Feeling depressed that are aren't among the millions of people around the world who work for the Mossad?
Upset that the Dubai Police Chief hasn't personally named you as a chief assassin yet?
Now's your chance -- you too can join the "I was also in the Dubai hit-squad" Facebook group.
Dubai has reacted with a lot of righteous indignation to the death of Hamas murderer and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on its territory. With the Mossad being blamed for Mabhouh's death, there's been a lot of talk about how the heretofore secret relations between Israel and the UAE have been damaged.Iran is the principal destination of goods re-exported from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of which Dubai is a member. The bulk of these goods go by sea -- the major Iranian port of Bandar Abbas is a mere 100 miles away from Dubai. The emirate boasts a busy dhow port for smaller vessels as well as a modern container port at Jebel Ali. It also offers numerous daily flights to and from several Iranian cities. Annual trade between the two jurisdictions has reportedly tripled to $12 billion over the past five years, and an estimated 8,000 Iranian businesses and 1,200 trading companies are currently based in Dubai.
UAE efforts to clamp down on illicit Iranian trade have grown in the face of U.S. pressure but are still a work in progress. The UAE passed its first national security export control law in 2007, and authorities have seized several illicit shipments destined for Iran. UAE officials say they are making it more difficult for Iranian businessmen to obtain and renew visas and commercial licenses. Similarly, Iranians are reportedly having trouble finding UAE banks to handle their transactions. In addition, plans have been announced to more closely regulate the dhow port on Dubai Creek, where customs supervision is currently nonexistent.
UAE initiatives do not necessarily mean cooperation from Dubai, however. Although the leading emirate, Abu Dhabi, holds nearly 8 percent of global oil reserves and often bankrolls the other six sheikhdoms, each emirate proudly preserves its independent status. Thus, while Abu Dhabi is clearly apprehensive about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, Dubai appears less so. In 2008, Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi, the UAE's minister of economy and planning, explained why its authority and ability to act might be limited: "At the end of the day, Iran is still a neighbor."
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Dubai also has experience with violent death. In 2008, an Egyptian politician paid a hit-man to kill Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim, who was living there in an exclusive apartment block. The hit man was tracked down and arrested because, reportedly, bloodstained footprints marked his escape. The Egyptian authorities imposed gag orders on reporting of the case.
Just weeks before the Mahbouh killing, the magazine Vanity Fair claimed that the CIA had tracked A. Q. Khan during his frequent visits to Dubai and had planned to assassinate him there. The magazine's source said the hit didn't happen "because of lack of political will" in Washington. A CIA spokesperson refused to discuss the question with the magazine.
Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response.
Syria has canceled a planned visit by IAEA inspectors next week because the Syrians are too busy to meet with them. Syria has rejected a planned visit by officials of the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency, a statement by the agency said. In a letter, Syrian officials said they could not host inspectors because of preparations for the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors meeting next week.
So much for Russia being on board for sanctions. A week after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu returned from Moscow, where he publicly called for “crippling sanctions” and “sanctions with teeth” against Iranian energy exports and imports, Oleg Rozhkov, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security and disarmament department, said that Moscow would not back “crippling or paralyzing” sanctions that could lead to the “political or economic or financial isolation” of Iran.
According to Reuters, Rozhkov – when asked by a reporter what sanctions Russia might support – replied, “Those that are directed at resolving nonproliferation questions linked to Iran’s nuclear program.
“What relation to nonproliferation is there in forbidding banking activities with Iran?” he asked. “This is a financial blockade. And oil and gas. These sanctions are aimed only at paralyzing the country and paralyzing the regime.”
Hillary Clinton has apparently put her foot in her mouth. Secretary of State Clinton seems to be suggesting that engagement failed, not because it was inherently a bad idea, but rather because of the rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iranian society, a discovery Clinton voiced recently in Doha.
The problem is that the IRGC was in control well before Obama took over; its rise is nothing new. Here's my colleague Ali Alfoneh, back in February 2008 detailing just how the Revolutionary Guards had eviscerated Iranian society.
Europe has its own Israel lobby. No, it's not a lobby for Israel in Europe. It's a European lobby that attempts to effect change in Israel by intervening in Israel's policies through funding of Arab and other leftist NGO's. And it's anti-Semitic, as I will show you toward the end of this post. The EU may have realized during the second intifada that its concerns were not being listened to. Perhaps they heeded the increasingly alarmist statements of Israelis themselves, such as former Haaretz editor David Landau who in 2007 told US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that the US needed to "rape" Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians. Regardless of the exact cause, in 2002 the European Union began lavishly funding non-governmental organizations in Israel. It claimed that it was doing this because of "the vital contribution made by NGOs to the promotion and protection of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law."
Between 2002 and 2008, a total of $14 million was granted to various Israeli NGOs through the EIDHR. My investigation of the NGOs that received funding revealed that the lion's share of the money benefited two groups: Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. $5.5 million was directed specifically to causes for Palestinians such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel's project "Building a Better Future: Empowering the Palestinian Residents of East Jerusalem to access their planning and house [sic] rights" which received $135,000. A further $7m. went specifically to programs that benefit only Israeli Arabs such as the al-Awna fund's "Master Plan for the Unrecognized Beduin Villages: Securing minority rights for housing and social services" which received $263,000. Even when the EIDHR funded programs for women it did so only for programs for Beduin or Israeli Arab women, except for a token $100,000 it gave to an organization called Isha le Isha (Woman to Woman) which helps fight women trafficking.
There was not one cent directed specifically towards any of the numerous and diverse Jewish communities in Israel: Ethiopians, Russians, Yemenites, Persians or Jews from the Caucasus. The only mention of Jewish citizens as potential recipients was in a grant to the Mossawa Center, the advocacy center for Arab citizens in Israel. It received $402,000 for a project that "aims to combat racism and transform inter-communal relations between target groups who include the Jewish majority, Arab minority and ethnic groups including the Russian, Ethiopian, Mizrahi and Reform Jewish communities."
Around $73,000 was directed towards former IDF soldiers. It wasn't to help them with trauma or reward them for a "shared citizenship." It was to get them to "break the silence" about what they witnessed while in the army, to provide testimony that might lead to a process whereby European courts might put the soldiers or their officers on trial for war crimes. Of course that is not what Breaking the Silence stated for the public. They described their project as "personal encounters with former Israeli combat soldiers."
THE EIDHR's "instrument" to affect Israeli policy is merely the tip of the iceberg. In its November 2009 report "Trojan Horse: The impact of European government funding for Israeli NGOs" NGO Monitor illustrated that individual European embassies in Israel and other EU projects give lavishly to Israeli NGOs, sometimes even making up the majority of their budgets. In fact "foreign-funded local NGOs are responsible for a significant portion of the petitions brought before the Israeli High Court of Justice," says the report.
The EU, realizing it could not get Israel to change its laws through diplomatic means, has resorted to creating an internal lobby within Israel to get Israel to bend to the will of Europe.
The second “D” is the test of double standards. From discriminatory laws many nations enacted against Jews to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick, this differential treatment of Jews was always a clear sign of antisemitism. Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies pursued by other governments produce similar criticism?
It is antisemitic discrimination, for instance, when Israel is singled out for condemnation by the United Nations for perceived human rights abuses while proven obliterators of human rights on a massive scale — like China, Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria, to name just a few — are not even mentioned. Likewise, it is antisemitism when Israel’s Magen David Adom, alone among the world’s ambulance services, is denied admission to the International Red Cross.
In every other country in the world, the EIDHR directs its funding towards large-scale projects supporting "democracy" and "civil society." In Egypt it gave $10m. (2003-2008), none of which went specifically towards projects for the minority Coptic Christians.
Eli Lake has spoken with some of his contacts in the intelligence community, and has published his results in Thursday's Washington Times. The bottom line is that although there is some evidence that the Mossad was not behind Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's liquidation (notably, the fact that two of the alleged liquidators went to Iran from Dubai, and that 26 people were used for a job that needed far less participants), most of the world believes that the Mossad was behind the liquidation and that this too shall pass. There's only one slight problem: Frances Townsend, a homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, said the Obama administration should work discreetly to resolve the issue with the United Arab Emirates.
"I think it's important to the extent that Mossad is believed to be behind the Mabhouh assassination, it is important for the United States to lead the international community to a quiet resolution of this issue," she said.
"The United States can go to the [emirates] and the British behind the scenes and exert their power and influence. That is what they ought to do."
Controversial television reporter, Illana Dayan, who was recently found guilty of character defamation of an IDF officer, was awarded a prize in 2008 by the New Israel Fund.
Dayan decided to donate the prize money to the group Itach – Lawyers for Social Justice. The group was involved in providing material for the Goldstone report.
As a Jew, as someone who has identified with Israel for his entire life, it is profoundly painful to me to admit the honest truth of this day: that Israel’s founding is inextricably bound up with its dispossession of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. In the end, Yom Ha’atzmaut and what the Palestinian people refer to as the Nakba are two inseparable sides of the same coin. And I simply cannot separate these two realities any more.
You will recall that when I blogged the announcement of the government's new hasbara website last week, I was critical of the fact that the site was Hebrew-only. Someone in the government must read my blog, because they have now announced that they will be opening an English-language website in April. Hopefully, the English on the website will be better than the following (lifted word-for-word from the article): “The interest there has been is too good to be true,” Edelstein said. “This shows that we pressed the right buttons.”
Edelstein said the main complaint he had received was the lack of an English-language site.
Training sessions have begun, and a pamphlet about how to defend the country is being distributed at Ben-Gurion Airport.
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Edelstein said Israelis should feel free to advocate for a Palestinian state if that was their opinion, but that his ministry would concentrate on giving Israelis facts and techniques for representing Israel abroad.
“The campaign doesn’t encourage people to give speeches on the Palestinian conflict but to talk about their lives and that we don’t take our wives out to fight Palestinians but to concerts,” Edelstein said.
“If people talk about the beautiful Israel and are ready for the tough questions, it can change the atmosphere for Israel internationally.”
Notice the Islamic crescent? More here.
Al Gore does something smart for a change. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former American Vice President Al Gore has invested $10 million in the Israeli start-up company Green Road Technologies Ltd. The money comes from Gore’s cleantech fund, Generation Investment Management LLP. In making this move, Gore joins other big names who have invested in the Israeli company such as Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Ventures, Balderton Capital, and DAG Ventures.
So what exactly is this Israeli start-up doing that is generating so much buzz? Green Road Technologies has figured out a way to make driving both safer and greener. The company has created the “GreenRoad 360 service” that provides drivers and their fleet managers with real-time feedback on the manner in which a person is driving. When the driver starts the day, the device shows a green light. If the driver displays erratic driving such as slamming on the breaks or swerving, the light becomes yellow. If the reckless driving continues, the light turns red. While it may sound simple, the algorithms can analyze more than 120 different driving maneuvers providing life-saving, and money-saving, feedback to the driver’s supervisor.
Green Road Technologies says their customers can experience a 50% reduction in accident related costs and a 10% reduction in fuel costs. Billions of dollars could be saved every year by improving driving behavior, the most significant factor in determining fuel efficiency. By improving driving behavior, this Israeli start-up is hoping to make companies more efficient, more green, and safer. According to TechCrunch, “fuel savings just from driving less aggressively can save a company some $300 per vehicle per year, and when you factor in crash savings it’s more like $1000 to $4000 in savings per vehicle per year.”The company has its headquarters near San Francisco as well as its 90-person research and development center in Or Yehuda in Israel. Chief of Safety Hod Fleishman, one of the company’s founders, told Globes that he believes that the company could become profitable very soon. He explained, “This may be our final financing round.”
Two interesting tidbits about the Dubai investigation in this New York Times article. Here's the first one. The Dubai police statement issued Wednesday included a striking detail: two of the new suspects, identified as Nicole Sandra McCabe and Adam Marcus Korman and carrying Australian passports, left Dubai on a ship bound for Iran. All the others traveled by plane to European and Asian countries, according to the statement. The statement included no further information about the two suspects or why they would have gone to Iran.
All 26 suspects appear to have traveled on passports from countries that do not need prior visas to travel to the United Arab Emirates, and do not need travelers to go through eye scans or provide other biometric data required of some nationalities. Emirati officials said this week that they might revise their visa guidelines.
Moshe Feiglin says that the uproar over the liquidation of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh - allegedly by the Mossad - is not going away. Somebody in the Mossad and the echelon that authorized the Mabhouh mission is still living in the eighties. They didn't notice that the Western world, and particularly the British, no longer sees Israel as the good guy in the story. For them, Mabhouh is a freedom fighter.
If you didn't notice, Israel's most senior ministers are wanted in Europe's capitals for war crimes. No need for sophisticated electronics. All that you have to do is open your eyes to reality. If Israel's leaders are wanted for crimes against humanity, what does that say about our country? In the eyes of much of the world, Israel is no more than a pirate ship sailing on borrowed time.
The world has changed, ladies and gentlemen. Israel can no longer expect the international community to wink its eye and look the other way.
To the esteemed Meir Dagan. Please turn off your computer and your telephones - and think for a moment about Israel's place in the world today.
Hamas has reacted to a report published in Haaretz on Wednesday, which claimed that Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son a senior Hamas official, was an Israeli informant for ten years. "We came to the conclusion that Israeli media have become yet another tool against our people; that is why we will not comment on reports. What has been published, does not deserve a reply," Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas leader, said.
"This is fabricated lies, which Israeli media deploy to shake Palestinians' fortitude," he said.
The Obama administration is demanding that Syria distance itself from Iran. The US asked that Syria distance itself from Iran, claiming that the tight relations between the two countries causes problems in the entire region.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Syria must stop intervening in Lebanon's affairs, stop providing weapons to Hezbollah, and promote renewed peace talks with Israel.
With all of the fuss over the false passports that were used, Samuel Segev reminds us that there is a lot to be admired about the skillfully planned assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The most important lesson is the penetration of Hamas, Syrian and Iranian security services. From information gathered from the media and other sources, it's clear that the killers visited Dubai several times in the past and knew all the security arrangements in the country. They were aware, of course, of the videos and the sophisticated monitoring equipment in the airport and the various hotels. Hence, they took into consideration the possibility that their passport photos could be exposed.
But they trusted the skills of the professionals who specialize in creating fictional identities and different looks. The use of the false passports was dictated by the nature of the operation's site. Dubai, a flourishing open city, has a border policy that granted the U.S., the European Union and other countries visa waivers and other facilities. Because of its location, Dubai is often used by foreign intelligence services as a "listening post" to Iran.
Like most of the Arab countries, Dubai doesn't recognize Israel. However, like other countries in the Persian Gulf, Dubai is part of the western anti-terror coalition and as such allows low-level contacts with Israel. Israeli tourists carrying foreign passports and on their way to Asian destinations often stop at Dubai airport and frequent the magnificent duty-free stores that are considered among the cheapest in the world.
An objective analysis of the Dubai operation would lead to the conclusion that the benefits of Mabhouh's killing outweigh the political cost. Despite the European demand for Israeli explanations, no one really believes that there will be any diplomatic consequences. All countries use fake passports in their anti-terror struggle and all will continue to use them in future.
There is also no operational damage. All 11 members of the team are safe and all will continue to be active, although with a slight change in their disguise.
Even Richard Cohen believes that President Obumbler has to start acting tougher on Iran or all hell will break loose here. Israel, of all countries, has little faith in the rationality of mankind. It simply knows better. So the question of whether Ahmadinejad is playing the madman or really is a madman is not an academic exercise. It has a real and frightening immediacy that too often, in too many precincts, gets belittled as a form of paranoia. For instance, when Israeli leaders warn that they might take preemptive action against Iran -- say, an attempt to bomb its nuclear facilities as they did in Iraq in 1981 -- it is dismissed as irresponsible saber-rattling. Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski even suggested that if Israel tried such a thing, the United States might have to back it down with force. The Brzezinski Doctrine is refreshing in its perverse boldness: We shoot our friends to defend our enemies.
An Iranian bomb is not a matter that concerns only Israel. It would upend the balance of power throughout the Middle East and encourage radical/terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas to ratchet up their war against Israel. Other Middle East nations, not content to rely on an American nuclear umbrella, would seek their own bombs. An unstable region would go nuclear. (It speaks volumes about Middle Eastern reality and hypocrisy that Egypt serenely lives with an Israeli bomb but breaks out in diplomatic hives at the prospect of an Iranian one.) Have a good night's sleep.
I have no idea whether Ahmadinejad merely acts crazy or is crazy. I do know, though, that Iran seems intent on getting nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. I also know that nothing the United States and its allies have done has dissuaded Ahmadinejad (or the mullahs or the Revolutionary Guard Corps) from his goal. It may be time for Barack Obama, ever the soul of moderation, to borrow a tactic from Richard Nixon and fight crazy with crazy. The way things are going, it would be crazy not to.
Unfortunately, support for Israel is rapidly becoming a partisan issue. Over the last five years, support for Israel has increased slightly among Republicans (rising from about 77% for each of the past several years to 85% today) and independents, but has stayed roughly the same among Democrats. Since 2001, however, there has been a more dramatic shift in partisan attitudes: a 25-point increase in sympathy for Israel among Republicans and an 18-point increase among independents. Even on this longer-term basis, support for Israel among Democrats has been relatively flat.
The poll goes on to show that most Americans don't believe that peace is coming between Israel and the Arabs anytime soon, although (surprise!) a higher percentage of Democrats believes in peace than Republicans or Independents.
Read the whole thing.
When he was a Senator and he wanted to avoid taking stands on controversial issues, Barack Hussein Obama would please all of the people all of the time by voting 'present.' He's trying to do the same thing on Iran. It's not working. Team Obama has spent the year dithering and hoping that doing nothing would allow the opposition inside Iran time to peacefully bring down Ahmadinejad's government. But while the Obama team nervously talks among themselves, they have missed the opportunity to make the Internet available to the thousands of student protesters inside Iran or to implement harsh sanctions on the government that could push Ahmadinejad over the cliff and deliver the fatal blow to his presidency. The Obama administration should cease making the old, tired claim that American involvement would undermine the opposition by playing into the hands of Ahmadinejad's re-cycled message that this is an American CIA coup on his presidency. We are well past the point of the Arab world thinking thousands of Iranian students and opposition leaders are in the streets of Tehran because of American enticement. Many in the Arab world would privately cheer if Ahmadinejad's government fell or if the Iranian nuclear sites were destroyed. The lack of Obama leadership and assistance to the opposition inside Iran is now prohibiting the fall of a dictatorship on the brink. When White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs complains more often about former Vice President Dick Cheney than about Ahmadinejad it sends the wrong message to the Iranians, Chinese and Russians.
Team Obama's robotic and bland pronouncements citing general themes and re-cycled talking points from the Bush Administration will not stop Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon. It is time for even Obama to admit that he failed to convince the Iranians to give up their illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons and has failed to motivate the cheering crowds of Germany and Egypt to do more than celebrate the kinder, gentler, weaker American President. There may still be time to make sure Iran doesn't acquire the nuclear weapons that they will surely use, but it will require quick and sustained action by the White House. An immediate combination of paralyzing UN sanctions, aggressive support for the struggling opposition inside Iran, firm pressure on Europeans to implement the current financial sanctions and a credible use of a military deterrence must all be realized -- and soon.
Don't hold your breaths waiting for it to happen.
What could go wrong?
I'm not sure I agree with the explanation of why Obama won't bomb Iran (I believe he's an anti-Israel pacifist), but the rest of this is correct. The president will not bomb Iran's nuclear installations for precisely the same reasons that George W. Bush did not bomb Iran's nuclear installations: Because we don't know exactly where they all are, because we don't know whether such a raid could stop the Iranian nuclear program for more than a few months, and because Iran's threatened response -- against Israelis and U.S. troops, via Iranian allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon -- isn't one we want to cope with at this moment. Nor do we want the higher oil prices that would instantly follow. No American president doing a sober calculation would start a war of choice now, while U.S. troops are actively engaged on two other fronts, and no American president could expect public support for more than a nanosecond.
But even if Obama does not bomb Iran, that doesn't mean that no one else will. At the moment, when Washington is consumed by health care and the implications of Massachusetts, it may seem as if Obama's most important legacy, positive or negative, will be domestic. In the future, we might not consider any of this important at all. The defining moment of his presidency may well come at 2 a.m. some day when he picks up the phone and is told that the Israeli prime minister is on the line: Israel has just carried out a raid on Iranian nuclear sites. What then?
This is hardly an inevitable scenario: If the Israelis were as enthusiastic about bombing raids as some believe, they would have carried them out already. They had no qualms about sending eight jets to take out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, or about bombing a purported Syrian facility in 2007. Both are now considered model operations. They were brief and successful, they provoked no serious retaliation, and they even won de facto acceptance from the outside world as legitimate defensive measures.
The Iranian context is different, as Zeev Raz, the squadron leader of the 1981 raid, readily concedes. "There is no single target that you could bomb with eight aircraft," he told the Economist (in a strangely tragic article that says Raz "exudes gloom" while his children apply for foreign passports). The Israelis have the same doubts as everyone else about the efficacy of raids, which is why they have focused on covert sabotage and even off-the-record diplomacy, despite having no diplomatic relations with Iran, in the hopes of slowing down the nuclear development process. They have also quietly studied the ways in which Iran could be deterred, knowing that they will have the advantage in nuclear technology for the next couple of decades. Although they keep all options on the table, they have so far concluded that bombing raids aren't worth the consequences.
At some point, that calculation could change. Because Americans often assume that everyone else perceives the world the way we do, it is worth repeating the obvious here: Many Israelis regard the Iranian nuclear program as a matter of life and death. The prospect of a nuclear Iran isn't an irritant or a distant threat. It is understood directly in the context of the Iranian president's provocative attacks on Israel's right to exist and his public support for historians who deny the Holocaust. If you want to make Israelis paranoid, hint that they might be the target of an attempted mass murder. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does exactly that.
