Aimed -- it seems -- at keeping America's attention firmly on the unacceptable danger of Iran building nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are hinting that an Israeli attack on Iran could come at any time.
Officials in Jerusalem and in Washington have suggested, however, that they believe Netanyahu has been privately asked by President Barack Obama not to attack until after America's election day; and many Israeli strategic analysts believe that a military strike can indeed wait until then. However, Netanyahu is trying to maintain the pressure, not only on Iran but on the United States, by declaring that time is running out for a peaceful solution. He barely conceals the fact that he would prefer that the U.S. carry out the attack on Iran.
The prime minister is not saying publicly that Israel's foreign espionage and operations agency -- the Mossad -- is highly active, day and night; and its main focus, for eight years now, has been Iran's nuclear program. The agency's director from 2002 through 2010, Meir Dagan, made a point of redirecting the Mossad's priorities: with a lot less emphasis on Palestinian politics and militant groups, and a laser beam of attention on Iran.
We reported last month that at least four assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran were carried out by Mossad operatives. The Israeli attackers were part of an elite unit within Israeli intelligence, called Kidon (the Hebrew word for Bayonet). Since its creation, in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, many espionage experts have concluded that Israel's assassins respect no rules and know no boundaries.
We've learned, however, that the Kidon unit does respect an unwritten regulation adopted by Israel's secret agencies about half a century ago: not to use local Jews as spies or saboteurs in their home countries. This is relevant consideration in Iran, where around 25,000 Jews live -- long after most moved away in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The restriction is somewhat ironic, because Israeli secret agents have devoted a lot of their energies to protecting or rescuing Jews. Intelligence agency chiefs have always felt obliged to be guardians of their brethren, far and wide. Two units of Israel's intelligence community -- Nativ, which specialized in helping Soviet Jews, and Bitzur, part of the Mossad -- organized Hebrew education, self-defense, and secret emigration to Israel. The Israelis learned -- at a painful cost of seeing Jews tortured and executed in Egypt and Iraq in the 1950's -- not to use local Jews as spies inside what the Mossad calls "target countries."
In Iraq, in late 1951, around one hundred Jews who had agreed to spy for Israel were arrested -- and two were hanged. In Egypt, dozens of young Jews -- involved in an Israeli sabotage campaign aimed at humiliating then-President Gamal abdel Nasser -- were rounded up in 1954. Two members of the group were hanged, and six others were given harsh prison sentences. An Israeli intelligence officer, Max Bennett, committed suicide in an Egyptian jail cell. In any Arab country where Jewish citizens were accused of spying for Israel, life quickly became intolerable for the entire Jewish community.
The Mossad felt that this applied to every nation on earth, not only Arab lands, and agency directors decided to avoid putting local Jews in sensitive situations anywhere. There were minor exceptions: A Jew might be used for a little bit of logistical advice or assistance -- a low-level relationship which the Israelis referred to as being a sayan ("helper") -- but never to act as an agent or a spy in their own home country.
There was one glaring violation of the rule, and it has roiled United States-Israel relations for 27 years: the arrest in Washington of Jonathan Jay Pollard, a civilian who abused his job in U.S. Naval Intelligence to procure secret documents for Israeli handlers. It turned out that the Mossad did not run Pollard. He had offered his services to an Israeli military officer, and it was a special unit of the defense ministry in Tel Aviv that accepted Pollard's offer.
The head of that unit, known as Lakam (a Hebrew acronym for Science Liaison Bureau), was Rafi Eitan, an unusually adventurous Israel intelligence operative whose career included the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960.
Eitan gambled, by running an American Jew as a spy; and it was the American spy who lost. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison. Other American Jews working in the defense and intelligence fields immediately found themselves under suspicion of disloyalty.
The bitter Pollard experience only strengthened the Mossad's resolve not to use Jewish locals as spies. Thus the agency carefully avoids contact with Jews living in Iran. Yet Israeli officials say privately that they will continue to act in innovative, secret ways against Iran's nuclear program -- because that is far preferable to having all-out war break out.
Dan Raviv, a CBS News correspondent based in Washington, and Yossi Melman, an Israeli journalist specializing in security issues, have co-authored five books, including the new Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars. They blog at IsraelSpy.com.
You guys linked to a book review for a book you wrote that says "they do not cite sources for their assertions about the assassins’ nationalities or religious beliefs," and "Mr. Raviv refers to the book’s style as “synthesis,” assertions stated as facts, without citing interviews, quotations or even anonymous sources."
So in other words your own source says your claims are not proven. Yet you state it as fact. That's really all I need to know about the blogs authors credibility.
Pollard spied for our ally Israel 3 yrs. He also received a life sentence.
I see a world of difference between the two. Hanssen spied for our enemy the USSR and for 22 yrs. Pollard for our ally Israel for 3 yrs.
But, that is the function of Israeli propagandists.
Careful, your mask is coming off.
As to information sharing, I'm sure it was a two-way street.
And, you/your chums got together and got that post pulled. Doesn't matter since most who were going to read the posts have done so and you/they would not have bothered if its existence hadn't been effective.
Read the article next time.
:)
But the strength and high-profile of the US-Israel relationship has meant that the role of other parties in shielding Israel's apartheid regime has not been subjected to the critical scrutiny it deserves, particularly the case with the European Union.
[The European Parliament] Calls for full and effective implementation of existing EU legislation and EU-Israel bilateral agreements to ensure that the EU control mechanism - the "technical arrangements"- does not allow Israeli settlement products to be imported to the European market under the preferential terms of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Last month, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted 291 to 274 (with 39 abstentions) in favour of a resolution covering a wide number of issues related to the peace process, and events on the ground in Palestine/Israel.
The resolution noted a range of human rights abuses experienced by Palestinians under occupation, including "planning restrictions and the consequent acute house shortage, house demolitions, evictions and displacements, [and] confiscation of land". It emphasised that Israel's illegal settlements "are subsidised by the Israeli Government with considerable incentives".
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201287194144393945.html
So this is also not a big deal, unless foreign money is what's buying US democracy. In an interview condemning Adelson's contributions, Senator John McCain said that "obviously, maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign".
All the big money and Israeli interference is coming at a time when US neoconservatives are pushing hard for a new war. And they can only push as hard as they do because they have successfully purged the Republican Party of whatever sanity it possessed - a phenomenon Pat Buchanan recently highlighted.
The administration is reportedly fighting against a war with Iran. And to the president's mind, the best way to do that is by embedding the Israelis in the US national security apparatus. For example, the head of the US delegation to the P5+1 non-proliferation talks recently flew from Baghdad to Tel Aviv. According to an unnamed US source, "we updated the Israelis in detail before we updated our own government".
So, to summarise again: Israelis are helping write US laws, funding US campaigns, and helping craft US war-making policy.
What is left for Americans to do? Well, to fight the wars, of course.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/06/2012625111756468675.html
He, like any American, is entited to an opinion on our foreign policy, and is entitled to support whoever he wants within the limits of campaign finance law.
Israel, Iran and the US: Axis of instability
Ratcheting up geopolitical tension isn't likely to contribute to peace or stability.
Unsurprisingly, it has been reported that Israeli Mossad agents were responsible for killing the young scientist; the hit had all the agency's flamboyant and theatrical hallmarks. Equally unsurprising was the extent to which the US went to distance themselves from the ill-advised Israeli decision to terrorise civilians in Tehran. After all, the two countries have vastly different interests when it comes to igniting another war in the Gulf.
Israeli leaders are not irrational. They know what is at stake. A scenario where the US attacks Iran can only improve their relative political position vis-à-vis Iran. And with little perceived risk to themselves.
The most popular refrain in Israel (and Congress) today is that Iran poses an existential threat to the small Jewish-majority state. That is because Iran is apparently pursuing a nuclear weapon. Once that supposed nuclear weapon has been manufactured, Iranian mullahs will order that it be employed and await their own annihilation in rapturous, convulsive ecstasy (Israel possesses about 200 nuclear weapons).
In reality, however, the Israelis understand that Iran will not pursue anyone's eradication - their more honest leaders say so regularly.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212194348390751.html
In New Zealand in 2004 they attempted to gain a false passport using the identity of a sufferer of cerebral palsy.They were found out ,imprisoned but again let out after a few months .Yet again no apology from Israel.
By using false passports ,Mossad put the lives of totally innocent people of the nationality of the passports used at risk .Their last one was where they assassinated a Palestinian using false passports,including British ones,in Dubai
stop with the double standards and naivite.
You've got quite a "propaganda machine" going yourself, although it's more laughable than "powerful"
What's the alternative, trusting US politicians?
BTW Regime is a dictorship or army controlled country. As our country is more democratic than the US - Israel is the proper term
In the case of you and your Israel-first chums, they are all self-serving.
One question: if both Israel and Iran can act as adults regarding the Iranian Jews, is it too much to hope they will drop their childishness on other issues? I see no rational reason these countries should be at each other's throats.
If it stopped abusing the indiginous population, they could avoid most of their conflict. A conflict which is basically an objection to: an artificial nation of immigrants in the middle of what is Palestinian land. An occupation and violation of human rights and international law.
old.btselem.org/statistics/english/Casualties.asp
I just flagged you, and frankly I think the HP should ban you. Read your post again, you are accusing thousands of good American citizens of treason.