslem West Beirut. There was no indication whether the theft of Jordana’s car was related to the attack on the American diplomat.]

      Today’s attack came just hours after Dean said the United States was working with Israel and the United Nations to end the violence among Christian militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas in southern Lebanon. It was his first public statement since Aug. 21, when he created an uproar by condemning an Israeli raid on Palestinian guerilla strongholds in the area. The U.S. State Department later disavowed the statement.

      There were conflicting reports about the kind of explosive that was aimed at the ambassador’s car. Some local radio stations said it was a rocket, while others said it was a rifle grenade. None of the reports could be confirmed.

      The shooting took place as Dean was driving to Beirut. Excited security guards outside the U.S. Embassy told reporters that a spurt of machine-gun fire followed the explosion.

      The attackers, who abandoned their car, fled into the woods on the side of the highway, Beirut’s official radio said.

      Lebanese Army troops and internal security forces were quickly moved to the ambush site and an all-night search was begun to track down the would-be killers. Reliable police sources said two Lebanese suspected of being linked to the assassination attermpt were taken in for questioning.

      Following a meeting with Lebanese Foreign Minister Fuad Butros today, Dean stressed that "American policy includes opposition to all acts of violence which ignore or violate the internationally recognized border between Lebanon and Israel.

    • The remarkable disappearing act of Israel’s car-bombing campaign in Lebanon or : What we (do not) talk about when we talk about ’terrorism’
      Rémi Brulin, MondoWeiss, le 7 mai 2018
      https://seenthis.net/messages/692409

      La remarquable occultation de la campagne israélienne d’attentats à la voiture piégée au Liban ou : Ce dont nous (ne) parlons (pas) quand nous parlons de terrorisme
      Rémi Brulin, MondoWeiss, le 7 mai 2018
      https://seenthis.net/messages/695020

    • Inside Intel / Assassination by proxy - Haaretz - Israel News | Haaretz.com
      https://www.haaretz.com/1.5060443

      Haaretz 2009,

      Did Israel try to kill the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon in the early 1980s?Haggai Hadas’ experience is not necessarily an advantage in the talks over Gilad Shalit’s release The Israeli intelligence community has committed quite a number of crimes against the United States during its 60-year lifetime. In the early 1950s it recruited agents from among Arab officers serving in Washington (with the help of military attache Chaim Herzog). In the 1960s it stole uranium through Rafi Eitan and the Scientific Liaison Bureau in what came to be known as the Apollo Affair, when uranium was smuggled to Israel from Dr. Zalman Shapira’s Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation - in Apollo, Pennsylvania). In the 1980s it operated spies (Jonathan Pollard and Ben-Ami Kadish), and used businessmen (such as Arnon Milchan) to steal secrets, technology and equipment for its nuclear program and other purposes.

      Now the Israeli government is being accused of attempted murder. John Gunther Dean, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, claims in a memoir released last week that Israeli intelligence agents attempted to assassinate him. Dean was born in 1926 in Breslau, Germany (today Wroclaw, Poland), as John Gunther Dienstfertig. His father was a Jewish lawyer who described himself as a German citizen of the Jewish religion who is not a Zionist. The family immigrated to the U.S. before World War II. As an adult Dean joined the State Department and served as a diplomat in Vietnam, Afghanistan and India, among other states.

    • Remi Brulin on Twitter: "Shlomo Ilya was, in the early 1980s, the head of the IDF liaison unit in Lebanon. He is also (in)famous for declaring, at the time, that he only weapon against terrorism is terrorism, and that Israel had options for “speaking the language the terrorists understand.” https://t.co/TKx02n2SpA"
      https://mobile.twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1001904259410071552

  • Israël poursuit ses dirigeants pour tous leurs méfaits, sauf le véritable crime : l’occupation
    Gideon Levy | 23 janvier 2017
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/opinions/isra-l-poursuit-ses-dirigeants-pour-tous-leurs-m-faits-sauf-le-v-rita

    Un nuage sombre menace l’avenir politique du Premier ministre israélien.

    Benyamin Netanyahou est soupçonné d’avoir commis une série de crimes, principalement regroupés en deux dossiers. Le premier implique le fait d’avoir accepté des cadeaux du producteur de films israélo-américain Arnon Milchan.

    S’élevant à plusieurs dizaines de milliers de dollars, les cadeaux de Milchan, offerts au cours de plusieurs années, auraient compris des cigares de luxe et du champagne livrés à la résidence du Premier ministre. Milchan a des intérêts commerciaux en Israël sur lesquels Netanyahou, qui est également ministre de la Communication de l’État, exerce une influence considérable. Dans un cas, Netanyahou serait intervenu avec le secrétaire d’État américain John Kerry pour aider Milchan à obtenir un visa américain de longue durée. Netanyahou a déjà été interrogé sur ce dossier.

    Le second dossier est plus compliqué. La police a obtenu des enregistrements de conversations continues entre Netanyahou et un autre Arnon, Arnon Mozes, éditeur et rédacteur en chef de Yediot Aharonot, jusqu’à récemment le plus grand quotidien d’Israël. La police s’est procuré ces enregistrements par hasard, au cours d’une autre affaire, en enquêtant sur un ancien assistant de Netanyahou.

    Ces enregistrements, récemment divulgués dans les médias, ont suscité la fureur en Israël. Le dialogue entre les deux hommes, un Premier ministre en activité et un éditeur de premier plan, ressemble à une discussion pragmatique entre deux hommes d’affaires cyniques voire, au pire, entre deux escrocs mafieux. On les entend négocier un échange de bons procédés par lequel une couverture plus favorable du Premier ministre dans le journal Yediot Aharonot serait récompensée avec certains avantages pour le journal.(...)

  • Netanyahu caught on tape negotiating mutual benefits with businessman - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.763607

    At the heart of Case 2000 is an attempt at an unambiguous deal between money and government. Sources who spoke with Netanyahu said he was surprised by evidence against him.

    Désolé, je n’ai trouvé un rapport en français que sur ce site d’extrême-droite :

    L’opposition veut faire tomber Netanyahou suite à un enregistrement entre le Premier ministre et un homme d’affaire
    http://alyaexpress-news.com/lopposition-veut-faire-tomber-netanyaou-suite-a-enregistrement-ent

    • Netanyahu caught on tape negotiating mutual benefits with businessman
      At the heart of Case 2000 is an attempt at an unambiguous deal between money and government. Sources who spoke with Netanyahu said he was surprised by evidence against him.
      By Gidi Weitz | Jan. 8, 2017 | 7:02 AM

      Suspicions in the main corruption affair involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are backed by a tape documenting alleged contacts between Netanyahu and a businessman over mutual benefits, Haaretz has learned.

      At the heart of the affair, dubbed Case 2000, lies an attempt to make an unambiguous deal between money and government – not suitcases brimming with cash in return for a gas monopoly, or bank transfers to a secret account in return for franchises in natural resources or infrastructure, but the businessman’s support that would help Netanyahu remain in office in exchange for huge financial benefits.

      Even if this pact was only partly realized or was still in its infancy, the mere existence – and documentation – of such incredible negotiations demands an immediate criminal investigation. When the affair is fully revealed, the details will shed light on how decisions are made at the top.

      It may be said that the affair is based on solid evidence that will be difficult to dispute, like that provided by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s bureau chief Shula Zaken about Olmert: a series of tapes in which the prime minister’s own voice is heard. People who spoke with Netanyahu over the weekend after his second police interrogation over corruption allegations said he was surprised by the evidence against him. “He didn’t expect it,” said a person who knows Netanyahu well.

      The details of the affair are sensational also because for many years Netanyahu has been perceived, and rightly so, as a stranger to the local swamp of crony capitalism, adeptly navigated by his two predecessors, Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon. A few years back, the man who admired the American trust-breaking president, Theodor Roosevelt, was not the cup of tea of the major players in Israel’s economy. Netanyahu has been described in the past as a cautious man whose sins, while they might infuriate the public, were minor. When the details of the “Case 2000” affair are revealed, these perceptions could crack.

      This explosive material landed on the desk of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit back in the spring. After sitting on it for long months and withholding the information from the public with no justification, the attorney general hastened to plug the narrative beneficial to Netanyahu: The affair is serious from a public perspective and is borderline in criminal terms.

      It’s time to put an end to this spin and to two others making headlines these last few days: That Netanyahu is calm and certain that it’ll all end in hot air; and that Mendelblit is a steadfast attorney general, who conducted a comprehensive, thorough and quick investigation. These two descriptions, aggressively peddled to the public by lackeys of these two intelligent individuals, are trickery and deception.

      It appears that the minor of the two affairs involving Netanyahu, the gifts case, is being received by the public with a shrug. The explanation may be the high threshold set over the last decade, when Israel watched in wonder as a president accused of rape barricaded himself in his residence, tycoons funneled millions into the prime minister’s son’s bank account, envelopes bursting with dollars finding their way into another prime minister’s hands, a finance minister who topped off his bank account with labor unions’ funds and a defense minister who stashed away hundreds of thousands of dollars and bought himself a luxury pad with money from tycoons.

      Today, it appears that only a gas monopoly in return for suitcases of cash, or a TV franchise for a bloated bank account in the Virgin Islands under a straw man’s name will wake the public out of its stupor. This is what Israeli society has come to.

      Suspicions in the gifts affair come as no surprise. For years stories abounded of Netanyahu’s tendency to abuse his status to receive funding from wealthy individuals in Israel and abroad for his luxurious lifestyle. This included first-class flights, hotel suites, expensive Cuban cigars, champagne and suits. Despite many reports since the early 1990s, about his parsimoniousness, his bizarre funding of personal expenses from the public purse, his fondness for enjoying the good life but not paying for it, Netanyahu continued in a behavior, which mainly showed dubious judgement.

      In this affair, wealthy businessmen, above all movie producer Arnon Milchan, were allegedly asked to buy hundreds of thousands of shekels worth of luxury items for Netanyahu and his wife Sara. A report by Channel 10’s Raviv Drucker that Netanyahu had asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to assist Milchan with his visa problems, proves once more that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and that the friendship between Netanyahu and Milchen was not just a warm, authentic relationship that happened to develop between the huge money and a top politician.

    • Israël : la police examine un enregistrement impliquant Netanyahu
      AFP | 08/01/2017
      http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1028010/israel-la-police-examine-un-enregistrement-impliquant-netanyahu.html

      La police israélienne, qui enquête sur une éventuelle implication de Benjamin Netanyahu dans des affaires de corruption, examine un enregistrement d’une conversation avec un patron de presse sur l’éventualité d’apporter une couverture plus favorable au Premier ministre, selon des informations diffusées dimanche.

      Selon la chaîne privée Channel 2, la police est en possession d’un enregistrement d’une conversation entre M. Netanyahu et Arnon Moses, propriétaire du quotidien Yediot Aharonot et de son site d’information Ynet.
      Ce journal fournit une couverture traditionnellement hostile à M. Netanyahu. Cette même chaîne de télévision israélienne affirme que les deux hommes discutaient d’"un accord qui aiderait le Yedioth en échange d’une couverture favorable" au Premier ministre.

      Selon Channel 2, les discussions entre M. Netanyahu et l’éditeur portaient sur la possibilité de réduire ou fermer le supplément hebdomadaire du Israel HaYom, pour donner un coup de pouce aux ventes de son rival et à la fortune de la famille Moses.
      En échange, ajoute la même source, le Yedioth baisserait le ton de sa couverture traditionnellement hostile à M. Netanyahu. La chaîne ne précise pas quand cette conversation avait eu lieu ou si un accord avait été conclu.

      Depuis son lancement en 2007, le tirage du quotidien gratuit pro-Netanyahu Israel HaYom dépasse celui de Yedioth. Le journal appartient au milliardaire américain juif Sheldon Adelson, soutien de longue date de M. Netanyahu.

      Le Premier ministre a été interrogé jeudi par les enquêteurs pendant cinq heures, pour la deuxième fois en une semaine, dans le cadre d’une enquête sur des cadeaux qu’il est soupçonné d’avoir reçus illégalement d’hommes d’affaires.

      Channel 2 avait auparavant indiqué que M. Netanyahu avait reçu pendant sept ou huit ans des boîtes de cigares de choix de la part d’Arnon Milchan, homme d’affaires israélien, producteur hollywoodien et ami du Premier ministre. La valeur totale de ces cigares s’élèverait à des dizaines de milliers de dollars, selon Channel 2.

      La chaîne affirme également que la police soupçonnait M. Milchan d’avoir offert à l’épouse du Premier ministre, Sara, du champagne rose d’une valeur d’une centaine de dollars la bouteille.
      Un avocat de Benjamin Netanyahu avait affirmé vendredi que ces soupçons étaient « dénués de toute substance ».

  • ’Hollywood producer was an Israeli nuclear agent’ (noter: juillet 2011)
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/hollywood-producer-was-an-israeli-nuclear-agent-1.373867

    Israeli businessman and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan was a longtime weapons dealer and Israeli intelligence agent who purchased equipment for Israel’s alleged nuclear program, a new biography claims.

    The book, “Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan,” written by Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, recounts Milchan’s life story, from his days as a boy in Rehovot through his friendships with Israeli prime ministers, U.S. presidents and Hollywood stars.

    Milchan’s services to the Israeli security industry have been made public before, but he has always denied or refused to acknowledge them. This is the first time Milchan confirms these claims, albeit indirectly.

    Even though the authors claim to have written an unofficial biography, Milchan agreed to meet with them, answer their questions and correct their mistakes. One of the major sources for the book was Israeli President Shimon Peres, a close friend of Milchan.

    “I am the one who recruited him,” Peres is quoted as saying.

    • Netanyahu Worked Inside Nuclear Smuggling Ring by Grant Smith
      http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2012/07/03/netanyahu-worked-inside-nuclear-smuggling-ring

      On June 27, 2012, the FBI partially declassified and released seven additional pages [.pdf] from a 1985–2002 investigation into how a network of front companies connected to the Israeli Ministry of Defense illegally smuggled nuclear triggers out of the U.S.* The newly released FBI files detail how Richard Kelly Smyth — who was convicted of running a U.S. front company — met with Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel during the smuggling operation. At that time, Netanyahu worked at the Israeli node of the smuggling network, Heli Trading Company. Netanyahu, who currently serves as Israel’s prime minister, recently issued a gag order that the smuggling network’s unindicted ringleader refrain from discussing “Project Pinto.”