Israelis have taken over Afghan skies. Israeli drones that is. While Israeli soldiers can't fight in the war in Afghanistan, Israeli drones can. Starting next week, five NATO member countries will be operating unmanned aerial vehicles produced in the Jewish state in anti-Taliban operations in the Central Asian country.
Next week, officials from the German military will arrive to take delivery of an undisclosed number of Heron UAVs [pictured. CiJ], made by Israel Aerospace Industries.
The Heron is a medium altitude long endurance UAV that can remain airborne for more than 30 hours with a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, and can carry a payload of 250 kg. It has a wingspan of 16.6 meters, a takeoff weight of 1,200 kg. and an operational range of several hundred kilometers. It can carry a variety of sensors used for surveillance and target identification.
Germany is the fifth country to operate Israel Aerospace Industries UAVs in Afghanistan. In December, the Royal Australian Air Force took delivery of several Heron systems, joining Spain, France and Canada that already operate the platform.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, James K. Glassman and Michael Doran explain how the United States government can support the 'green revolution' and undermine the Iranian regime. Such a policy would have four separate tasks:
• Provide moral and educational support for the Green Revolution. Here third parties, rather than the U.S. government, should play the main role. Dissidents should be reminded that others have succeeded on the same path they are travelling.
We should, for instance, publicize reports on what worked in Ukraine or Georgia, spread testimony by leaders like the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel, and distribute, in Farsi, guides to nonviolent change like Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy" and Peter Ackerman's "A Force More Powerful." It's time to dub into Farsi documentaries on the fall of Ceausescu, Milosevic and Pinochet; the transitions in South Africa and Poland; and the achievements of the U.S. civil-rights movement.
• Tighten sanctions on the Iranian economy and publicize the connection between regime belligerence and economic malaise. Despite Iran's oil wealth, the economy has for years been in miserable shape thanks to bad management, corruption and the squandering of funds on Arab terrorist groups and the nuclear program. The slogans of the protestors demonstrate that they are connecting the dots between the regime's foreign policy and economic privation.
• Do all we can to increase communications within Iran, as well as between Iran and the outside world. Opposition movements succeed through sharing and disseminating information. Broadcasting by the taxpayer-funded Radio Farda and Voice of America satellite TV should be ramped up, and we should encourage the U.K. to do the same with the BBC. We also should vigorously protest attempts by Iran to jam broadcast signals in defiance of international law, back private media—from satellite TV pitched at young people to cell-phone messaging to social networking—and help Iranians get the technology to overcome regime attempts to block and censor.
• Finally, we should refute, in campaign style, the four key propositions of Iranian propaganda. These are that the reformers are unrepresentative and unpatriotic; that the U.S. is in decline and wants to cut a deal with Iran and extricate itself from the Middle East; that Iran's nuclear program will advance the country technologically; and that international opposition to the program is a Western plot to keep Iran, as a Muslim nation, poor and backward.
NGO Monitor has sued the European Union for violating its own transparency rules regarding funding of 'Palestinian' NGO's. NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog organization, announced on Wednesday it has filed suit against the European Commission of the European Union, demanding that it meet its own transparency requirements and disclose internal documents revealing the decision-making process and criteria for funding Israeli and Palestinian nongovernment organizations.Read the whole thing. The extent of anti-Israel bias among NGO's is not to be believed.
Gerald Steinberg, the president of NGO Monitor, said at a press conference in Jerusalem that the EU has contributed at least NIS 177 million since June 2005 to about 150 Israeli and Palestinian NGOs, most of which he said demonized and delegitimized Israel.
The application to the EU Court of Justice was filed by the Asserson Law Office, an international law firm providing English legal services from Jerusalem.
Steinberg, who is a British citizen, said he was applying to the court on the basis of a European Commission regulation which states that "in the event of a total or partial refusal to grant access to documents, the applicant may institute court proceedings against the institution."
Could it be that the Obama administration is finally going to let up on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and start pressuring 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President U.S.-Israeli relations had once been marked by unwonted coolness under Netanyahu's premiership and the Obama presidency. But Western diplomats said Wednesday they detected signs that Washington was increasingly frustrated with Abbas.
One Western diplomat in the region, speaking privately, said that Abbas "as the weaker partner" was now the focus of U.S. efforts to stir the peace process back to life. "It's a dramatic shift from the way it started with Obama year ago," he said.
Mitchell raised Israeli hackles last week with remarks about curbing U.S. financial help for the Jewish state if peace efforts got bogged down. But the diplomat spoke of an "implicit threat" of cuts in U.S. aid to the West Bank if Abbas held out.
Signs of a shifting balance of power were clear in September when Obama softened his opposition to Israeli settlement policy and persuaded Abbas to meet him, with Netanyahu, in New York.
The Jerusalem municipality has slammed a report that appeared on al-Beeb earlier this week, which claimed that the municipality increased the pace of demolitions of illegal Arab-owned buildings toward the end of 2009 in order to use up the demolition budget. "The amount of demolitions carried out by the Jerusalem Municipality every year is determined solely by the number of illegally constructed buildings erected by those residents who flouted the law," the Jerusalem Municipality said Thursday afternoon in response to a show aired on the BBC news network which claimed the municipality allocates a special budget for house demolitions.
...
The municipality said in a statement the number of demolitions conducted in eastern Jerusalem actually decreased in 2009 - from 86 in 2008 to 65 in 2009, a 25% decrease.
It said also that there was simply no connection between the annual budget of the municipality and the number of demolitions conducted.
The municipality called Corbin's report "completely and utterly false" and a "distasteful distortion of reality."
The municipality also expressed doubt whether the reporter really had in her possession a list of planned house demolitions, saying "it would be prudent to ask Ms. Corbin what happened to her alleged list of 40 planned demolitions since her filming in late 2009. You'll easily find yet another one of her distasteful distortions."
In an interview published on Thursday, President Obumbler admitted to Time Magazine's Joe Klein that his administration was overconfident about being able to bring peace between Israelis and 'Palestinians.' The other area which I think is worth noting is that the Middle East peace process has not moved forward. And I think it's fair to say that for all our efforts at early engagement, it is not where I want it to be.
Why is that? My sense of it is that [U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George] Mitchell spent a number of months negotiating a settlement deal and saw some progress from the Israelis and kind of got blinded by that, because he didn't see that it wasn't sufficient progress for the Palestinians.
I'll be honest with you. A) This is just really hard. Even for a guy like George Mitchell, who helped bring about the peace in Northern Ireland. This is as intractable a problem as you get. B) Both sides — the Israelis and the Palestinians — have found that the political environment, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that. From [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas' perspective, he's got Hamas looking over his shoulder and, I think, an environment generally within the Arab world that feels impatient with any process.
And on the Israeli front — although the Israelis, I think, after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, they still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures. And so what we're going to have to do — I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn't produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted, and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high. Moving forward, though, we are going to continue to work with both parties to recognize what I think is ultimately their deep-seated interest in a two-state solution in which Israel is secure and the Palestinians have sovereignty and can start focusing on developing their economy and improving the lives of their children and grandchildren.
While the Prime Minister's Office had no official response to the president's remarks, Channel 2 quoted an unnamed senior Israeli official as saying that Israel had warned the Americans that their Middle East strategy would not bear fruit.
Another senior official tried to lower any expectations that Mitchell's current regional trip - the US envoy arrived in Israel Wednesday night from Lebanon and Syria - would lead to any dramatic progress, saying that it was not clear whether the Palestinian Authority had made the strategic decision to re-enter the talks.
The official said Netanyahu had no intention of giving Mitchell any more gestures to take to the Palestinians, saying that the Palestinians have climbed up a "eucalyptus tree," and every time a gesture is given as a ladder, they climb even higher.
Remember the 'Brand Israel' nonsense that the foreign ministry wanted us to push at the bloggers' conference a year and a half ago? The idea was that instead of promoting the country the way it has traditionally been promoted, the foreign ministry wanted to promote bikini-clad women on beaches in Tel Aviv and anything that was disconnected from the fact that this is a Jewish state.In the past few weeks, however, three major events have propelled Israel to the forefront of the public debate in a much more positive light. Following the unsuccessful undie-bomber attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, Americans effluviated about the need for improved airport security, and suddenly everyone was aware that Ben-Gurion airport has not had a security breach in a generation, despite the fact that its passengers never have to part with their favorite nail clippers or the 6-oz. bottles of perfume they picked up in Tel Aviv. The difference, it seems, is not that Israelis indulge in racial profiling, but that their security personnel are intensely trained to recognize the fact that people who know they are about to die behave differently than ordinary airline passengers (who knew!). Although that’s oversimplifying things, the fact is that Israeli airline security really does put a far greater emphasis on the human components of terror prevention: recognizing behaviors, building a network of informants, and so on.
The second event was the earthquake in Haiti. Within hours, Israel had dispatched more than 200 personnel, including rescue teams and high-level medical staff. They set up a full-fledged field hospital, the only one of its kind, complete with digital imaging, an ICU, and more. For the past couple of days, both this CNN report and this MSNBC one have been passed around the Internet, highlighting Israel’s hospital. In addition, today we learn that the Israelis also set up a global communications center, enabling journalists to use the Internet and phones via Israel’s Amos satellite. One American observer has described this as a “home run” for Israeli PR.
The third was the publication of Saul Singer and Dan Senor’s Start-Up Nation, which hit the New York Times bestseller list. Of all the pro-Israel books to come out in the past year, this one probably made the biggest splash: by highlighting what Israel is indisputably good at (business innovation), Singer and Senor succeeded in changing the subject and constructing a positive image of Israel that is not all war.
How come these recent events have been so successful at helping Israel’s image, while the “rebranding” stunt didn’t?
“Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area.”
Nonviolent resistance is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation. ... The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics — both nonviolent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. No other successful nonviolent movement was able to achieve what it did without a concurrent violent movement ...
It sounds like the next 'world leader' to be welcomed to Tehran may well be 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President The official Fatah movement website, Voice of Palestine announced yesterday that they are removing all material from their website from Iranian sources opposing the Iranian regime.
The following is a translation of excerpts from the Arabic item:
Voice of Palestine deletes all news concerning the OMPI of its website and announced not to deal with their news
20-01-2010 - 12:01 AM
www.palvoice.com/popup.php?id=22201
Eshtewi general supervisor for Center for Media and Information - The Voice of Palestine - Fatah announced that the New Department of the web page was deleting all news concerning OMPI [AL: People’s Mujahedeen of Iran] from the servers and that the Center would not deal with any news of the MEK[AL: Mujahedin-e Khalq - another name for OMPI] from now on. The Technical Center team is working to delete all the links present to these items in global search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and the Director of the Center hopes that the process of deleting the links from the web site will be completed in the next 24 hours, so that the servers will be completely free from any news for the MEK.
The move is to resolve the impact of news published by the Editor web page entitled "Commander of the Iranian Resistance message on the occasion of the uprising of the Iranian people" which was carrying with it the words insulting to the Iranian regime, in Persian...
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Eshtewi said that the relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Palestinian Authority and Fatah is the fraternal relationship and the Iranian regime would not be offended from the pages of electronic media and that the Palestinian Fatah will not allow news of any form to be distributed which affect the fraternal relations between the two countries.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that the IDF has set up communications capabilities in Haiti, including wireless internet and video conferencing. Here are some more details. While the world has already heard about the remarkable work at the IDF field hospital in Port-au-Prince, not much has been written about the communications room set up on the island by reservists from the military's C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) branch.
"This is an unprecedented operation in its scale and size," explained Lt.-Col. (res.) Yaakov Magal. "We did not even have something like this during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last January."
According to Magal, before the rescue teams were sent to Haiti, the IDF ensured that the delegation would have around-the-clock access to one of Israel's Amos communications satellites. It also sent millions of dollars of equipment to Haiti.
"This operation is called 'End of the World,' but with our communications systems we gave soldiers and delegation members the ability to call home at the price of a domestic call in Israel," he said.
The wireless Internet has attracted, he said, journalists from around the world who come to send their materials back to their editorial offices.
Magal and his team also set up video conference systems in surgery theaters to give field surgeons the ability to consult with experts back in Israeli hospitals. "They can turn on the camera and even watch the surgeries in Israel as they occur in Haiti," he said.
Anyone still think we can't take out Iran's nukes?
Heh.
Meanwhile, Rachel Abrams marvels at the missing contribution from 'our friends the Saudis.'
So where, beyond an expression of condolence from the “king,” are the offers of help and money from the House of Saud? It seems it was God’s little joke to hand the greatest supplies of oil and natural gas to a people who part with their riches for their own ends only. Not only have the rulers of sand and oil donated not a single penny so far to the Haiti relief effort, but a scouring of the English-language Saudi press turns up not even a mention of the word Haiti. Perhaps they will be shamed into reaching into the very, very full pockets of their thwabs to pull out a contribution. If they’re shamable.
Just wondering: If his country were to suffer a terrible natural disaster, and the Israelis were willing to deploy their miraculous field hospitals and search teams to this most Jew-hating of states, would the Saudi “king” allow them to land on his oil-drenched soil to search for survivors and save the lives of his “subjects?” Would he first demand that any mention of the Jewish state be scrubbed from their passports?
Israel undoubtedly would try to send rescuers to Saudi Arabia - we sent them to Indonesia after the tsunami and I know we have offered to send them to Iran.
I have no idea how the Saudis would respond.
Here's an update on the Israeli field hospital's activities. Let's go to the videotape.
By the way, they're up to nine babies delivered as of this writing.
There's a sucker born every minute and Aziz Dwaik, Hamas's most senior representative in the West Bank, apparently found one in Hebron this week. The sucker's name is David Martin Abrahams, and unfortunately, he's described as a British millionaire with close connections to the British and Israeli governments. Dwaik told Abrahams that Hamas really doesn't want to drive us into the sea. Of course, Dwaik doesn't even speak for Hamas in Gaza, let alone for its real leadership in Syria. Abrahams is scheduled to brief British Foreign Secretary David Milliband this weekend on the outcome of his meeting with Dwaik and other top Hamas officials in the West Bank.
Abrahams, a major donor to Britain's Labor Party, told The Jerusalem Post he would urge Milliband to "consider the implications of Hamas's positive overtures."
During the meeting in Hebron, Dwaik stressed that other Hamas leaders, including Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal and Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, have voiced support for the idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 boundaries.
Abrahams said that he would be happy to facilitate a dialogue between Hamas on the one hand, and Israel and the international community on the other. He said he was "very excited" to hear from the most prominent leader of Hamas in the West Bank that the movement would be prepared to nullify its charter and accept Israel.
"The fact that there is a possibility for recognition of Israel is a symbolic gesture," Abrahams added. "We can all look for good in people and we can all look for bad in people. I always look for the good."
Asked whether he might be condemned as naïve for believing Hamas, Abrahams said, "People might say that I'm naïve, so let them. But I'm prepared to give them [Hamas] a chance because I've got faith and confidence in Dwaik and Haniyeh. We can't allow 1.5 million to be festering in the Gaza Strip while the majority of them are good and well-educated."
Abrahams said that his decision to engage Hamas was aimed at "preventing bloodshed on both sides." He said he was encouraged by the massive support he found among the Jewish community in Britain for the idea of talking to Hamas.
"I recently published an article in the Jewish Chronicle to test the temperature of the water within the Jewish community about Hamas," he said. "I found a lot of support among Jews for dealing with Hamas and I was pleasantly surprised."
Denying that he had delivered any message from the British government or the EU leadership to Hamas, Abrahams said he was convinced more than ever that the movement posed no threat to the US. "Hamas is different from al-Qaida," he said. "Hamas is no threat to Western interests."
'Hamas is no threat to Western interests....' Anyone know how to sing Kumbaya in British?
Wherever the borders may be drawn, what is clear is that underneath the Palestinians’ future homeland lie the ruins of ancient Israel — ruins that archaeologists from all over the world have labored hard to begin uncovering over the last 40 years. From Shiloh to Hebron, from the mountains above Nablus to the City of David in eastern Jerusalem, a great many of the most important insights about life in ancient Israel have come from archaeological expeditions carried out in lands captured by Israel in the 1967 war.Read the whole thing.
Why is this issue serious enough to be considered in peace negotiations? After all, aren’t the safety and security of Israelis, and the rights of Palestinians, much more important?
For Jews, embracing, remembering and preserving our past is an existential need. We can argue about how much land to give up, and whether to dismantle settlements. We can disagree over so many things that define our Judaism — the meaning of Halacha, the role of women in rituals, homosexuality, the authorship of the Bible. But there is one thing on which all movements of Judaism have always agreed: the importance of the past in defining who we are.
For thousands of years, Jews have clung feverishly to their past in facing every trial, and celebrated their history at every opportunity. Every Jewish holiday is a commemoration of our ancient heritage; every prayer a recollection of our patriarchs; every greeting to fellow Jews from around the world spoken in a language redolent with biblical idiom; every social movement an effort to recapture the dreams of the prophets.
It is our past, in other words, that makes us Jews.
I hesitate to even run this story because I don't want to contribute to the hysteria surrounding it. As I noted in the past, the FBI and the CIA have a paranoia about the Mossad spying on them dating back to the Jonathan Pollard case. But ignoring it isn't going to make it go away so....Two attorneys in the counterespionage unit of the U.S. Department's of Justice National Security division, Deborah Curtis and Heather Schmidt, presented documents found on the scientist's computer. One document, titled "Proposed Operations for 2005-2006," referred to the need to carry out "a penetration of NASA," the U.S. space agency.
Another document, according to the prosecution, shows Nozette attempted to obtain highly confidential material by using his high-level security clearance and infiltrating other people's computers.
Other documents mention the names of Yossi Weiss and Yossi Fishman. Weiss is a former project manager and today the deputy CEO of IAI and head of the company's missile and space division. Fishman was the IAI's representative in the U.S. and is today the CEO of ODF Optronics.
Fishman told Haaretz he knew Nozette the way he knew other Americans employed by the IAI at the time as consultants. "We did not engage in any kind of spying activity or information gathering, perish the thought. The relationship was business as usual."
The IAI is not mentioned specifically by name in the documents. It is referred to as a foreign company or as a space company owned by the Israeli government." Background talks with administration officials indicate the references are indeed to IAI.
The indictment and the documents indicate that Nozette was employed for nine years as an IAI consultant. Versions vary as to how much he was paid, from $170,000 to $225,000. His direct superior was Israel Aircraft Industries International, a U.S.-registered company.
The FBI searched Nozette's home and computer and found additional proof of his connection to Israel. He visited here several times, but did not report this - as is required by his high security clearance. The FBI confiscated letters he wrote to Israelis, reports he forwarded to the IAI, a map of Israel, photos of assorted places in Israel, a Hebrew-language catalog of archaeological artifacts and other items.
A 17-year old boy took out his Tefillin (phylactories - see picture) to pray on a morning flight from New York to Louisville on Thursday and someone decided they were a bomb. As a result, the plane was diverted to Philadelphia. City police Lt. Frank Vanore said a 17-year-old boy on the plane was using tefillin.
Tefillin is a set of small black boxes attached to leather straps and containing biblical passages. One box is strapped to the arm; the other box is placed on the head.
Vanore said the crew on US Airways Flight 3079 questioned the teen, who explained the ritual. Still, the pilot decided to land in Philadelphia.
The flight had left La Guardia airport in New York on Thursday morning bound for Louisville, Kentucky. It landed without incident in Philadelphia around 9 a.m.
Vanore said the teen has been very cooperative with law enforcement.
