The Times report noted that “Senior Israeli officials, including the foreign minister and leader of the Mossad, have traveled to Washington in recent weeks to make the case” that Iran would very soon reach the point where bombing could no longer disrupt its nuclear program. The argument is that once Iran moves enough of its equipment and materials to impregnable underground facilities, these could no longer be destroyed with even the biggest bombs. So Israel must strike soon, perhaps as early as a few months from now, these officials argued

Full Story Here: Will Israel Attack Iran? Not Before the U.S. Presidential Election | Common Dreams.

Israel has ordered the shutdown of a dovish Israeli-Palestinian radio station, officials and the station’s operators said on Sunday.

The station and other critics said the move was politically motivated, and part of a broader assault on democracy by conservative forces in the government.

Some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have pushed forward a series of measures recently that critics say are aimed at stifling opponents.

Among the proposed legislation are attempts to block most foreign funding for dovish nonprofit groups, lowering the threshold for politicians to file libel suits against the media, and a push to shift control of Supreme Court appointments from an independent panel to parliament.

Full Story Here: Israel Shuts Down Dovish “All for Peace” Radio Station | Common Dreams.

Skimming the newspapers as I rushed to get my children ready for school, I suddenly understood that Israel might actually be preparing for a military attack against Iran. “[United States Secretary of Defense Leon] Panetta Demanded Commitment to Coordinate Action in Iran” read one headline, and “A Bomb at Arm’s Length” read another.

Feeding this hype were a series of military events that had been planned months in advance yet mysteriously coincided with the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. For four days straight all of the major television channels repeatedly showed images of Israel preparing for war.

It began with a report on Israel’s testing of a long-range ballistic missile, which emphasized the missile’s capacity to carry nuclear warheads. This was followed by interviews with pilots who were part of a comprehensive Israeli Air Force drill on long-range attacks carried out at an Italian NATO air base. Archival images of a missile being launched from an Israeli submarine were also shown. Ha’aretz readers were told that the submarine was important because it would enable Israel to carry out a second strike in case of a nuclear war.

Full Story Here: Is Israel Preparing an Assault Against Iran? | Common Dreams.

Trading opened as normal on Sunday, the first day of Israel’s working week, but mandatory suspensions went into effect minutes into the session as the stock exchange plunged.

The leading TA-100 indice was down 5.73 percent at 988.24 points by the time trading was halted, while the blue-chip TA-25 had fallen 5.42 percent to 1,092.41, according to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange website.

Full Story Here: Tel Aviv exchange halts trade after 6% fall – FRANCE 24.

By Michael Sfard

Israel’s cautious foreign policy on legal matters over the past 44 years is likely to collapse in September. The mechanisms of legal defense that it built since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to combat the “danger” of international jurisdiction about its conduct toward millions of people who are under its control, are likely to turn into dust at the stroke of the diplomatic moves.

If indeed the international community recognizes a Palestinian state, the question whether officers in the Israel Defense Forces who are involved in assassinations, shooting at unarmed demonstrators and using phosphorus bombs will be interrogated and brought to trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the question of whether international human rights treaties ‏(and other treaties‏) will obligate Israel during action in the territories, will no longer be decided in the government offices in Jerusalem but rather in the corridors of the Muqataa in Ramallah.

Full Story Here: Haaretz.Com.

Israel admitted this week that it was behind the abduction of the operations manager of Gaza’s only power plant, who disappeared more than a month ago while travelling on a train in Ukraine.

Israeli officials confirmed in a statement that Mr Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, was being held in Israel’s Shikma prison, near Ashkelon, after a judge partially lifted reporting restrictions late on Sunday. However, the explanation for Mr Abu Sisi’s abduction and detention are still covered by the gag order, which has been extended by a judge for 30 days.

The whereabouts of Mr Abu Sisi, an engineer, had been the subject of intense speculation since he disappeared on February 18 travelling on a train to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

Full Story Here: Full: Israel admits kidnapping operations manager of Gaza’s only power plant – The National.

A year and a half ago, an Israel Navy submarine crossed the Suez Canal on its way from Haifa to the Red Sea, where it conducted an exercise, and back. The unusual voyage reflected the growing strategic cooperation between Israel and Egypt, which aimed a menacing message at Iran. The submarine’s crossing of the waterway demonstrated how quickly Israel could deploy its deterrent near Iran’s shores, with the tacit support of Egypt.

Once more, the canal is being used to deliver a message of deterrence – but this time the direction is reversed. Egypt is allowing Iranian warships to cross the canal, on their way to Syrian ports. Israel was publicly critical of the passage – arguing that it is a provocative move – but Egypt ignored the pressures and granted the Iranian navy permission to pass, symbolizing the change to the regional balance of power following the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

Full Story Here: Egypt is no longer committed to an alliance with Israel against Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

President Barack Obama has abandoned attempts to persuade Israel to slow West Bank settlement activity, officials said Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and one of the president’s top foreign policy initiatives.

After months of trying to broker a formula under which Israel would impose a new, temporary settlement freeze in return for U.S. promises and incentives, two American officials said the administration has concluded that course won’t work. The decision was expected to be announced later Tuesday.

Talks stalled in September, barely a month after they started. The Palestinians refused to return to direct negotiations until a new freeze was in place following the expiration of an earlier, 10-month Israeli slowdown in settlement expansion.

Full Story Here: U.S.: Israel Settlement Freeze Demand Dropped.

– Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has warned he may dissolve his self-rule government and ask Israel to resume full control of the West Bank if troubled peace talks fail.

Dismantling the Palestinian Authority would be a last resort, Abbas told Palestine TV in an interview broadcast late Friday. However, his comments marked the most explicit warning yet that he’s considering a step that could crush lingering hopes for a Mideast peace deal.

If Abbas were to take such a step, Israel, as a military occupier, would have to assume full responsibility again for 2.2 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel was relieved of that financial burden with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, as part of interim peace deals.

Full Story: Abbas: Last resort — I’ll ask Israel to take over – Yahoo! News.

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been “lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time” before being shot in his face.

Full Story: UN Fact-Finding Mission: Israeli Killing Of U.S. Citizen Was ‘Execution’.

An organization of European Jews has announced that it wants to sail an aid ship to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The organization refused to disclose its port of departure.

Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer, a leader of the German Jewish Voice organization, said the trip was being managed by the British Group Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP), Haaretz daily reported.

Katzenstein-Leiterer also said that the boat was ready to depart and Jewish activists were “on board”.

Full Story: Jewish activists to sail to Gaza to break blockade – Top News.

Britain’s unions have thrown their weight behind a campaign of disinvestment and boycott from companies which are profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

Trade unions voted unanimously today at the TUC’s annual conference for a motion put forward by the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA), seconded by the GMB, and supported by UNSION, PCS (the Public and Commercial Services Union) and the FBU (Fire Brigades’ Union).

The motion called for the General Council to work closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to actively encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and construction of the Apartheid Wall.

Full Story: British Trades Union Council (6.5 million workers) confirms support for Israel boycott 14Sep10.

The Israelis say they have been inspired by the example of Ilana Hammerman, a writer who is threatened with prosecution after publishing an article in which she admitted breaking the law to bring three Palestinian teenagers into Israel for a day out.

Ms Hammerman said she wanted to give the young women, who had never left the West Bank, “some fun” and a chance to see the Mediterranean for the first time.

Her story has shocked many Israelis and led to a police investigation after right-wing groups called for her to be tried for security offences.

Full Story: Israelis risk jail to smuggle Palestinians – The National Newspaper.

“The choice of the Israeli government is settlement or peace, they cannot have both,” he said at a news conference in Ramallah, the political capital of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But he also said he believed agreement could be reached within one year.

“We think it is doable.”

Full Story: Israel’s Choice is Settlements or Peace, say Palestinians | CommonDreams.org.

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/palestinians-denied-access-to-wate…

It explained how Israel exploits Palestinian water resources, using most of it, forcing them to find ways to get by. Water, of course, is essential to life, rights to it natural and usufructuary. Belonging to everyone as part of the commons, it must be used, not owned or abused, an essential truth Israel corrupts.

On August 5, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) published the latest in its “Narratives Under Siege” series, titled “There’s Something in the Water: The Poisoning of Life in the Gaza Strip.”

“THIS BEACH IS POLLUTED” signs dot Gaza City beaches, posing serious health hazards because of daily raw sewage dumped into the Mediterranean Sea through 16 discharge sites along the coast. Yet thousands fill them despite the dangers, including children, taking advantage of one of their few sources of respite – available, convenient, and free, but not safe.

For Gazans, the sea is part of their lives – to fish, gather with family, swim, and for children, play in the sun on hot days, a joy this writer recalls growing up on America’s Atlantic coast. Summers were always the best time. The memories remain.

Full Story: Gaza’s Poisoned Water | War Is A Crime .org.

For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more

dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.

It is possible that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is also possible that Iran’s reform-minded Green Movement will somehow replace the mullah-led regime, or at least discover the means to temper the regime’s ideological extremism. It is possible, as well, that “foiling operations” conducted by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the United States, Great Britain, and other Western powers—programs designed to subvert the Iranian nuclear effort through sabotage and, on occasion, the carefully engineered disappearances of nuclear scientists—will have hindered Iran’s progress in some significant way. It is also possible that President Obama, who has said on more than a few occasions that he finds the prospect of a nuclear Iran “unacceptable,” will order a military strike against the country’s main weapons and uranium-enrichment facilities.

But none of these things—least of all the notion that Barack Obama, for whom initiating new wars in the Middle East is not a foreign-policy goal, will soon order the American military into action against Iran—seems, at this moment, terribly likely. What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)

Full Story: The Point of No Return – Magazine – The Atlantic.

• UK ambassador advising Sheikh Khalid of Ras al-Khaimeh

• Tiny UAE state ‘aids trafficking of nuclear parts’ to Iran

Israel is aiding an exiled Arab sheikh who is vying to seize control of a strategically important Gulf emirate only 40 miles from Iran.

The Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, has met Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qasimi, the exiled crown prince of Ras al-Khaimeh (RAK), who asked him to help with his campaign to oust the leadership of the northernmost state in the United Arab Emirates.

The meeting took place in London in March and has been followed by phone calls and wider assistance and advice, according to records of the relationship seen by the Guardian.

Khalid, who has been based in London and has hired a solicitor from Ickenham as his agent, is bidding to replace his ailing father, Sheikh Saqr, and half brother, Sheikh Saud, to take control of RAK.

Full Story: Israel linked to exiled sheikh’s bid for ‘coup’ in Gulf emirate of RAK | World news | The Guardian.

The video has the potential to undermine Netanyahu’s credibility in the US and internationally but there’s another aspect to the story that could undermine Bibi Netanyahu’s credibility with Jews in Israel and internationally – Netanyahu’s key, close ally in undermining peace negotiations, Christians United For Israel founder and head John Hagee, has a ugly history of distributing, on a global scale, vile anti-Jewish propaganda including Adolf Hitler’s favorite conspiracy theory, the canard that Jewish bankers rule the world.

While the newly released Netanyahu video footage leaves little doubt of Prime Mininster Netanyahu’s complicity in blocking peace efforts, there’s additional compelling evidence bolstering the case, as Talk To Action contributor Rachel Tabachnick outlined in Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and John Hagee Share Stage as Biden Arrives in Israel, and Netanyahu and Hagee, Serial Obstructionists, Benjamin Netanyahu and Christian Zionist leader John Hagee have twice appeared together, while US presidents were mounting high-profile efforts to jump start the peace process, at highly public events during which the two men demonstrated blatant contempt for and hostility towards peace efforts.

Full Story: Talk To Action | Netanyahu Admits To Blocking Peace Process. Meet His Anti-Semitic American Ally.

NABI SALAH, Occupied West Bank, Jul 23, 2010 (IPS) – Palestinian activists are being jailed, Israeli activists are under surveillance, and the Israeli military is increasingly targeting journalists who cover West Bank protests.

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel issued a statement recently condemning what it sees as a change in Israel Defence Forces (IDF) policy in their treatment of journalists covering the growing number of West Bank protests against Israel’s separation barrier, illegal settlements and land expropriation.

“We would appreciate it were the authorities to remind the various forces involved, that open, unhindered coverage of news events is a widely acknowledged part of the essence of democracy.

“Generally speaking this would not include smashing the face of a clearly marked photographer working for a known and accredited news organisation with a stick, or for that matter aiming a stun grenade at the head of a clearly marked news photographer or summarily arresting cameramen, photographers and/or journalists,” said the FPA.

Full Story: Israel Gets Brutal With Media – IPS ipsnews.net.

A summary of the findings:

1. 56% of Americans agree with the claim that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza;

2. 43% of Americans agree with the claim that people in Gaza are starving;

3. 34% of Americans support the Israeli operation against the Flotilla;

4. 20% of Americans “felt support” for Israel following announcement of easing of Gaza closure.

Full Story: Think Progress » Leaked Luntz Poll: Majority of Americans don’t support Israeli flotilla raid..

Israel on Monday dropped its long-standing restrictions on allowing consumer goods into the Gaza Strip but retained tight limits on desperately needed construction materials, redefining the rules of its heavily criticized Gaza embargo on the eve of the Israeli prime minister’s trip to the White House.

The new rules, which come in response to an international outcry following a deadly Israeli raid on a blockade-busting flotilla, should bring some relief to Gaza’s 1.5 million people.

The decision ends the use of a narrow and often arbitrary list of permitted items. In a boost to the moribund Gaza economy, officials also said raw materials would soon be allowed to flow to Gaza’s shuttered factories.

Full Story: Israel Eases Gaza Blockade Restrictions, Releasing List Of Allowed Items.

The public rift between Israel and Turkey may be closing somewhat.

Persistent reports in the Turkish press indicate that Israel will formally apologize and pay compensation for the deaths on the Mavi Marmara.

The Mavi Marmara was the blockade-busting ship manned by Turkish citizens on which nine actvists were killed in unclear circumstances by Israeli naval commandos.

Turkish newspaper of record Hürriyet indicates that discussions of apology and compensation took place at a secret meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Israeli Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Benjamin Ben-Eliezer on Wednesday. According to Hürriyet’s source:

Full Story: Reports: Israel to apologize for flotilla raid – Neal Ungerleider – Falafel Mafia – True/Slant.

Israel’s government decided Sunday to draw up a list of items banned from Gaza limited to weapons and materials deemed to have military uses and said the easing of the three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory would be implemented immediately.

The list of banned goods replaces an old list of allowed items that permitted only basic humanitarian supplies for the 1.5 million Gazans. Under the new system, the government said practically all non-military items can enter Gaza freely.

“From now on, there is a green light of approval for all goods to enter Gaza except for military items and materials that can strengthen Hamas’ military machine,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

Full Story: Israel Eases Gaza Blockade, Will Allow In All Goods Except For Weapons.

Fafo poll conducted in West Bank and Gaza finds that 89% Palestinians support PA legislative elections this year, 84 % believe Fatah will win.
The majority of Palestinians support a peace agreement with Israel and believe that the Palestinian Authority should use non-violent means to achieve their political goals, a new Fafo poll revealed.

Fafo, a Norwegian based international multidisciplinary research foundation, found that 73 percent of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza were in favor of peace negotiations with Israel, but stressed that a settlement freeze should be a precondition to talks.

Full Story: Poll: Most Palestinians want peace with Israel – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The White House welcomed the announcement on Thursday as a “step in the right direction.” U.S. President Barack Obama a few weeks called the three-year embargo unsustainable, and urged Israel to scale it back dramatically.

The new product list approved by Israel’s security cabinet on Thursday includes all food items, toys, stationery, kitchen utensils, mattresses and towels.

Israel will also allow in more construction materials to repair damage from the December 2008-January 2009 war in the Gaza Strip, provided they are used for civilian projects carried out under international supervision, government and military officials said.

Full Story: Obama welcomes ease of Gaza blockade, urges Israel to expand goods inflow – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

“He was arrested in Warsaw and is suspected of being involved in illegally obtaining a (German) passport,” a spokesman for German federal prosecution said, confirming a report in German magazine Der Spiegel.

“It’s now up to the Poles to decide if they are going to hand him over to Germany.”

According to an article to be published Monday in Der Spiegel, the suspect identified as Uri Brodsky was arrested early June on arrival at Warsaw’s airport on suspicions that he helped a member of the hit squad get a German passport in June 2009.

Full Story: Poles arrest alleged Mossad agent in Dubai killing | Raw Story.

in Britain, for the most part, ordinary people don’t care about the complicated story of the Middle East. They don’t buy the line that Israel stands on the front line of the war against terror.

Last week I wrote a comment piece for the Guardian comparing the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid ships to the British assault on the Exodus in 1947. The comparison between the two events is far from exact, but both involved the running of a naval blockade as a public relations stunt, and both succeeded in dramatically winning over world opinion. In each case a more complex narrative told by the other side went unheard. Israel has failed to convince the public in Europe that those on board included terrorists smuggling arms to Hamas, and that they attacked the Israeli commandos first. As in 1947, rightly or wrongly, the sympathy was with those whose vessels were boarded, not those doing the boarding.

Full Story: Liberal Diaspora Jewry afraid to talk, afraid to be silent – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

In the days since an Israeli naval takeover of a flotilla trying to break the siege turned deadly, that consensus has taken on added urgency, with world powers, anti-Hamas Palestinians in Gaza and some senior Israeli officials advocating a shift.

In its three years in power, Hamas has taken control not only of security, education and the justice system but also the economy, by regulating and taxing an extensive smuggling tunnel system from Egypt. In the process, the traditional and largely pro-Western business community has been sidelined.

This may be about to change.

Full Story: New Approach Sought as Pressure Grows to End Gaza Embargo – NYTimes.com.

Swedish Port Workers Union says won’t handle Israeli ships in protest of Monday’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla

Associated Press

Swedish dockworkers are set to launch a weeklong boycott of Israeli ships and goods to protest Monday’s raid on a Gaza-destined aid flotilla, a union spokesman said Saturday

Nine activists died after Israeli troops intercepted the convoy. Nearly 700 activists had joined that operation, most of them aboard the lead boat from Turkey that was the scene of the violence.

Full Story: Scoop: Sweden to launch weeklong boycott on Israeli ships.

A senior commander in the the Israeli military has stated that he believes that action taken by the Turkish government in protecting an upcoming flotilla to Gaza would be considered an act of war.

Major General (Res.) Uzi Dayan stated, whilst speaking with the army radio station that, “If he [Prime Minister Erdogan] comes here with Turkish warships there can be no doubt that it would amount to a declaration of war. We need to draw a clear line and say that whoever crosses it will not be boarded but sunk.”

The Major General’s comments come in response to a report issued in Lebanon, on Saturday, saying that the Turkish PM is considering traveling aboard a Turkish Navy vessel in support of a forthcoming flotilla to Gaza, in another attempt to break the Israeli siege that has been in place since 2006 and tightened in 2007.

Full Story: Senior Israeli Army Commander: Turkish Attempt To Break The Siege Would Be “Act of War” :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-5].

One of the few ways the Obama administration has attempted to show it’s displeasure with Israel following the death of pro-Palestinian activists aboard a flotilla was by stressing its support for an international investigation into the incident.

On Sunday, however, Israel’s ambassador to the United States stated firmly that the country wouldn’t go along with that type or probe and even threw a subtle dig at U.S. officials who felt it was a necessary course of action.

“Israel is a democracy,” said Michael Oren, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “Israel has the ability and the right to investigate itself, not to be investigated by any international board. I don’t think the United States would want an international inquiry into its military activities in Afghanistan, for example.”

Asked flatly if he was rejecting the very idea of an international commission, Oren confirmed he was.

Full Story: Israeli Ambassador To U.S., Michael Oren, Rejects International Investigation Of Flotilla Deaths.

Robert Fisk:

I have, of course, been outraged at armed men boarding ships in international waters, killing passengers on board who attempt to resist and then forcing their ship to the hijackers’ home port. I am, of course, talking about the Somali pirates who are preying on Western ships in the Indian Ocean. How dare those terrorists dare to touch our unarmed vessels on the high seas? And how right we are to have our warships there to prevent such terrorist acts.

But whoops! At least the Israelis have not demanded ransom. They just want to get journalists to win the propaganda war for them. Scarcely had the week begun when Israel’s warrior “commandos” stormed a Turkish boat bringing aid to Gaza and shot nine of the passengers dead. Yet by week’s end, the protesters had become “armed peace activists”, vicious anti-Semites “professing pacifism, seething with hate, pounding away at another human being with a metal pole”. I liked the last bit. The fact that the person being beaten was apparently shooting another human being with a rifle didn’t quite get into this weird version of reality.

Turkish family protests that their sons wanted to be martyrs – something which most Turkish family members might say if their relatives had been shot by the Israelis – had been transformed into confirmation that they had been jihadis. “On that aid ship,” a Sri Lankan texted me this week, “I had my niece, nephew and his wife on board. Unfortunately Ahmed (20-year-old nephew) got shot in the leg and now treated (sic) under military custody. I will keep you posted.” He did indeed. Within hours, the press was at his family’s home in Australia, demanding to know if Ahmed was a jihadi – or even a potential suicide bomber. Propaganda works, you see. We haven’t seen a frame of film from the protesters because the Israelis have stolen the lot. No one has told us – if the Turkish ship was carrying such ruthless men – how their terrible plots to help the “terrorists” of Gaza were not uncovered in the long voyage from Turkey, even when it called at other ports. But Professor Gil Troy of McGill University in Montreal – in the rabid Canadian National Post, of course – was able to spout all that gunk about “armed peace activists” on Thursday.

Full Story: Robert Fisk: The truth behind the Israeli propaganda – Robert Fisk, Commentators – The Independent.

Exclusive: Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy results reveal

Israel was tonight under pressure to allow an independent inquiry into its assault on the Gaza aid flotilla after autopsy results on the bodies of those killed, obtained by the Guardian, revealed they were peppered with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range.

Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine.

Full Story: Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range | World news | The Guardian.

Today in a speech to the Turkish parliament, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Israel out on the carpet over its recent murder of at least 9 peace activists. Erdoğan told Turkish parliamentarians that Israel had “massacred the innocent” and the fact that it treats civilians like terrorists shows that “it knows no boundaries”. He said that since the Israeli government uses lying as state policy, the international community should conduct its own inquiry and lawfully punish those responsible.

In a clear swipe at the 62-year-old Jewish state, Erdoğan said “Turkey is not a young and rootless country” and that no one should test its patience. He said that the Free Gaza flotilla was carrying “the conscience of humanity” and Israel’s actions of “pouring blood and massacring was obviously state terrorism”.

Full Story: Turkish Prime Minister To Israel: International Community Is “Sick Of Your Lies” — Signs of the Times News.

Pro-Palestinian activists sent another boat to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and Egypt declared it was temporarily opening a crossing into the Palestinian territory after a raid on an aid flotilla that ended with Israeli soldiers killing nine activists.

The raid provoked ferocious international condemnation of Israel, raised questions at home, and appeared likely to increase pressure to end the blockade that has deepened the poverty of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the strip.

NATO on Tuesday joined calls for a “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation” into the raid. “As a matter of urgency, I also request the immediate release of the detained civilians and ships held by Israel,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a statement after representatives of the alliance’s 28 nations had met.

Full Story: NATO Wants Probe Of Israeli Raid.

Israel said the forces encountered unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels. Dozens of passengers and at least five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation in international waters.

The Israeli military said in a statement: “Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) … During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire.”

The Israeli raid has “triggered widespread condemnation across Europe; many of the passengers were from European countries. The raid also strained already tense relations with Israel’s longtime Muslim ally Turkey, the unofficial sponsor of the mission, and drew more attention to the plight of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.”

Full Story: Think Progress » Israeli Commandos Raid Gaza Aid Flotilla, Netanyahu Cancels Meeting With Obama.

Gaza Flotilla ATTACKED: Israel Storms Aid Ship, At Least 10 Dead

Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis.

Israel said its commandos were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they rappelled from a helicopter to board one of the vessels.

Dozens of activists and at least 10 Israeli soldiers were wounded in the bloody confrontation in international waters.

Full Story: Gaza Flotilla ATTACKED: Israel Storms Aid Ship, At Least 10 Dead.

The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.

The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

The flotilla’s commander, identified only as “Colonel O”, told an Israeli newspaper: “We are an underwater assault force. We’re operating deep and far, very far, from our borders.”

Full Story: Israel stations nuclear missile subs off Iran – Times Online.

According to Israel’s private channel 10 television, Israeli marine commandos had opened fire after being attacked with axes and knives by a number of the passengers on board the aid ships, the television said, without giving the source of its information.

The station did not say whether the dead and injured were passengers or members of the Israeli navy.

Full Story: ‘At least 10 dead’ as Israel storms aid convoy: Israeli TV | Raw Story.

BREAKING NEWS: Ten people have reportedly been killed and more than 30 injured after Israeli forces attacked a flotilla seeking to break through a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Contact with Herald journalist Paul McGeough, who is on board one of the flotilla vessels, has been lost.

This is what McGeough filed earlier before contact with the flotilla was lost …

Video at link

Full Story: Protesters bound for Gaza.

Qatar had proposed a major thawing of relations between the two countries in which Israel would have been allowed to reopen its official interests office, shut down on the orders of the emirate during the military onslaught on Gaza in January 2009.

But in return it wanted an easing of the three-year blockade of Gaza to allow a major increase in imports of cement and construction materials to start rebuilding war-ravaged sectors of the besieged territory.

Full Story: Qatar’s offer to help rebuild Gaza is snubbed by Netanyahu – Middle East, World – The Independent.

US President Barack Obama wants Congress to pay Israel more than $200 million to fund a new missile system, the White House spokesman says.

Obama has asked Congress to approve the aid so that Israel could deploy a controversial missile system called the “Iron Dome.”

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said on Thursday that Washington recognizes the need for Israel to have such a system.

Israel has completed tests in January on the short-range anti-missile system which is designed to intercept rockets and artillery shells.

“As the president has repeatedly said, our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable and our defense relationship is stronger than ever,” said Vietor.

Full Story: Obama to fund Israel’s missile system.

Israel’s secretive nuclear activities may undergo unprecedented scrutiny next month, with a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency tentatively set to focus on the topic for the first time, according to documents shared Friday with The Associated Press.

A copy of the restricted provisional agenda of the IAEA’s June 7 board meeting lists Israeli nuclear capabilities as the eighth item – the first time that that the agency’s decision-making body is being asked to deal with the issue in its 52 years of existence.

The agenda can still undergo changes in the month before the start of the meeting and a senior diplomat from a board member nation said the item, included on Arab request, could be struck if the U.S. and other Israeli allies mount strong opposition. He asked for anonymity for discussing a confidential matter.

Full Story: Report: IAEA to discuss Israel’s nuclear activities for first time – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Israel is ready to negotiate the terms of Palestinian statehood, although it wants its security concerns addressed in the initial stages of indirect talks, the Israeli president said Friday after meeting with the U.S. Mideast envoy.

George Mitchell, who is President Barack Obama’s special representative for Mideast peace, is in the region for the start of four months of indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians that aim to bridge vast differences between the sides on the contours of a future Palestinian state.

The Palestinians want the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem – territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War – for their state, but have said they are willing to make some minor land exchanges.

Full Story: Israel Ready For Deal On Palestinian State, Peres Says.

JCall, which describes itself as “the European J Street” and is to be officially launched Sunday with the presentation of the letter, has raised a storm with its call to stop construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem.

The letter is signed by some 3,000 Jewish intellectuals, among them philosophers Bernard Henri-Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, considered some of Israel's strongest defenders among French intellectuals. Signatories also include Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the student protests in the 1960s and now a member of the European Parliament, as well as other Jewish members of the European Parliament.

Full Story: 3,000 European Jewish intellectuals urge end to Israeli settlements – Haaretz – Israel News.

Avigdor Lieberman also made harsh comments about Turkey, Israel’s increasingly alienated ally, saying the Turkish prime minister was coming to resemble Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi.

Lieberman, who heads an ultranationalist party, has become known for a belligerent tone that has earned him critics abroad and inside Israel.

Full Story: Israel Warns Palestine Not To Declare State.

Anat Kam, 23, who used to work for the Israeli news site Walla, was arrested last December for allegedly copying secret Israeli Defense Force (IDF) documents during her compulsory military service.

These documents outlined how Israeli assassination squads would plan the killing of Palestinian political leaders and fighters months beforehand and then pass their deaths off as “mishaps” during “failed” attempts to arrest them.

Uri Blau, a reporter from the daily Ha’aretz, then wrote a piece on the copied documents and is refusing to return to Israel from Britain fearing that Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, will arrest him if he does.

Full Story: Israel Gags News on Extrajudicial Killings by Mel Frykberg — Antiwar.com.

Ramping up the rhetoric of war in a volatile region can lead to a misstep and once the dogs of war are off their leash, it will be hard to bring them to heel.

When Israeli Minister without Portfolio Yossi Peled said recently that a war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah was “just a matter of time” and that such a conflict would include Syria, most observers dismissed the comment as little more than posturing by a right-wing former general. But Peled’s threat has been backed by Israeli military maneuvers near the Lebanese border, violations of Lebanese airspace, and the deployment of an anti- missile system on Israel’s northern border.

The Lebanese are certainly not treating it as Likud bombast.

“We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats,” Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri told the BBC. “We see what is happening on the ground and in our airspace.during the past two months-every day we have Israeli airplanes entering Lebanese airspace.” Hariri added that he considered the situation “really dangerous.”

The increasing tension was behind the recent visit to Beirut by Senator Philippe Marini, French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s special envoy to Lebanon. After Marini met with Hariri, Christian Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, and Hezbollah leaders, the envoy said that he feared a Hezbollah-Israel rematch could easily become a regional war.

Full Story: Is Israel About to Trigger a New Middle East War? | World | AlterNet.

Israeli planes have carried out 13 air strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources have told the BBC.

Four of the strikes took place near the town of Khan Younis, where two Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Palestinian fighters last week.

Israel says the operation was targeting four weapons factories. Reports say three children were injured.

The latest violence is the most serious since the end of Israel’s assault on Gaza in January 2009.

Palestinians and rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans died in the conflict, while Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.

Full Story: BBC News – Thirteen Israeli air strikes hit Gaza Strip.

Israeli soldiers moved around 500 meters (yards) inside Gaza on Sunday in several armored vehicles including bulldozers.

Witnesses said the troops were predominantly targeting olive groves and almond fields in the Abasan al-Jadida area east of Khan Yunis.

They dug large trenches and fired warning shots to keep farmers away, but there were no reports of casualties.

Sunday’s incursion was close to the site where Israeli tanks, bulldozers and jeeps, backed by helicopters, carried out a strike late Friday damaging two houses and killing a Palestinian. Seven people were also wounded in the attack.

Full Story: Israeli armor moves into Gaza, digging trenches.

Witnesses in Gaza said tanks and bulldozers moved towards the southern town of Khan Younis before withdrawing.

They also said there had been firing from the Israeli navy along the Gaza coastline.

It is the first time Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since Israel’s 22-day offensive there more than a year ago.

Reports say at least two Palestinians have also been killed.

Israel says the fighting started when its troops crossed into Gaza after spotting militants planting explosives along the border.

Reports from inside Gaza say the militants then tried to capture an Israeli soldier.

Full Story: BBC News – Israeli tanks ‘enter Gaza’ after deadly clashes.

AIPAC supposedly exists to promote US-Israel relations or, more precisely, to promote them to the point where Israeli policies are never challenged by the United States. Most important to AIPAC is that the $3 billion aid package sails to Israel unimpeded, no matter what budgets cuts are inflicted here at home and no matter what the current president thinks.

AIPAC wants to put on a nice Washington show of power but without egregious poking of American eyes. For instance, the 7,800 delegates were warned in advance not to boo or hiss Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she discussed achieving peace with the Palestinians — and they didn’t. They allowed their feelings to show only when they stood and applauded her requisite criticisms of Palestinians while giving scattered applause to her calls for Israeli concessions.

Full Story: Heckuva Job, AIPAC | Media Matters Action Network.

- Haaretz -

Details emerging from Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington remain incomplete, but the conclusion may nonetheless be drawn that the prime minister erred in choosing to fly to the United States this week. The visit – touted as a fence-mending effort, a bid to strengthen the tenuous ties between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama – only highlighted the deep rift between the American and Israeli administrations.

The prime minister leaves America disgraced, isolated, and altogether weaker than when he came.

Instead of setting the diplomatic agenda, Netanyahu surrendered control over it. Instead of leaving the Palestinian issue aside and focusing on Iran, as he would like, Netanyahu now finds himself fighting for the legitimacy of Israeli control over East Jerusalem.

Full Story: Netanyahu leaves U.S. disgraced, isolated and weaker – Haaretz – Israel News.

Britain took the extraordinary step Tuesday of expelling an Israeli diplomat for the first time in more than 20 years, after concluding there was compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for the use of forged British passports in the plot to slay a senior Hamas operative in Dubai.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said trust between the two countries had been badly dented, demanded formal assurances it never happen again and – in an unusual step – issued travel advice to U.K. citizens warning their identity details may be at risk if they visit Israel.

Miliband told the House of Commons that the expelled diplomat, who has not been named, was removed following an investigation into the use of 12 fake U.K. passports in the Jan 20. slaying in Dubai.

Full Story: UK Expels Israeli Diplomat Over Dubai Murder Case.

The aircraft attacked a tunnel on the Rafah sector on the border with Egypt, but no one was injured, said witnesses.

A military spokesman confirmed the raid, saying they had hit a tunnel used for arms smuggling and in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian side.

One rocket was fired into southern Israel late Sunday from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip though it landed without causing any injuries or damage, the Israeli army said earlier.

Full Story: Israeli warplanes bomb Gaza: officials – Yahoo! News.

The Israeli Prime Minister says his nation’s security is his top priority. Too bad he’s undermining it.

In international relations, whenever you hear the term “confidence-building measures,” you can be sure that someone is trying to kick a can down the road. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has now promised to offer such measures to the Palestinians. He has also urged that everyone “calm down” about the diplomatic row between his government and the United States.

But this crisis hasn’t been caused by just one event—the announcement, while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel, to approve new Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem. It caps a year of increasingly strained relations between Washington and Tel Aviv. And while he’s apologized for the ill-timed announcement, Netanyahu remains unyielding. In fact, the Israeli press has reported plans to build not merely the 1,600 units announced last week, but 50,000. “We will act according to the vital interests of the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said last week.

Full Story: Zakaria: Bibi Is Undermining Israel’s Security – Newsweek.com.

Hoping to defuse a fight between friends, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed Thursday to meet next week in Washington to confront an embarrassing dispute over Israeli land claims.

The Obama administration’s special envoy for Mideast peace, George Mitchell, prepared to return to the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Netanyahu called Clinton on Thursday. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declined to provide details of the conversation, which he described as the Israeli prime minister’s response to Clinton’s call last week in which she harshly criticized Israel’s announcement of additional Jewish settlement housing in east Jerusalem.

Full Story: Netanyahu, Clinton Talk: Israeli Leader Plans Meeting In US Next Week.

The destruction has now begun, as the pretensions and hypocrisies begin to fall. The cause of this is external and unexpected. Preoccupied with its own interests, and by the expansionist forces inside its society of secular Zionism, expressed in the Likud Party, and the equivalent expansionism motivated by millenarian religion, the Benjamin Netanyahu government has made itself an obstacle to American military security and to the interests of U.S. military forces operating in the Islamic world.

This has been obvious for many years but has only now been acknowledged by military commanders. As Mark Perry has reported on the Foreign Policy magazine website, a team dispatched by Gen. David Petraeus of Central Command briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Jan. 16 to the effect that the conduct of Israel with respect to the Palestinians has now caused the Islamic forces cooperating with the United States, as well as those fighting it, to conclude that the U.S. is weak, and its military posture is subverted by American complicity with Israel’s intransigence on the Palestinian issue.

Full Story: William Pfaff: The Truth About American and Israeli Interests Comes Out – Truthdig.

The cancellation of the visit by American envoy George Mitchell, who has been delegated to renew the diplomatic negotiations, embodies the slippery slope facing Israel during the past week. Even before completing the first year of his second term in office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to foment crises in two key strategic areas: the peace process with the Palestinians and relations with the United States.

The affair of the building plans for Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, which cast a pall on U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visited, pushed back the two-state solution. At the same time, the unnecessary snub of a friendly guest became a deep rift in the dialogue between the Israeli government and the White House.

In order to rescue the proximity talks and resolve the crisis in relations with the United States, the Obama administration has made three demands of Netanyahu: cancelling the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee’s decision to approve for presentation building plans for Ramat Shlomo, a “significant” gesture to the Palestinians and a public statement that the indirect talks will deal with all the core issues, including Jerusalem.

Full Story: It’s time for Netanyahu to say yes to Obama – Haaretz – Israel News.

The Israeli government, its brutal war crimes in Gaza exposed in detail in the U.N. report by Justice Richard Goldstone, has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations inside and outside Israel that are accused—often falsely—of assisting Goldstone’s U.N. investigators. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting to shut down Israel’s premier human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. It is busy expelling or excluding peace activists and foreign nationals from the Palestinian territories. The campaign, if left unchecked, will be as catastrophic for Palestinians as it will be for Israel.

The Goldstone report, which is over 500 pages, investigated Israel’s 22-day air and ground assault on Gaza that took place from Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009. The United Nations and the European Parliament have endorsed the report. The report found that Israel used disproportionate military force against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip while failing to take adequate precautions to protect the civilian population against the military assault. The Israeli attack killed 1,434 people, including 960 civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. More than 6,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, leaving behind some $3 billion in destruction in one of the poorest areas on Earth. No Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets fired into Israel during the assault. The report did not limit itself to the 22-day attack; rather, it went on to indict the occupation itself. It examines the beginning of the occupation and condemns Israel for the border closures, the blockade and for the wall or security barrier in the West Bank. It has two references to the right of return, investigates Israeli torture and criticizes the willful destruction of the Palestinian economy.

Full Story: Chris Hedges: Israel Crackdown Puts Liberal Jews on the Spot – Chris Hedges’ Columns – Truthdig.

60 years after the World War II Nazi military siege of Leningrad that lasted for 900 days and caused the greatest destruction and largest loss of life ever known in a modern city, the Israeli military has imprisoned Gaza for 1,000 days. The blockade has caused incredible physical and emotional suffering those crowded into an incredibly small space-25 miles long and 5 miles wide-one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

The siege means that the Israeli government controls the entry of food, medicines, and gasoline and construction materials for the Palestinians. The purpose of the blockade is to force by blatantly violating international law, a change in the government represented by Hamas, the political organization the people elected. The siege began in June, 2007, following Hamas’ takeover of governmental functions in Gaza.

Full Story: The 1,000 Day Siege of Gaza | CommonDreams.org.

Outside the walled Old City, where the Al Aqsa mosque is situated, and in several West Bank villages, clashes were reported between Palestinian protestors, their Israeli and international supporters, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), leaving at least 20 Palestinians wounded.

Following a security assessment Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak ordered security forces to stop tens of thousands of Palestinians from entering Jerusalem.

Full Story: MIDEAST: Israel Lands in Public Relations Nightmare – IPS ipsnews.net.

EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton: We may use trade ties as leverage.

The European Union might use its trade ties with Israel as leverage to pressure it into renewing peace talks with the Palestinians, Catherine Ashton, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the EU said on Saturday.

Ashton was speaking at an EU foreign minister conference held in Finland. Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, said that Israel’s announcement on building in east Jerusalem during United States Vice President Joe Biden’s visit last week was intentional and not coincidental.

Bildt said there were “no guarantees” that Israel was committed to peace.

Ashton is on the verge of a Middle East tour where she will visit Egypt, Israel, Syria and Lebanon.

Full Story: ‘EU may push Israel into peace talks’.

The following is an excerpt from A Wall in Palestine by Rene Backmann (Picador, 2010).

Who invented the wall? Who came up with the idea for it? “Maybe it was me,” Dany Tirza says half-jokingly as he weaves his car through Gilo morning traffic. Adjacent to the southern neighborhoods of Jerusalem, this truly “new” city of thirty-seven thousand people, which dominates the nearby Palestinian enclaves of Bethlehem and Beit Jala, is considered by the Israelis to be a natural extension of the Holy City. In fact, Gilo was built on the outskirts of “Greater Jerusalem,” as it was redefined by Israel in 1967 after the Six-Day War, on approximately seven thousand acres of annexed Palestinian land. But Gilo is on the Palestinian side of the “Green Line,” which, since 1949, separates the State of Israel from the present- day West Bank. Thus, it is a settlement, one of twelve built by Israel since 1967 at the periphery of Greater Jerusalem.

Full Story: Sealing in the Palestinians: The Story of the Most Controversial Border Wall in the World | World | AlterNet.

The murder of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana, a 275-room five-star luxury hotel, in Dubai on January 19 has been widely perceived to be a Mossad operation involving, by the most recent count, 27 suspects traveling on fraudulently obtained and falsified European or Australian passports. In late February and early March, the plot thickened suddenly and significantly when major US media outlet reports connected the crime and many of those involved in it to the USA and to corporations based in the USA and Israel and revealed that some of the suspected assassins, apparently members of a Mossad kidon team, had entered the USA after leaving Dubai.

ABC News reported on February 24 that Dubai police had identified 15 new suspects as part of a ring that killed Al Mabhouh.

Full Story: Dubai Investigation Exposes Israeli Ops in USA | Dissident Voice.

The parliament also called on Israel to immediately open border crossings with the Gaza Strip, saying the blockade was worsening the humanitarian crisis there.

The resolution backed the findings of a UN-appointed expert panel chaired by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which concluded that both sides committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity throughout the IDF operation that began in December 2008 and ended in January 2009.

Full Story: EU Parliament backs Goldstone Report.

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano and Israeli Transport and Road Safety Minister Israel Katz today announced a new agreement to enhance information sharing about civil aviation security incidents and ensure efficient and effective coordination in response to potential acts of terrorism and other aviation-related public safety emergencies.

“The real-time exchange of information with our international partners is critical to our efforts to enhance overall global aviation security,” said Secretary Napolitano. “This agreement will allow the United States and Israel to better coordinate on and respond to potential aviation security incidents to strengthen our mutual safety.”

“MOU implementation will further improve the effectiveness of the cooperation between the respective civil aviation security authorities,” said Minister Katz. “Such International collaboration is of particular importance to ensure effective response to the evolving threat to international aviation.”

Full Story: DHS: United States and Israel Announce Agreement to Enhance Joint Aviation Security.

British statesman Leopold Amery’s plea to prime minister Neville Chamberlain – “For God’s sake, go” – has undergone many incarnations, and I’m surprised at my colleague Nahum Barnea, who made do with a simple “Go” in reference to Avigdor Lieberman. The suspicion that Lieberman received documents relating to the investigation against him from our ambassador in Belarus is now being checked by the police. It doesn’t smell good – not to mention that the stench of the foreign minister’s behavior justifies speeding up the distribution of gas masks.

But the problem is not Avigdor, it’s the person who appointed him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is gradually going back to being the Bibi of his first term. Never since the founding of the state has its image, prestige, reputation and moral and ethical weight been at such a nadir. The commander of the Dubai police is sitting comfortably in his armchair and enumerating one by one the mistakes he claims were made by the Mossad – for example, dressing one of its fattest agents in a tennis outfit. He is also issuing international arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

And in a public courtroom in Barcelona, Israel is being portrayed as a country that tramples basic human rights, while Hamas is being “acquitted” of being a terror organization.

Full Story: If Netanyahu wants peace, he knows what to do – Haaretz – Israel News.

Dahi Khalfan Tamim “said he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for … Netanyahu and the head of Mossad,” the television said. It did not give details.

Tamim has said he is “almost certain” Israeli agents were involved in the killing of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel in January, calling for Mossad’s boss, Meir Dagan, to be arrested if it is proved responsible. Tamim said on Monday Mossad had “insulted” Dubai and Western countries whose fraudulent passports were used by suspects in the assassination.

Dubai has asked the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into prepaid cards issued by the Meta Financial Group’s MetaBank which the suspects used, a United Arab Emirates newspaper said.

Citing an FBI source, The National newspaper said the investigation would look into any Israeli involvement in the killing.

Full Story: Dubai police chief says to seek Netanyahu arrest | Reuters.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will address the Israeli public directly next week during a speech he is scheduled to deliver at Tel Aviv University, focusing on American commitment to Israel’s security, Iran’s nuclear program and the peace process.

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday in Jerusalem that Biden is seeking to ensure that Israel and the United States are in alignment on the issue of preventing the Iranian nuclear threat.

Kerry, who is privy to the details of efforts to impose sanctions on Iran, hinted Monday at a press conference in Jerusalem after a meeting with the prime minister that Biden’s visit to Israel, and that of other senior administration officials, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, aims at restraining Israel against the possibility of unilaterally attacking Iran.
Full Story: Biden to speak directly to Israelis from Tel Aviv – Haaretz – Israel News.

Barak Simultaneously Insists Iran No Threat to Attack Israel

At his visit to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an AIPAC founded think tank, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak reiterated his calls for Western nations to keep “all options” open in moving against Iran. But more importantly, he suggested Israel might attack Iran even beyond American objections.

“I don’t think that there is a need to coordinate in this regard,” Barak insisted, adding later in the speech that Israel has always “felt very proud that we never asked the Americans to come and fight for us.”

US officials have repeatedly expressed opposition to a unilateral Israeli attack, noting that it would be perceived internationally as an attack by the United States, which has provided Israel with enormous military aid over the years.

Full Story: Israeli DM: No Need to Coordinate With US on Attacking Iran — News from Antiwar.com.

The UN and other humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called on Israel to immediately open all border crossings not only for basic necessities, which it allows in limited amounts, but for the reconstruction material needed to rebuild the scores of buildings destroyed by the offensive, which Israel says it launched to halt rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Full Story Scoop: Israel Tightens Vice on Gaza Strip, UN Reports.

Israel should heed the friendly warning it received from the Obama administration, which opposes a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, warned in Tel Aviv on Sunday of the unexpected consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran, just as he did during the days of the Bush administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Qatar that Iran’s neighbors, who are worried about its nuclear plans, must rely on the American defense umbrella. And next week, Vice President Joseph Biden will visit Israel to pass on a similar message.

Both Israeli and Iranian leaders have escalated the threats they have been exchanging over the past few weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz about a new Amalek. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that if Israel goes to war, “we need to put an end to the Zionist regime once and for all.” And last week, on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran will enrich uranium to 20 percent and declared that his country is capable of building an atomic bomb

Full Story Israel should heed Obama’s warning not to strike Iran – Haaretz – Israel News.

Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat.

The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London.

Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist.

Full Story Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign – Haaretz – Israel News.

Between 2009-2018, the United States is scheduled to give Israel–the largest recipient of U.S. aid–$30 billion in military aid. Through its illegal 42-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, Israel misuses U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure, blockade the Gaza Strip, and build illegal settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem.

How much of this total will your community provide?  Is this a good use of your tax dollars? What else could your taxes be used for in your community?

Find out on the interactive map below.

Full Story US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation : How Much Military Aid to Israel?.

Israel’s prime minister attempted to end a war of words with Syria on Sunday, saying his country is open to peace talks with its longtime enemy.

Israeli and Syrian officials have traded threats over the past week, raising concerns of an escalation between two countries that have officially been at war for more than 60 years.

Israel desires peace agreements with “all of its neighbors,” Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting.

Full Story Netanyahu: Israel Open To Peace Talks With Syria.

“Israel claims it is conducting credible and impartial investigations, but it has so far failed to make that case,” said Joe Stork, HRW’s New York-based group’s deputy director for the Middle East.

“An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks,” Stork said in a statement.

About 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the 22-day onslaught launched by Israel on December 27, 2008, aimed at halting rocket attacks from the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fighting.

Full Story AFP: HRW says Israel ‘failed’ to probe Gaza war crimes.

Boyle spoke to {EIR} on Jan. 15, 2010, giving his assessment of Gaza, one year after the Israeli attacks. He stressed that he was speaking only for himself.

While the Israelis stopped the artillery bombardment and air strikes just before the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, the deaths of Palestinians continue–from lack of medicines, infrastructure, clean water, and everything else that the world community–as shown in emergency aid to Haiti–{knows} is necessary to sustain human life.

Full Story Scoop: Prof. Francis Boyle: Israel Is Committing Genocide.

A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year’s Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.

The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as “means and intentions” – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of “literally zero risk to the soldiers”.

Full Story Israeli commander: ‘We rewrote the rules of war for Gaza’ – Middle East, World – The Independent.

Anyone who is anyone in Israel will come to Herzliya this week for a conference about the state of the Jewish nation. Our correspondent joined them and found a climate of unprecedented insecurity – and paranoia

So the propaganda war is on. Forget Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the 15,000 Lebanese and Palestinian dead. Forget the Sabra and Shatila massacre that same year by Israel’s militia allies as their troops watched. Erase the Qana massacre of 1996 – 106 Lebanese killed by Israeli shellfire, more than half of them children – and delete the 1,500 in the 2006 Lebanon war. And forget, of course, the more than 1,300 Palestinians slaughtered by Israel in Gaza last year (and the 13 Israelis killed by Hamas at that time) after Hamas rockets fell on Sderot. Israel – if you believe the security elite of Israel’s right wing here in Herzliya – is now under an even more dangerous, near-unprecedented attack.

Britain – this came yesterday from Israel’s ambassador in London, no less – is “a battlefield” in which Israel’s enemies wish to “de-legitimise” the 62-year-old Jewish state.

Even Israel’s erstwhile friend, that fine Jewish judge Richard Goldstone, is now, in the words of one of Israel’s staunchest American-Jewish supporters, Al Dershowitz, an “absolute traitor to the Jewish people” and “an evil, evil man”. (Headlines for this, of course, in Israel yesterday.)

Full Story Robert Fisk: Israel feels under siege. Like a victim. An underdog – Robert Fisk, Commentators – The Independent.

Abdallah Abu Rahme, 39, the coordinator of the Bi’lin Popular Committee, which has challenged Israel’s illegal expropriation of Palestinian land both in an Israeli court and a Canadian one, has been charged with “illegal arms possession, stone throwing and incitement.”

The “illegal arms possession” charge relates largely to a protest exhibition Abu Rahme had made out of spent tear-gas canisters and plastic-coated rubber bullets, shot by Israeli soldiers, and assembled to form a large peace sign.

Full Story MIDEAST: Israel Jails Palestinian Peace Activists – IPS ipsnews.net.

The Air Force bombed the site in 1981. Now, 29 years later, al-Maliki has instructed the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad to clarify with the UN whether it would be possible to extract compensation from Israel.

An Iraqi source told the German DPA that MP Mohammad Naji said UN Resolution 487, approved after the strike, allowed his country to sue Israel.

“Al-Maliki’s appeal follows an answer received from the UN Secretariat by the government of Iraq on November 25, which says Iraq has a right to demand compensation for the damage Israel did to it with the attack on the reactor, through a neutral committee which will assess the extent of the damage,” the report says.

Full Story Iraq to sue Israel over destroyed reactor – Israel News, Ynetnews.

In the Mideast, dreams can only end badly. Not because messianic messages are, in and of themselves, bad dreams, but because of the nature of this place, the history which is as much imagination as it is record, as much sacred hallucination as it is shared memory. And because the dreamers of this place fail again and again because they are under the illusion that they are realists.

The decade just passing is one in which Middle East dreams came to die. It began, appropriately, with an Israeli leader who saw his place in history as dependent on imposing a peace plan on the entire Arab world, and a Palestinian icon who saw his place in history as dependent on saying no.

In no decade of the modern Middle East has the roll of failure been so democratic. The titans Arafat and Sharon fought their battle to the death, and both lost. Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmed Yassin, hilltop youth, Al Aqsa Martyrs, Yossi Beilin, the Yesha Council, even Jimmy Carter – all dreamed Icarus dreams and realized, only too late, that in the brilliant sun of the Holy Land, wings of feathers and wax reveal their true selves, which is to say, nothing more than feathers and wax.

It was a decade framed by a fundamentalist Palestinian belief in salvation through suicide and a fundamentalist Israeli belief in salvation through brutality.

Full Story Israel’s 10 worst errors of the decade – Haaretz – Israel News.

Ending two years of legal sparring between the military and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which challenged the ban on behalf of six Palestinian villages, the court ruled that the Army had not taken into account the harm to the daily lives of the Palestinians caused by the closure.

ACRI spokeswoman Melanie Takefman said the ruling was “a huge victory” and one that could impact on other road closures. “We hope this will be the end of the segregated roads,” she said.

Full Story Israeli court orders opening of segregated road – World – NZ Herald News.

“The United States opposes new Israeli construction in East Jerusalem,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

Israel announced plans earlier on Monday to build nearly 700 new homes for Jews in areas of the occupied West Bank it considers part of Jerusalem, a city it has excluded from a limited moratorium on settlement construction.

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the plan, saying new building on territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war was illegal.

“Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally preempt, or appear to preempt, negotiations. Rather, both parties should return to negotiations without preconditions as soon as possible,” Gibbs said.

Full Story White House opposes new Jerusalem-area construction | Reuters.

The meeting to be attended in Jerusalem Al-Quds on December 27-31 is hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the ministry reported on its website.

“The idea is to facilitate direct dialogue with the country’s leaders, mutual updates on major diplomatic issues, and a discussion of action plans to deal with the challenges awaiting Israel in the international arena in the coming year, including the Iranian threat,” it said.

Full Story Israel summons envoys from all over the world.

British sources reported late Monday that though a British court had issued an arrest warrant for Livni over war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza while she served as foreign minister, it annulled it upon discovering she was not in the U.K.

Livni served as foreign minister alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak during the Israel Defense Forces offensive in Gaza. The three figures comprised the “troika” of top decision-makers who charted the course of the war.

The Guardian points out the significance of this arrest warrant, and goes on to explain that former Israeli leaders (no longer serving) lose their diplomatic immunity granted under the State Immunity Act:

Full Story The Seminal » War Crimes Catch Up With Israeli Officials: They Can No Longer Visit The UK.

Palestinian leaders from President Mahmoud Abbas down have alarmed Israeli ministers by swinging their weight behind a planned effort to secure UN backing for a unilaterally declared independent state in the West Bank and Gaza.

In an innovative strategy which would not depend on the success of currently stalled negotiations with Israel, the leaders are preparing a push to secure formal UN Security Council support for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders as a crucial first step towards the formation of a state.

Although there is no fixed timetable,

via Palestinian push for an independent state causes Israeli alarm – Middle East, World – The Independent.

There is an entire dynamic, which is an undercurrent in Israeli society, that Jews from North Africa who emigrated to Israel are grossly misrepresented in government, policy making, negotiations with friends and foes alike. However, here is a perfect example of how ‘Arab Jews’ can play a pivotal role in the peace making process with the Palestinians.

According to a report in Israel’s daily ‘Ma’ariv’, as reported by the Mideast Peace Pulse, Mofaz is putting forth the idea of the immediate formation of a Palestinian state which would require the demolition of Israeli settlements which translates into displacing some 70,000 people. Those settlers would be compensated as described below:

Full Story An unexpected bold proposal from Israeli MK Shaul Mofaz: an immediate Palestinian state.

But Israel rejected the investigation as one-sided and shameful.

The report accused Israel of committing “actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity” during its military incursion into Gaza from December 27 to January 18.

Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who headed the U.N. investigation into the conflict, demanded that someone be held responsible for crimes committed during it.

“The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point,” Goldstone said Tuesday. “This is the time of action.”

He formally presented the report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday.

Full Story: Palestinians call for Israel to be ‘punished’ for Gaza offensive – CNN.com.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert goes on trial in Jerusalem on Friday, battling the corruption allegations that forced him to resign last year .

He is charged with taking cash payments from a U.S. businessman, advancing the interests of clients of a former law partner and double-billing Israeli charities for overseas travel expenses during fund-raising trips.

The 64-year-old politician, a former mayor of Jerusalem who underwent treatment a few months ago for prostate cancer, denies any wrongdoing.

Full Story: Olmert goes on trial for corruption Friday | International | Reuters.

Only one in five Israeli Jews believes a nuclear-armed Iran would try to destroy Israel and most see life continuing as normal should the Islamic Republic get the bomb, an opinion poll published on Sunday found.

The survey, commissioned by a Tel Aviv University think-tank, appeared to challenge the argument of successive Israeli governments that Iran must be denied the means to make atomic weapons lest it threaten Israel’s existence.

Asked how a nuclear-armed Iran would affect their lives, 80 percent of respondents said they expected no change. Eleven percent said they would consider emigrating and 9 percent said they would consider relocating inside Israel.

via Poll: Most Israelis could live with a nuclear Iran – Haaretz – Israel News.

American politicians hate to confront Israel. But here’s why Obama will.

Monday’s meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made obvious what everyone already knew: There is a vast and unbridgeable gap between the two leaders’ positions. Netanyahu refuses to accept the idea of a Palestinian state, the sine qua non of any Mideast peace plan. He also believes, apparently sincerely, that Iran is a psychotically anti-Semitic state willing to commit national suicide to kill Jews. Driven by his perceived need to avert a second Holocaust, Netanyahu could decide to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran, even if the U.S. tells him not to.

There is zero convergence between Netanyahu’s ideas and Obama’s. Unbeholden to the extreme “pro-Israel” neoconservative ideology that warped the Bush administration’s policies in the region, Obama realizes that brokering a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential for America’s interests. Nor does he buy Netanyahu’s shrill claims that an Iran with nuclear arms would be willing to commit national suicide by attacking Israel. He sees that accepting Netanyahu’s demand that the U.S. either attack Iran itself or allow Israel to attack it would be an act of supreme folly, one that would have catastrophic consequences for the U.S., the region and the world. All the hoopla over Obama’s statement Monday about an end-of-year “deadline” for negotiations with Iran is meaningless because the U.S. would never sign off on an attack on that country.

via Obama’s coming collision with Netanyahu | Salon.

By Aluf Benn

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions are shaped by a profound conviction that Israel will be in danger of extermination if Iran has nuclear weapons at its disposal. Removing the Iranian threat to Israel has been Netanyahu’s main goal for years, and the Iranians’ progress in this realm has only reinforced his awareness that the fateful hour of decision is fast approaching.

Ariel Sharon called Iran a global rather than an Israeli problem. Ehud Olmert used to say no issue preoccupied him more than the nuclear threat posed by Iran. But Netanyahu’s predecessors didn’t describe this danger with the same gravity as he does. “We will not allow the Holocaust-deniers to perpetrate another Holocaust against the Jewish people,” the prime minister warned at the state ceremony on Holocaust and Martyrs’ Remembrance Day last week. Senior political figures say Netanyahu has spoken to them about the danger of another Holocaust in private conversations as well. They are convinced that he truly believes it is his historic mission to rescue the Jewish people from a catastrophe.

As far as Netanyahu is concerned, a decisive turning point in world history will occur when Iran completes its nuclear bomb. This will mean that significant control over the world’s energy resources will be in the hands of a fanatical sect of ayatollahs, and will turn the Arab countries, against their will, into Tehran’s satellites. Netanyahu views Israel’s strategic problems as part and parcel of the ongoing struggle with Iran, a country that has built “launching bases” on the other side of the borders, in Lebanon and in Gaza, by supplying rockets to both Hezbollah and Hamas. The prime minister believes that once Iran goes nuclear, thereby turning Syria into its protege, any withdrawal from the Golan Heights will turn that territory into an Iranian front.

via Is Netanyahu bringing Israel closer to a ‘second Holocaust’? – Haaretz – Israel News.

Israeli Prime Minister: We will not allow Holocaust deniers to carry out another Jewish Holocaust

Honorable President, Shimon Peres,
Speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin and His Wife,
President of the Supreme Court, Dorit Beinish,
Ministers, Members of Knesset,
Honorable Chief Rabbis and Congregation Leaders,
Chairman of the Council of Yad Vashem, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau,
Chairman of the Board of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev,
Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine and His Wife,
Esteemed Holocaust Survivors from Israel and Abroad,
Righteous Gentiles,
Distinguished Guests,

Before the recent Pesach holiday, a Jewish hero passed away – David Plonsky, also known as “Yurek”, may his memory be blessed – the cigarette salesman from the Triple Cross Square in Warsaw.

Yurek was only 14 when the Warsaw Ghetto was established.  He turned from child into adult overnight.  He smuggled food into the ghetto and his life was under constant threat.  Yurek survived. He immigrated to Israel, fought in the War of Independence, started a family and built a home at Kibbutz Meggido.  He lost his son Eitan during the Yom Kippur War, but found the fortitude to overcome this tragedy as well.  He continued living, continued building and continued inculcating his legacy into thousands of youngsters.

His life story and activities are, to a large extent, a mirror of the Jewish people’s transition from exile to liberty – a story of suffering, supreme heroism, construction and renaissance; a story of bereavement, faith and independence.

Yurek may have survived the inferno, but close to a million and a half Jewish children did not survive and perished in the Holocaust.  I think the human mind cannot grasp this fact.  We always see before us the famous picture of the frightened Jewish child, raising his hands in front of the barrels of German rifles.  But this child was only one out of a million and a half children, a million and a half pairs of frightened eyes.  Each one of them was an entire world of hopes and dreams, a mother’s love and a father’s concern, a world transformed instantly into one of terror, suffering and death.

via Address by PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.

by Sheera Frenkel

JERUSALEM – The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public

for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,” one senior defence official told The Times.

Officials believe that Israel could be required to hit more than a dozen targets, including moving convoys. The sites include Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges produce enriched uranium; Esfahan, where 250 tonnes of gas is stored in tunnels; and Arak, where a heavy water reactor produces plutonium.

The distance from Israel to at least one of the sites is more than 870 miles, a distance that the Israeli force practised covering in a training exercise last year that involved F15 and F16 jets, helicopters and refuelling tankers.

via Israel Stands Ready to Bomb Iran’s Nuclear Sites | CommonDreams.org.

In a private conference call with Jewish leaders on Tuesday, the Obama White House reaffirmed that it has not decided to formally reengage negotiations over the charter of the United Nations’ World Conference on Racism, citing lingering disputes over the review document’s language.

On the call, which the Huffington Post managed to listen in on, National Security Council aide Samantha Power stressed that while progress had been made on the text of the Durban II document, not enough had been done to get the United States to the table.

The current working text, she said, “met two of our four red lines frontally, in the sense that it went no further than reparations and it did drop all references to Israel and all anti-Semitic language. But it continued to reaffirm, in toto, Durban I. And while it did drop specific references to defamation, it continues to include very problematic language on incitement… that are out of line with core U.S. commitments to free speech. So that’s where we have been for a couple weeks, with a text that is dramatically improved… [but] also ratifies the U.S. decision to walk away in the sense that it did seem to spur the other delegations to go back to the drawing board… We have not reengaged in any kind of formal way with this process. Our red lines remain our red lines… In order for us to participate in the negotiations, to sit behind the placard, to be involved in a frontal way, much more would need to be done. And all four of our red lines will need to be met.”

via Obama Team Tells Jewish Leaders: UN Durban Text Crosses “Red Line”.

The Army has let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in the world — that Israel has the bomb.

Officially, the United States has a policy of “ambiguity” regarding Israel’s nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power.

But a Defense Department study completed last year offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within “a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east.”

The single reference is far more than the U.S. usually would state publicly about Israel, even though the world knew Israel to be a nuclear power years before former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu went public with facts on its weapons program in 1986.

via US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes.

There are very worrying signs about Israel and Iran, amid new threats from Israeli officials that they won’t long tolerate Iran’s nuclear program before they strike militarily. But, at the same time, there are reports that President Obama’s national security team isn’t buying the Israeli line that time is running out.

For instance, a top Israeli military official, in Washington, was not exactly given the red carpet treatment by Obama’s top officials — yet even so, he met Jim Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, Hillary Clinton, and Dennis Ross.

The Israeli armed forces chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, met yesterday with top US officials in Washington, including General James Jones, the national security adviser, and Dennis Ross, the State Department’s special adviser on “the Gulf and Southwest Asia,” and he warned that Israel is preparing for a military strike on Iran. According to Haaretz, the Israeli daily:

via Obama Rebuffs Israeli Hawk.

His diplomatic moves are a good start. But does he have the will to challenge Israel

March 17, 2009 | Trying to figure out what Barack Obama intends to do in the Middle East is like trying to read the leaves in a cup of tea stirred by Jackson Pollock. For every signal Obama has given that he intends to break decisively with Bush’s failed approach to the Middle East, he has given another that indicates he plans to simply give the same policies a fresh coat of paint.

Obama took what many regarded as a backwards step even before assuming office by appointing Hillary Clinton, who supported the Iraq war and as senator toed the establishment line on Israel, as secretary of state. But then he gave his first presidential interview to the Arabic-language station al-Arabiya and announced that his administration would approach the Arab-Muslim world with a spirit of respect and willingness to listen. He said, “If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.” But then he named as his Iran advisor the right-leaning Dennis Ross, who signed a threatening Iran paper drafted by two hard-line neoconservatives, claimed, in a statement to Congress accompanying his renewal of sanctions against Iran, that the country posed “an extraordinary threat” to the U.S. and gave every indication that he would continue Bush’s failed carrots-and-sticks approach. Obama has ordered a top-to-bottom strategic review of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, but sent 17,000 more troops there and has continued to assassinate militants in Pakistan with missiles fired from Predator drones. He announced that he was winding down the Iraq war, but is doing so at a hyper-cautious pace.

via Does Obama have the will to challenge Israel? | Salon.