NOVANEWS
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Shamai Leibowitz leaked FBI’s wiretaps of Israeli embassy in effort to stop Iran strike — Silverstein/NYT
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Israelis uproot trees in occupied Walaja to make room for more Jewish settlers
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Alert: French JDL is recruiting ‘militants’ to travel to West Bank in 2 weeks
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Wikileaks: U.S., Saudis reached 2010 compromise over Israeli-made Cadillac parts
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Many Americans are not aware of the depth of Obama’s desire for a second term
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Will Libya victory feed western hubris?
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Avnery says UN vote could bring violence/crackdown to West Bank
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9/11 commission prevaricated about prime grievance behind the attack, Palestine
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Stuart Levey and the ‘war on terror’
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Cohen: US policy toward Israel is a ‘domestic policy’ and it’s undermining our ‘strategic interest’
Shamai Leibowitz leaked FBI’s wiretaps of Israeli embassy in effort to stop Iran strike — Silverstein/NYT
Sep 05, 2011
Philip Weiss
“Leak offers look at U.S. efforts to spy on Israel” — is the headline of a New York Times piece on FBI wiretaps of the Israeli embassy in D.C. The piece relies on Richard Silverstein‘s account of the facts behind the Shamai Leibowitz case. Leibowitz is the former FBI translator convicted of leaking classified information, including info gathered from FBI eavesdropping.
Silverstein took his own blogposts based on the leaks down, but recalled some of the info to the Times. Naturally the Times doesn’t play up the substance of the info. Like, the Israeli embassy gave ‘regular written briefings’ to president-elect Obama during the Gaza war…
“I see him as an American patriot and a whistle-blower, and I’d like his actions to be seen in that context,” Mr. Silverstein said. “What really concerned Shamai at the time was the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, which he thought would be damaging to both Israel and the United States.” …
Mr. Silverstein’s account could not be fully corroborated, but it fits the publicly known facts about the case. Spokesmen for the F.B.I., the Justice Department and the Israeli Embassy declined to comment on either eavesdropping on the embassy or Mr. Leibowitz’s crime. He admitted disclosing “classified information concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States,” standard language for the interception of phone calls, e-mails and other messages by the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, which generally focuses on international communications….
One post reports that the Israeli Embassy provided “regular written briefings” on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza to President Obama in the weeks between his election and inauguration. Another describes calls involving Israeli officials in Jerusalem, Chicago and Washington to discuss the views of members of Congress on Israel. A third describes a call between an unnamed Jewish activist in Minnesota and the Israeli Embassy about an embassy official’s meeting with Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, who was planning an official trip to Gaza.
Mr. Silverstein said he remembered that embassy officials talked about drafting opinion articles to be published under the names of American supporters. He said the transcripts also included a three-way conversation between a congressman from Texas, an American supporter of the congressman and an embassy official; Mr. Silverstein said he could not recall any of the names.
No word in the piece on the most explosive info rumored to have come from Leibowitz:
Threat Level thinks it’s more likely Leibowitz was behind the leaked news that Representative Jane Harman had allegedly been caught on an NSA wiretapengaging in a quid-pro-quo conversation with an Israeli agent. That information was published in April by Jeff Stein, a writer for Congressional Quarterly, on his SpyTalk blog, which was mirrored at CQ Homeland Security. Stein told Threat Level he never comments on sources.
Israelis uproot trees in occupied Walaja to make room for more Jewish settlers
Sep 05, 2011
annie
This is heart wrenching. I will never get used to the ongoing destruction of Palestine, never. Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh writes from his blog Popular Resistance.
Our hearts broke when we arrived to find that much of the Israeli uprooting of Palestinian olive trees was already done in Al-Walaja today. The old farmer Mohammed Al-Atrash (Abu Wajih) was standing there in shock, speechless, wondering where humanity is on this black day. Israeli authorities picked the day well: it was the day of returning to school and to work from the 5 day Eid (Holiday) at the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan. They brought massive forces starting at dawn and circled an area of over one square mile declaring it a closed military area. No media presence was allowed (so much for “democracy”) so that we could not even videotape the destruction as it happened, only its aftermath. Dozens of olive, almond, za’rur, and pine trees were destroyed. This despite the fact that there is a court case pending on this land to be heard at the end of this month. The villagers called for presence in the village tomorrow (Tuesday morning Sept 6).
I cried for this old gentlemen, who already suffered one heart attack and who reminded me of my late father. I also cried for the apathy of so many people and for the cruelty of Israeli contractors, their (Arab) workers, the Israeli private “security” guarding the bulldozers, the Israeli “soldiers” and “border police” who reminded me of mafias and of other fascists and racists.
It is a shame that some Palestinians who refuse to reconstitute the PLO insist that they will continue “security cooperation” with the apartheid regime. Some even continue to meet with Israeli war criminals. Meanwhile the US administration in Israeli-occupied Washington DC is mobilizing its diplomats to try to stall and convince Mr. Abbas to go back to “negotiations”; the same useless negotiations between a prisoner and prison guards where the guards can determine everything (3). 20 years of this “peace process” should by now have demonstrated that it is nothing but a farce. Returning to it means giving more time for colonialism to finish their ethnic cleansing and finish the walls around the remaining “people warehouses”/ghettos/Bantustans. Al-Walaja is one such place as it will be surrounded on all sides by walls (an open air-prison).
Also the settlers are on a rampage and today they burned a mosque in a village near Nablus while they are recruiting foreign mercenaries to serve in their ranks.
The text and photos are from today, the video from August 13th. More photos available atryan rodrick beiler photography.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour He is author of “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle” and “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment”
(hat tip CigarGod and Anna Rogers)
Alert: French JDL is recruiting ‘militants’ to travel to West Bank in 2 weeks
Sep 05, 2011
annie
Below is the Google translation of the text at JDL’s French Website. I am literally shaking while typing this. I do not know what more I can say.
TRAVEL militant solidarity in the West Bank
Posted September 3, 2011 by AdministratorThe JDL is organizing 19 to 25 September, a trip solidarity with our Israeli brothers living on the land of our ancestors Judea and Samaria.
This trip is for militants with military experience: The aim of this expedition is to lend a hand to our brothers face the aggression Palestinian occupants and thus enhance the security features of Jewish cities in Judea and Samaria.
Wikileaks: U.S., Saudis reached 2010 compromise over Israeli-made Cadillac parts
Sep 05, 2011
Paul Mutter
According to a 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy in Riyadh disclosed by Wikileaks, the U.S. is extremely pleased with ongoing Saudi efforts to reduce the extent of the Saudi economic boycott of Israel, including a historic compromise over fuel filters made in Israel that are used in General Motors (GM) vehicles.
The Saudi economic boycott of Israel, instituted after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, is carried out under the auspices of the Arab League, though individual member states are able to carry out the specifics of the boycott as they see fit, which gives the Saudis the legal leeway to reduce the terms of the boycott without discussion among Arab League members. Several members, such as Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, do not even enforce the primary boycott anymore (though Saudi Arabia still does) that bans dealings with Israeli firms.
The pace of globalization – container shipping and aircraft manufacture, in particular – have made the boycott increasingly difficult (and unprofitable) for Arab nations to enforce. The Saudi effort has been one of eliminating “secondary and tertiary” aspects of the boycott – which means no longer applying restrictions to non-Saudi firms that do business in Israel (secondary boycott) or to firms that make use of Israel cargo facilities (tertiary boycott).
As an example of how difficult (and unprofitable) the secondary and tertiary aspects of the boycott would be for the Saudis to maintain, take Boeing.
Boeing sells aircraft to Israeli customers like El Al and works with Israeli firms to manufacture parts for F-15 fighters and Apache attack helicopters (primary and secondary boycott conditions) and makes use of Israeli cargo facilities for its air shipping (tertiary conditions). And yet the Saudis do not boycott Boeing. In fact, F-15s and Apaches are used by both the Israeli and Saudi militaries (as are dozens of Boeing-manufactured commercial aircraft used by Saudi Arabian Airlines).
The Saudi royal family, as always, intends to play both sides of the game, and, as always, they are doing an excellent job of it. As evidence of their newfound cooperativeness, Saudi trade officials informed their U.S. counterparts that:
“He [Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade Abdullah Al-Hamoudi] . . . anecdotally explained that the small Israeli-made fuel filters in General Motors vehicles are acceptable as long as they are not shipped directly as spare parts.”
When I read this, I was reminded of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s description of a Soviet customs officer sifting through sacks of grain, to the point of fingering individual grains to make sure they meet “standards”:
The Bedouin bureaucrat removed the fuel filters from the engine, gingerly lifting them up to his nostrils. He was like a bloodhound when it came to sniffing out Israeli goods. It was said that he could identify which kibbutz a bottle of Israeli olive oil had come from by smell alone. He paused to smell every metal fixture, every piece of plastic stripped from the Cadillac – like a debutante sampling her perfumes – looking for the tell-tale essence of Israeli beneath the overpowering reek of gasoline. Even if the Zionists handled the parts in hazmat suits, they wouldn’t throw him off the scent. If it was “Made in Israel,” he would flush it out of the undergrowth.
Or was it, disappointingly (and probably, realistically), just a mundane matter of a web search for serial numbers, skimming through a manual and making a couple of phone calls to GM? The diplomatic record is, sadly, silent, on the specifics.
No matter how the Saudis arrive at their decision, though, the U.S. is indeed grateful for the effort to “simplify” things:
“Al-Hamoudi’s commitment to investigate all prohibited requests, and to be the point of contact on future complaints, further reflects Saudi Arabia’s high-level engagement on all of its GCC and WTO trade commitments. Saudi Arabia’s willingness to investigate private entities is also a noteworthy indication of how seriously the SAG [Saudi Arabian Government] takes this issue, and the SAG’s strong commitment to honor its commitments.”
Kind of takes the wind out of the “if you don’t recognize a Palestinian state at the UN in September, we will raise the price of oil!” threat, doesn’t it?
Many Americans are not aware of the depth of Obama’s desire for a second term
Sep 05, 2011
Philip Weiss
Haaretz:
Obama campaign believes that many U.S. Jews are not aware of the depth of President Obama’s support for Israel…
An Obama campaign activist thinks that the campaign must publicize Obama’s record on Israel in order to make the Jewish community – where Obama’s approval rating is still around 60% – less uncomfortable about his candidacy, after the Washington-Jerusalem rifts over the past two years.
“I have found time and again when people come to me and ask – and I explain [Obama’s] record of support with regard to Israel, his record of military cooperation and assistance – and doing everything possible to prevent a nuclear Iran, people say: ‘Gee, I didn’t know that’,” said a “Haaretz” source involved in the campaign who also worked closely on Obama’s 2008 campaign. “I believe that the most important thing the campaign needs to do – especially in the Jewish community – is to get the record out, and the record is a superb one.”
“One expert on the Middle East said to me about a month ago that this a president who’s done more than the other presidents for Israel and got the least credit for it.
Will Libya victory feed western hubris?
Sep 05, 2011
Jerome Slater
It is perfectly correct to observe that any celebration of the apparent victory of the Libyan rebels–a clear consequence of the major military assistance by NATO and the U.S–is, at best, premature. If the outcome of the “victories” in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t warrant extreme caution in drawing conclusions about the efficacy of military interventions to bring about regime change, then nothing will.
That said, some of the continued skepticism about the success of the Libyan intervention is not persuasive. For one thing, the argument that the U.S. and NATO exceeded the UN mandate–which specified that the mission was to protect civilians–is weak. It was abundantly clear from the beginning–and now, maybe even more so, as the extent of Qaddafi’s repression becomes even clearer–that a victory of Quaddafi would have led to a bloodbath and the return to unchecked power of a regime which has a history of killing its own civilians. In this particular case, then, the distinction between protecting civilians and intervening in a civil war was nearly nonexistent.
In short, it would not have been possible to meet the UN mandate without regime change. And who can seriously doubt at this point that the overwhelming majority of the Libyan people supported the intervention and are overjoyed at its outcome? Or, more cautiously said, at least what appears to be its outcome.
The most important argument of those who strongly opposed the Libyan intervention from the outset and continue to do so today is that its success–if indeed it holds up in some meaningful way–will only encourage further US or NATO military interventions in countries where the costs and consequences would be far greater than in Libya and “success”–however defined–much less achievable.
That is an extremely important argument–but it appears highly unlikely that the necessary warning against hubris will be disregarded. It is instructive that hardly anyone–the Obama administration, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Tea Party, leading commentators, etc.–are calling for military intervention in, say, Syria, let alone Iran (the obvious present analogues to Libya.)
Put differently, it appears to be very widely recognized in this country that the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq are far more relevant and instructive in terms of future U.S. policies in internal conflicts than whatever success may emerge in Libya. That being the case, there is no harm in a muted, cautious celebration of one of the very few cases in which an essentially humanitarian military intervention actually worked, with bearable costs and the likelihood that the beneficial consequences will outweigh any damaging ones.
Or so there is reasonable reason to hope.
This is a crosspost from Jerome Slater’s site.
Avnery says UN vote could bring violence/crackdown to West Bank
Sep 05, 2011
annie
Uri Avnery has written one of the most chilling articles I have ever read, titled “Dogs of War.” It is about the dimensions of potential violence looming after the UN vote in what Israel has dubbed “Operation Summer Seeds”. Avnery fears this will kick off a third intifada and I am afraid those fears are not unwarranted. He reports the media is psyching up Israeli society. “All our TV stations have reported on them at length and lauded their effectiveness and ardor.” Bythem he means the Dogs of war.
Citing the defense establishment document about the operation acquired by Haaretz Avnery sounds the alarm:
This week it announced that it is training the settlers, too, and telling them exactly when they are allowed to shoot to kill. Thus it confirms what we all know: that there is no clear distinction between the army and the settlers – many settlers are officers in the army, and many officers live in settlements. “The army defends all Israelis, wherever they are,” is the official line.
One of the scenarios the army is preparing for, it was stated, is for Palestinians shooting at soldiers and settlers “from inside the mass demonstrations”. That is an ominous statement. I have been at hundreds of demonstrations and never witnessed anyone shooting “from inside the demonstration”. Such a person would have to be insanely irresponsible, since he would expose all the people around him to deadly retaliation. But it is a handy pretext for shooting at non-violent protesters.
It sounds so ominous, because it has happened already in the past. After the first intifada, which was considered a Palestinian success story (and brought about the Oslo agreement), our army diligently prepared for the second one. The chosen instruments were sharpshooters.
I am afraid that the preparations for the third intifada, which is anticipated to start next month, are proceeding on the same lines………….
THE SETTLERS and their dogs loom large in the upcoming scenarios.
That is quite logical, since the settlers now play a pivotal role in the conflict. It is they who prevent any peace agreement, or even meaningful peace negotiations.
Unlike the iconic photo above I fear the settler dogs will be unleashed and the leadership in Israel will not be fuming about them either. I recommend the entire article.
9/11 commission prevaricated about prime grievance behind the attack, Palestine
Sep 05, 2011
Ira Glunts
Our man in Lebanon, Robert Fisk takes his cue from Israeli military doctrine with this early and punishing pre-emptive strike of a 9/11 column in The Independent. In “For 10 years, we’ve lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question,” Fisk explores the role of Israel and theU.S. pro-Israel lobby in the tragic terrorist assault and the subsequent “U.S. War on Terror.”
There were two themes to this work [The Threatening Storm] by [Kenneth] Pollack – “one of the world’s leading experts on Iraq,” the blurb told readers, among whom was Fareed Zakaria (“one of the most important books on American foreign policy in years,” he drivelled) – the first of which was a detailed account of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction; none of which, as we know, actually existed. The second theme was the opportunity to sever the “linkage” between “the Iraq issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict”.
The Palestinians, deprived of the support of powerful Iraq, went the narrative, would be further weakened in their struggle against Israeli occupation. Pollack referred to the Palestinians’ “vicious terrorist campaign” – but without any criticism of Israel. He wrote of “weekly terrorist attacks followed by Israeli responses (sic)”, the standard Israeli version of events. America’s bias towards Israel was no more than an Arab “belief”. Well, at least the egregious Pollack had worked out, in however slovenly a fashion, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had something to do with 9/11, even if Saddam had not.
But I’m drawn to Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan whose The Eleventh Day confronts what the West refused to face in the years that followed 9/11. “All the evidence … indicates that Palestine was the factor that united the conspirators – at every level,” they write. One of the organisers of the attack believed it would make Americans concentrate on “the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel”. Palestine, the authors state, “was certainly the principal political grievance … driving the young Arabs (who had lived) in Hamburg”.
So what happened? The commissioners, Summers and Swan state, “settled on vague language that circumvented the issue of motive”. There’s a hint in the official report – but only in a footnote which, of course, few read. In other words, we still haven’t told the truth about the crime which – we are supposed to believe – “changed the world for ever”. Mind you, after watching Obama on his knees before Netanyahu last May, I’m really not surprised.
When the Israeli Prime Minister gets even the US Congress to grovel to him, the American people are not going to be told the answer to the most important and “sensitive” question of 9/11: why?
Stuart Levey and the ‘war on terror’
Sep 05, 2011
Philip Weiss
Julian Assange was on “60 Minutes” last night, a rerun. Assange is a great man–and here’s one reason why.
Stuart Levey was an Under Secretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence for both GW Bush and Obama, running around the world putting the squeeze on Iran. Last fall he got a full hour on Charlie Rose. Levey’s a very discreet man, but he was about to leave Treasury and become a talking head and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, so he was building the brand. Charlie Rose asked him how you define terror (48:00; transcript here).
Rose said, “People say we don’t have a war against terrorism because terrorism is a tactic.”
Stuart Levey:
I think that whether we say — we use the word war or not– is for someone else to decide. That’s semantic. But the point is we do have a threat to us that’s disproportionate to the amount of people on the other side and that — a small group of people can inflict very significant harm on us.
Sounds pretty reasonable, huh? It’s uncool to talk about a “war on terror.” Well this is from Wikileaks, when Levey was in Kuwait, back in 2006:
U/S Levey praised the GOK’s [Government of Kuwait’s] strong support for the war on terror … With numerous overseas branches of RIHS [Revival of the Islamic Heritage Society] suspected of supporting terrorist networks, U/S Levey stated that RIHS was like a tree bearing poisonous fruit, a problem that must be addressed at its roots, i.e. at its headquarters in Kuwait. He encouraged increased GOK information sharing, vigilance and scrutiny of RIHS headquarters in Kuwait and its branches abroad to address the concerns outlined in the paper and to protect Kuwait’s international reputation in the war on terror….
U/S Levey has cleared this message.
P.S. Levey is a fascinating figure. There’s a lot about his government activities in Wikileaks, and I’ll have more to report in days to come…
Cohen: US policy toward Israel is a ‘domestic policy’ and it’s undermining our ‘strategic interest’
Sep 05, 2011
Philip Weiss
Why isn’t this in the New York Times? Great column by Roger Cohen, at NYtimes.com, published in the International Herald-Tribune: “Israel isolates itself” –and undermines American strategic interest. A realism that is no different from Walt and Mearsheimer’s. He’s responding to the flotilla raid. Note the key passages, emphasis mine. Who will do any reporting in the mainstream about these issues?
of course no U.S. president, and certainly no first-term U.S. president, would say what Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said: “The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable.” Even if there’s an American citizen killed, raising such questions about Israel is a political no-no. So it goes in the taboo-littered cul-de-sac of U.S. foreign policy toward Israel, a foreign policy that is in large measure a domestic policy…
Israel is losing one of its best friends in the Muslim world, Turkey. The expulsion last week of the Israeli ambassador was a debacle foretold.
Israeli society, as it has shown through civic protest, deserves much better.
“We need not apologize,” Netanyahu thundered Sunday — and repeated the phrase three times. He’s opted for a needless road to an isolation that weakens Israel and undermines the strategic interests of its closest ally, the United States. Not that I expect Obama to raise his voice about this any more than he has over Dogan.