In first claim of invasion, military drill spokesman says planes were intercepted by Iranian jets
Iran says that unidentified foreign planes violated its air space six times as the country kicked off an air defense drill, but that they were intercepted and forced back by Iranian jets.
The remarks by Gen. Hamid Arjangi, a spokesman for the exercise, are the first Iranian claim of an intrusion. His comments were carried Wednesday by the semi-official Fars news agency.
Initially, he had only said that foreign planes had approached Iran’s air space.
Arjangi says Iran’s radar stations and observation posts reported six cases of foreign planes entering the air space during the exercise.
The five-day drill, which started Tuesday, is meant to showcase Iranian capabilities in defending its nuclear facilities from possible attack.
Cantor Recants
By MJ Rosenberg
Soon-to-be House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is desperately trying to explain away the promise he made to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Wednesday.Cantor huddled with Netanyahu just prior to the prime minister’s meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton was expected to reaffirm the American commitment to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and opposition to Israeli settlement expansion. Cantor wanted Netanyahu to know that he had his back.
Cantor’s office itself put out a statement bragging about his pledge to Netanyahu:
Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington,” the readout continued. “He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.
For now, forget Cantor’s ridiculous assertion that the security of Israel and the United States are “reliant upon the other.” No, the United States provides Israel with the security assistance to survive — it is not the other way around.
But lay that aside. It is Cantor’s statement of loyalty to Netanyahu that is the shocker. Specifically, it is his promise that he would ensure that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives “will serve as a check” on U.S. Middle East policy.
Almost immediately, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s bureau chief in Washington, Ron Kampeas, declared that Cantor’s statement was “extraordinary.” He wrote that he could not “remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the President.”
Kampeas was clearly shocked, but he was understating the enormity of Cantor’s offense. Cantor’s pledge of allegiance to a foreign leader would be remarkable, and deeply offensive, even if the foreign country in question were Canada or the United Kingdom, our two closest allies with whom we have few policy differences.
The United States has major policy differences with Israel, and has had them for decades, most notably over settlements, the occupied West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, etc. Israel is also the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world, which means that the President of the United States has every right to express those differences firmly and clearly.
On the other hand, no American official — by any stretch of the imagination — has the right to tell the government of Israel, or any foreign government, that he stands with the foreign leader against his own president. It is one thing to oppose particular US policies; it is quite another to tell a foreign leader, “I’m with you, not my president.”
Of course, Cantor was just being honest. Although he does oppose virtually all of President Obama’s policies (he’s a Republican and that is what Republicans do), he supports 100% of Israeli policies. And although an extreme partisan domestically, when it comes to Israel, he supports whichever government is in power. He believes in the right to criticize this government, just not that one.
Cantor’s mistake was not telling Prime Minister Netanyahu what everyone knows is true anyway, but telling the world what he said.
This is the classic Washington definition of a gaffe (i.e., inadvertently speaking an inconvenient truth).
In this case, the gaffe produced a firestorm.
And this is where I consider the possibility that Cantor simply doesn’t understand what he’s doing.
After all, he has been an AIPAC cutout since he first was elected to office. He’s been to more AIPAC meetings than he can probably count. And he should have figured out by now that the lobby is extremely careful, obsessively careful, to always emphasize loyalty to the United States while simultaneously endorsing Israeli policies that undermine our foreign policy objectives.
AIPAC officials never, ever, say that when push comes to shove their loyalty is with Israel not the United States. In fact, the accusation that this is the case is the charge AIPAC hates most.
But the soon-to-be Majority Leader came right out and said it: Israel, right or wrong.
It took a few days for Cantor to understand how utterly offensive his statement was. (He might have heard from a few Tea Party types who, say what you will about them, tend to take their patriotism seriously.)
So today Cantor explained he was misunderstood. His inconvenient truth, his gaffe, was replaced by a laughable untruth.
This is how the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reports it:
Brad Dayspring, Cantor’s press guy, tells me Cantor’s promise that the Republican majority would “serve as a check on the administration” was “not in relation to U.S./Israel relations.”
Mmmm. So Cantor’s pledge to stand with Netanyahu against Obama was “not in relation to US/Israel relations” despite the context of Cantor’s statement — just before Netanyahu’s meeting with Clinton — and the fact that the person he was talking to was the Prime Minister of Israel.
So, what was Cantor’s pledge “in relation to”?
Was it in relation to either repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or the Bush tax cuts for millionaires? Maybe it was about farm subsidies.
Come on, Eric. Don’t make us laugh.
It is eminently clear what you said and what you meant. And this time we will take you at your word
Zionist Organization of America–”Congress must pass legislation to protect Jewish students from anti-semitic harassment”
(thehill.com) Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that colleges and universities redress racial and ethnic discrimination, or risk losing their federal funding. Thus, if African American or Hispanic students are harassed on campus, they can complain to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is mandated to enforce Title VI and ensure that their schools fix the problem. But Title VI does not clearly protect Jewish students, as we found out after the Zionist Organization of America filed a Title VI complaint with OCR on behalf of Jewish students at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
To correct this problem, Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) introduced legislation last week that would require that Jewish students be protected from harassment and intimidation on their campuses. The legislation would add protection from religious discrimination to Title VI, which presently prohibits discrimination based on “race, color, or national origin.” The Specter-Sherman bill will fill a legal loophole that, right now, effectively permits colleges and universities to ignore when Jewish students are harassed or discriminated against. Lawmakers should enact this bill quickly, so that Jewish students are assured a campus environment that is safe and conducive to learning, which all students deserve.
The many troubling incidents of campus anti-Semitism highlight the need for this amendment. For example, at UC Berkeley last March, a Jewish student was holding a sign at a pro-Israel campus rally, which said “Israel Wants Peace.” She was rammed from behind with a filled shopping cart. The attack was unprovoked and the victim required medical attention.
At UCI, a Holocaust memorial was destroyed, and swastikas have defaced campus property. Posters have depicted women in traditional Muslim garb saying, “God bless Hitler.” A Jewish student was told to “go back to Russia where you came from.” Jewish students have been threatened and physically assaulted. The campus regularly hosts one to two-week-long events that demonize Israel and Jews. At the May 2009 event, a speaker compared Jews to Satan. Last May, this speaker referred to Jews as “the new Nazis.”
In October 2004, the ZOA filed a Title VI complaint with OCR, on behalf of Jewish students at UCI. The complaint detailed years of increasing anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation and discrimination, and charged that the university had either ignored the problems or made token efforts to address them.
At the time the complaint was filed, OCR had clarified its policy for enforcing Title VI, concluding that the law applied to religious groups that also share ethnic characteristics, such as Jews. Based on this policy clarification, OCR proceeded with the ZOA’s case, rendering it the first case of anti-Semitism that OCR ever agreed to investigate under Title VI.
Soon after the investigation started, the leadership at OCR changed, resulting in a change in the agency’s Title VI policy. OCR reverted back to denying Title VI protection to Jewish students, perceiving Jews simply as a religious group and not also an ethnic group that would be protected from “racial” and “national origin” discrimination under the law. As a result, even though OCR had overwhelming evidence that Jewish students were facing severe and persistent anti-Semitism at UCI, and that the university hadn’t responded adequately to the problem, OCR dismissed the ZOA’s complaint, concluding that many of the allegations fell outside the agency’s jurisdiction.
Our appeal of that decision has been pending since April 2008. Even now, with new leadership at OCR under President Obama, the policy of denying Jews the same protections as other minority groups has not changed.
The injustice of the UCI decision inspired the ZOA to advocate for a change in the law. We communicated with many members of Congress, educating them about the problems that Jewish students are facing on their campuses and about the law’s failure to afford them the same protections as other ethnic and racial groups. At our annual Advocacy Mission to Washington, D.C. last April, these problems were a centerpiece of our lobbying efforts with lawmakers.
When Congressman Ron Klein (D-Fla.), co-chair of the Congressional Taskforce Against Anti-Semitism, convened a briefing last June on campus anti-Semitism and the federal government’s role in redressing it, the ZOA briefed congressional members and their staff. The briefing led to letters from 38 members of Congress to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, urging the Education Department to enforce Title VI to protect Jewish students. We’ve also led the effort to educate the public – through letters, articles, speeches, press releases, ads and petitions – about campus anti-Semitism and Jewish students’ right to legal protection.
Senator Specter and Congressman Sherman have taken a leadership role in ensuring that Jewish students are protected. We have worked closely with them on the issue, including helping to craft the language in the bill that was introduced last week.
All of us should urge our representatives in Congress to support this bill so that an unjust gap in the law will finally be filled, and Jewish students will no longer have to tolerate anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses.
Settler convicted of kidnapping, abusing Palestinian teen
Zvi Struk from the settlement of Shiloh was convicted Sunday of kidnapping and abusing a bound 15-year-old Palestinian boy.
The 28-year-old settler is the son of Yesha Human Rights Organization head Orit Struk.
The indictment stated that Struk, arrived at an outpost located between Shiloh and Kfar Kusra in the West Bank. He arrived on a mini tractor and began to chase Palestinian youths at the scene.
The youths attempted to escape, but Struk cornered one of them and his friend, armed with Struk’s M-16 rifle, began to fire in the air. According to the prosecution, Struk then began to beat the boy, who had put his hands up in surrender, and knocked him to the ground.
The indictment went on to say that Struk’s friend continued to beat the boy while he chased another youth, beat him, and dragged him to the mini tractor bleeding. He then proceeded to blindfold and tie him to the tractor, and rode off with his hostage in tow.
The prosecution claimed that the boy, Amran Farah, lost consciousness during the ride, and was brought to an open field where the two suspects beat him, undressed him, and left him blindfolded and tied. He remained there for a number of hours, until he managed to untie himself and find a car to take him home.
The boy was hospitalized in Nablus, and diagnosed with multiple contusions and lesions all over his body.
Struk had attacked the boy two months earlier, the indictment stated, while the latter was herding sheep with a friend near the village. Struk told them to leave the land, claiming it was his, and then beat the two boys. The settler also killed a young goat belonging to the Palestinian.
Ynet reported Tuesday that Jerusalem District Court Judge Amnon Cohen convicted Struk of assault under severe circumstances, kidnapping with intent to cause severe bodily injury and three more counts of assault.
The Yesh Din human rights group, which accompanied the Palestinian boy throughout the trial, expressed satisfaction with the verdict, but said, “According to our data, some 90% of complaints filed by Palestinians against Israeli citizens that hurt them or their property end without an indictment.”
Yesh Din stressed that Struk’s accomplice was never caught.
Gruesome Find Told at US Hearing into Afghan Killings
(AFP) The gruesome testimony came as a third US soldier faced a pre-trial hearing over the alleged killings — after which the rogue soldiers allegedly posed for photos with their victims — in southern Afghanistan earlier this year
If proved in a full court martial, the crimes would be among the worst committed by US forces in Afghanistan, and could deal a blow to efforts to win over the support of ordinary Afghans in the war-torn country.
Private Andrew Holmes, one of five soldiers accused of going rogue, listened quietly as Special Agent Benjamin Stevenson described finding severed fingers near where members of the unit lived.
Army prosecutors allege Holmes participated in the execution of an Afghan the southern Kandahar province in January, kept a finger bone from an Afghan corpse and smoked hashish with some of the other killers.
On Monday, Stevenson, testifying by speakerphone, said he had a map provided by the army’s star witness, Corporal Jeremy Morlock, showing where investigators could find the digits allegedly taken from Afghan civilians.
Using Morlock’s map, Stevenson said he and another agent located a large, protective dirt barrier near the soldiers’ residences in Forward Operating Base Ramrod.
On top of the barrier, they found a plastic bottle containing two fingers, wrapped in cloth.
“Right where we were told the fingers would be, there they were,” Stevenson said. Another bone was found nearby.
Investigators also discovered a bone over a foot (30 cm) long, possibly a leg, in a house believed to be that of another soldier, Adam Kelly, who faces charges over covering up the alleged killings, but is not charged with murder.
Holmes’s attorney Dan Conway pointed out that the bones were found near the housing unit of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, the alleged ringleader of the rogue unit.
Speaking with reporters during a break, Conway said his client did once have a bone that a superior officer forced him to take and that Holmes got rid of it “as soon as practically possible.”
Specialist Ryan Mallet, an eye-witness to the January shooting leading to Holmes? murder charge, testified that he was on a hill in a small village when he saw Morlock call a man over from a field.
Mallet looked away, but then heard Morlock yell: “Grenade, he?s got a grenade. Holmes, shoot him.”
Holmes fired several rounds, according to Mallet, after which the man was still standing. The defense contends that Holmes did not fire the fatal shots and is fighting with the army to release photos Conroy says will show that.
After the rounds were fired, a grenade exploded, Mallett said.
When the dust cleared, the Afghan man was on the ground, unmoving.
Another soldier shot him twice.
Mallet, who described Holmes as a friend, said that the odd thing about the shooting was that despite shouting a grenade warning, Morlock “never raised his rifle that I could see.”
Conway told reporters that Holmes did not know that his team leader was staging a killing and that his team leader was using him as an unwitting participant in a cover story.
The soldiers participating in the alleged execution plots, allegedly orchestrated by Gibbs, were all members of the Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Division’s Stryker brigade at Ramrod.
Morlock, the army’s main witness against the accused killers including Holmes, is also charged with murdering Afghan civilians. He was the first to face a pre-trial hearing in September, and his case will now go to a full court martial.
Monday’s proceeding is part of a series of pre-trial hearings to determine if the soldiers accused in the murders and the cover-up of the killings will face full courts-martial.
The Holmes pre-trial hearing is due to wrap up on Tuesday.
F.B.I. Seeks Wider Wiretap Law for Web
(NYT) WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, traveled to Silicon Valley on Tuesday to meet with top executives of several technology firms about a proposal to make it easier to wiretap Internet users.
Mr. Mueller and the F.B.I.’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni, were scheduled to meet with senior managers of several major companies, including Google and Facebook, according to several people familiar with the discussions. How Mr. Mueller’s proposal was received was not clear.
“I can confirm that F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller is visiting Facebook during his trip to Silicon Valley,” said Andrew Noyes, Facebook’s public policy manager. Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, acknowledged the meetings but did not elaborate.
Mr. Mueller wants to expand a 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, to impose regulations on Internet companies.
The law requires phone and broadband network access providers like Verizon and Comcast to make sure they can immediately comply when presented with a court wiretapping order.
Law enforcement officials want the 1994 law to also cover Internet companies because people increasingly communicate online. An interagency task force of Obama administration officials is trying to develop legislation for the plan, and submit it to Congress early next year.
The Commerce Department and State Department have questioned whether it would inhibit innovation, as well as whether repressive regimes might harness the same capabilities to identify political dissidents, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
Under the proposal, firms would have to design systems to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. Services based overseas would have to route communications through a server on United States soil where they could be wiretapped.
A Google official declined to comment. Mr. Noyes said it would be premature for Facebook to take a position.
AIPAC dirty laundry aired as former staffer sues for defamation
Accusations of porn-viewing and nefarious activities abound as ex-employee sues after fired following espionage charges.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Jewish community has been scandalized by details of an increasingly dirty lawsuit, brought by a former AIPAC staffer who was dismissed after he was charged with attempting to spy for Israel.
Steven Rosen was sacked by the America Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2004 after he and fellow staffer Keith Weissman were charged with espionage and passing sensitive information to Israeli diplomats and journalists. The charges against the two, however, were dropped before the case reached a courtroom.
The FBI claimed that it had enough evidence for convictions, but all the charges were dropped nonetheless. The controversial case made headlines again in March 2009 after Rosen filed a civil suit in a Washington, D.C. court against his former employers for defamation.
In his suit, Rosen demanded damages of $21 million for comments by AIPAC officials, which Rosen claims they knew to be lies, while criminally disregarding the damage it would do to his reputation.
AIPAC submitted a detailed declaration in court at the beginning of November, requesting the dismissal of Rosen’s lawsuit. The document included transcripts of conversation between Rosen and his lawyer and other AIPAC senior officials, intending to prove that the organization had legitimate reasons to fire him.
The AIPAC declaration included recorded statements made by Rosen to a Washington Post reporter in which he says that he does not want to ‘run into trouble’ – a phrase that AIPAC claims proves that Rosen knew that he was doing something wrong.
Later in the conversation, Rosen expresses relief that the United States does not have a law on the books similar to the British law of ‘national secrets,’ according to which journalists can be tried for publishing classified information.
“The significance of this is that the plaintiff knew that the information he passed to the journalist was classified, otherwise there would be no need to mention the law,” the AIPAC deposition read. The organization spent $4.9 million on Rosen’s trial. The deposition mentioned that although the case never came to trial, Rosen was never exonerated.
A large part of the deposition relates to Rosen’s ‘inappropriate behavior,’ claiming that he experimented with sexual liaisons with other married men on Craig’s List and used his AIPAC office computer to surf pornographic websites.
The deposition also claimed that pornographic files were found on Rosen’s computer, a clear violation of AIPAC policy. Additionally, the deposition notes, criminal charges are not something that AIPAC expects from its employees.
For his part, Rosen sees himself as a victim and scapegoat that AIPAC knowingly put at risk with untrue accusations and by ignoring the facts. Rosen rejects AIPAC’s accusations that his actions should not be considered to be work done for the organization, claiming that they are considered to be normal behavior for the lobby.
In reponse to a request from haaretz, AIPAC issued the following statement:
“As is demonstrated in detail in the pleadings that AIPAC has filed, this is a frivolous lawsuit with no merit. AIPAC has made it clear during the course of this litigation that it disagrees with Mr. Rosen’s characterization of events relevant to the litigation.
“As the pleadings demonstrate, it is AIPAC’s position that Steve Rosen’s claims are wildly inaccurate, are undermined by Rosen’s own admissions under oath in his deposition, and constitute a blatant attempt to detract attention from the true and relevant facts. We have filed a motion for summary judgment in this case with the court and look forward to resolving these matters in that venue.”
At the time of publciation, Rosen had not replied to Haaretz’s request for comment.
