Iran, Israel ready to go to war

MOSCOW. (Pyotr Goncharov, for RIA Novosti) - On April 18, the London Times reported that "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."

Several days later, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Israel of being the "most cruel and racist regime," sparking a scandal at a UN racism conference in Geneva.

At the same time, Israeli websites reported that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu had met with the Israeli Defense Minister, the Chief of the General Staff and other defense leaders three times during the past week. He was reportedly informed about preparations for an assault at Iran's military facilities and was "pleasantly surprised" at how far these preparations had advanced.

How true can these reports be, and how high is the probability of Israel bombing out Iran's nuclear program?

Israel has always said that it would not allow Iran to advance to a technology level allowing it to create a nuclear bomb. One can understand its logic. While developing its nuclear technology, Iran keeps reminding Israel that it has no right to exist on the political map of the world.

Israel has always seen a "red line" in Iran's nuclear program beyond which Iran would become a direct threat to Israel. As defined by Israeli and European analysts, this "red line" comprises a certain development level of nuclear technology and a deadline, 2010. Therefore, it can be assumed that the media has reported a planned inspection by the new Israeli premier of the country's readiness to liquidate its biggest enemy.

There are several facts pointing in this direction.

Israel and the United States plan to hold a major ballistic missile defense exercise later this year, called Juniper Cobra. The maneuver will jointly test three different American and Israeli missile defense systems.

The Israel Air Force's Air Defense Division, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) have held the Juniper Cobra exercise for the past five years. The upcoming exercise is planned to be the most complex and extensive yet.

This may also mean that Israel and the U.S. are preparing for 2010, even if only in terms of defense.

Can a military scenario be avoided?

Israel has been living on the assumption that it must not be defeated. The smallest step backward is seen there as tantamount to the demise of the Israeli state.

Meanwhile, Iran has openly declared its ambition to become the regional power. It can attain its goal if it proves that Israel is ineffective as a state.

Why not try to push the enemy towards defeat, especially a military defeat, by forcing him to start a military operation with unpredictable consequences?

The current Tehran leaders have been saying and doing things that are actually forcing Israel to order its aircraft to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Tehran has announced several nuclear and missile achievements, thereby encouraging the international community to question the "peaceful nature" of its nuclear program.

As a result, the general concern is gradually giving way to the belief that Iran will eventually create a nuclear bomb, or that it is rapidly moving towards this goal. Ahmadinejad said in one of his recent speeches that Iran's nuclear ambition was fuelled by the immorality of the states that have the nuclear technology.

Indeed, this does not describe Iran's nuclear program as peaceful.

There is a definite loser in the Iranian-Israeli confrontation. It is Russia. If a war breaks out now, everyone will blame Russia.

The EU and the United States will blame Russia for failure to convince Tehran to stop its uranium enrichment program, Israel will blame Russia for selling weapons to Iran, and Iran will blame it for failure to deliver the S-300 defense systems.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

For more information in Russianhttp://en.rian.ru/analysis/20090422/121244833.html

UN expert 'biased' on Israel's Gaza offensive: US

The United States Monday said UN expert Richard Falk was "biased" in calling for an investigation on Israel's January offensive in the Gaza Strip on grounds it could be construed as a war crime.

"Look, we've expressed our concern many times about the special rapporteur's views on dealing with that question," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told a press briefing.

"We've found the rapporteur's views to be anything but fair. We find them to be biased. We've made that very clear," he added.

In a report presented Monday at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, UN expert on the Palestinian territories Falk called for a probe to assess if the Israeli forces could differentiate between civilian and military targets in Gaza.

"If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful, and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law," Falk said in the report.

"On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion," he added, pointing out that attacks were targeted at densely populated areas.

Wood said the United States was aware it could not prevent an investigation, but stressed: "if there are going to be these types of investigations, they need to be non-biased.

"They need to take into account the situations on the ground and the realities on the ground and -- and go from there.

Israel in late December launched a three-week offensive in Gaza which left over 1,300 Palestinians dead and countless of homes destroyed. The offensive was a retaliation for Palestine rocket attacks on Israeli territory.

Falk had focused his report on the legal issues arising from the war, as he had been unable to enter Gaza to assess the human rights situation on the ground.

He attempted a mission in December, but was detained by the Israelis in a facility close to Ben Gurion airport before being expelled the day after.

Falk has been highly critical of Israel's policies against the Palestinians, saying early December that they amounted to a crime against humanity.

Source: AFP American Edition

Israeli Professor - 'We Could Destroy All European Capitals'

By Nadim Ladki


(IAP News) — An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.

Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, Professor Martin Van Crevel said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force."

Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that "collective deportation" was Israel's only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.

"The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this (the Israeli government) are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent."

Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians.

"I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed."

Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."

Creveld argued that Israel wouldn't care much about becoming a rogue state.

"Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that this will happen before Israel goes under."

http://www.rense.com/general34/esde.htm

Israel must prepare to turn its military might from Gaza to Iran

By Amir Oren
Brig. Gen. Sami Turjeman is commander of the 36th Division in the Golan Heights, and is one of the most outstanding officers of his rank in the Israel Defense Forces. He is expected to be promoted this year to the rank of major general. Turjeman was head of the operations division at the General Staff during the tempestuous years of 2006 and 2007 - when the IDF embarked simultaneously on operations in both Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip, in the wake of the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and then attacked the North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria.

A few weeks ago, shortly before he set out for a visit to brigade commander Avi Peled and the Golani and Armored Corps fighters, as they undertook maneuvers not far from his headquarters in the Golan Heights, Turjeman pointed to a corner in his office. He had heard from Avigdor Kahalani, one of his predecessors in the 36th Brigade, that a secret opening to a tunnel that led to a bunker, to which the commander can escape in the event that Syrian tanks surround the command center, was concealed there.

The lines of Syrian armored columns between Damascus and the border have not been at the top of the IDF's list of concerns in recent years, nor has that country's air force. Indeed, in Turjeman's opinion, the Arabs have - in practice although not in theory - very effective air forces. He's thinking not of their airplanes, but rather of the fact that everything that hits Israel from the sky is considered "air force," and involves missile and rocket systems of different types and ranges, which are in the possession of various countries and organizations. Kiryat Shmona, Be'er Sheva, the Israel Air Force bases at Tel Nof, Hatzerim and Hatzor, and other bases and essential installations - all are within the scope of this danger.
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It is no wonder the U.S. Army, which has 100 soldiers manning the large radar installation in the Negev meant to detect Iranian missiles, has hastened to assure its troops that they are not at risk.

Facing an "air force of the poor," this week Israel mainly deployed its own splendid IAF. It's an acclaimed force, and rightly so, because in Israel, there is the IDF, and then there is the air force, and they are two organizations of different levels.

The ground forces need many junior officers for a short period, whereas the air force needs junior officers for long periods. The need for the mass production of the first sort - i.e., of platoon commanders - as compared to the qualitative selectiveness used with respect to the second sort - air crews (and naval officers) - is reflected in the difference between the levels of the two organizations. This difference has been exacerbated over the years, because in the IAF the selection process continues with those who hope to climb to command and high command levels. In the ground forces, on the other hand, there is a more arbitrary or random placement for soldiers aged 18 or 19, for example, in the artillery and not in the Paratroops.

Discussions about the "land maneuvers" that are the ground forces' part of the operation in Gaza, are promissory notes still waiting to be cashed.

There cannot be an expanded operation without IAF support, both fire power and reconnaissance, especially while the ground forces have been waiting for conditions that will enable them to enter the Strip.

The IDF of the Second Lebanon War, under the command of Dan Halutz, was not all that bad, and the IDF of today, under the command of Gabi Ashkenazi, is not all that good. It is the same army that was brought out of Lebanon in 2000 by Ehud Barak, when he was prime minister, and by Ashkenazi, when he was GOC Northern Command. Parts of it are disciplined and professional, and parts are in real need of improvement.

As has always been the case with Ashkenazi, the IDF is a pistol that has had a silencer affixed to it. Only the General Staff talks, and it does so in a single voice. The IAF and the Southern Command, which have been doing most of the work, have been forbidden to speak to the media.

During the first days of the current campaign, until the disagreements in the managing quintet of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Barak, Ashkenazi and Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin began to bubble over, the politicians and generals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were enjoying a popular sense that the operation was not only justified, but also successful. In reality, this was not more true than in the parallel days of July 2006, before the hesitations and the marching in place set in, but the positive atmosphere of this week can be attributed to a combination of changes.

The general impression is that this time the launching of the (Hamas) rockets preceded the (Israeli) aerial action, rather than followed it - even though the Hezbollah attack in the north, when Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were abducted, which is what sparked Israel's offensive, also included a bombardment.

The reserves that have been called up are not intended to participate in the fighting - or to lead the protest once it is over - but rather to reinforce the troops of the standing army who are sent in to fight.

The tone of the media is positive, because the whole element of personal enmity among career army and reserve officers - and the broadcasters close to them - toward Halutz and the commander of the 91st Division, Gal Hirsch, vanished with their retirement. The bad feelings toward Halutz and Hirsch - and of Halutz toward Hirsch - have dissipated along with the entry of the new management, which replaced the commanders in 2006. The IDF, having learned the lessons of the veteran generals in the ground forces who voiced their frustrations publicly, has grown wiser and has recruited them into its service. The TV studios are the same TV studios, and the generals are the same generals, but now they are spokesmen for the establishment, not its critics.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote last month that in Lebanon, Hezbollah won "a propaganda victory" over Israel. Now it appears that it also inflicted a domestic victory within Israel concerning the image of the army. This impression is truly deceptive, just like the originality that is attributed to the name of the operation, "Cast Lead" - a recycled name that is eight and a half years old, which served to describe the events that took place on Nakba Day (the Palestinians' commemoration of what they call the "catastrophe" of the creation of Israel in 1948) in May 2000.

Gaza is a far simpler sector than Lebanon - narrow, short, bounded, flat and exposed - and even though there too explosive charges, anti-tank ambushes and suicide terrorists are waiting, in Golani they are describing it as more of a company-level war game than a brigade maneuver. What they are aspiring to achieve in Gaza is just what was accomplished in Lebanon: a situation where even if Hamas/Hezbollah is left at the end of the fighting with rockets, it won't dare fire them. If no Qassam is launched from Gaza for two and a half years, then they will see this as a major achievement, in the hope that the public that became embittered by the results of the Lebanon war will respond with satisfaction this time.

The austerity of the planners of the current operation suggests that they are aspiring to a certain, realistic degree of success, at the price of a diplomatic defeat: acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza, both in terms of relinquishing the idea of getting rid of it, and in negotiating with it on an agreement that will lead to the end of the operation, before the price in IDF casualties and to civilian locales inside Israel, on the eve of an election, starts to become too heavy.

Such an outcome, even if it is considered better than the situation that preceded the operation, and is preferable to becoming bogged down in a prolonged stay in the Gaza Strip, will nevertheless be a badge of shame for Israel, until another explanation is needed to explain Israel's ability to make do with the outcome: Iran. Barak and Ashkenazi tried until the past few weeks to avoid the operation in Gaza, for which GOC Southern Command Yoav Gallant had been pushing (with the support of the IAF) for a very long time in order to thwart the strengthening of Hamas before it reaches its peak.

On the 14th story in the IDF headquarters in the Kirya in Tel Aviv, where the defense minister and the chief of staff have their bureaus, there is concern about an even more serious problem than rockets in Ashdod and Be'er Sheva. Barak, especially, has been concerned that the IDF will be drawn into Gaza, even if not in all its brigades and divisions, but certainly with the attention of the commanders and with a burden on the air force.

Therefore, the IDF must move quickly to disengage, in order to free its attention for the paramount task of preparing a military blow to Iran, if diplomacy and deterrence fail. As long as the great threat of Iranian power is hovering, the smaller threats of Hezbollah and Hamas that derive from it will not be dispelled. Cast lead, heavy as it may be, is still easier to digest than enriched uranium.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052025.html

Israel intensifies naval attacks on Gaza

Israel's naval forces have been firing at residential areas of the western Gaza Strip amid a full-scale incursion against the coastal enclave.

According to local residents, Israeli navy vessels started firing at civilian areas before the end of a daily three-hour lull in the region, Hamas Al-Aqsa TV station reported Sunday.

Tel Aviv repeatedly violates the three-hour ceasefire, which was announced for easing the transportation of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.

According to the United Nations agency responsible for Palestine, the temporary lull is not long enough to resume the transport of supplies into the costal sliver, while at the same time Israeli troops open fire on UN-flagged vehicles.

Meanwhile, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the troops advanced into a suburb of the populated Gaza City, killing at least 14 people in and around Sheikh Ajleen, Palestinian medical sources said.

According to witnesses, Hamas resistance fighters also fired anti-tank missiles and mortar shells at Israeli tanks and troops.

The military which intensifies attacks on the region, said its warplanes pounded over 60 targets across the Gaza Strip, including a mosque in the southern Gaza city.

The military also attacked a vehicle in Rafah, wounding at least four civilians.

Israeli Operation Cast Lead which was launched on December 27 has so far claimed at least 888 lives and wounded 3700 people across the region

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=81717&sectionid=351020202

UK Jews demand Israeli ceasefire

A number of prominent British Jews have written an open letter calling on the Israeli government to halt its military operations in Gaza immediately.

The letter, published in the Observer, warns the military action, far from improving security, will strengthen extremism and destabilise the region.

The signatories, who declare themselves "passionate supporters of Israel", include several rabbis.

The first major rally in support of Israel in the UK will take place later.

Prominent rabbis, academics and political figures supported the open letter, including Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield, head of the Movement for Reform Judaism; Sir Jeremy Beecham, former chairman of the Labour party; Professor Shalom Lappin of the University of London and Baroness Julia Neuberger.

Pro-Israeli rally

They write: "We look upon the increasing loss of life on both sides of the Gaza conflict with horror.

"We have no doubt that rocket attacks into southern Israel, by Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups, are war crimes against Israel.

"No sovereign state should, or would, tolerate continued attacks and the deliberate targeting of civilians.
Israel has warned its may intensify its two-week-old offensive

"Israel had a right to respond and we support the Israeli government's decision to make stopping the rocket attacks an urgent priority.

"However, we believe that now only negotiations can secure long-term security for Israel and the region."

Earlier Jewish officials reacted angrily after a hoax e-mail claimed a rally planned to take place in London on Sunday had been cancelled.

The event at Trafalgar Square is expected to draw thousands of people - it will be the first major rally organised by the Jewish community in the UK over Israel's offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

The e-mail purported to come from the UK's Jewish communal leadership, the Board of Deputies (BoD).

A rally is also being held in Manchester.

'8,000 rockets'

BoD chief executive John Benjamin said despite support for Israel's position, the events are primarily a call for peace.

He said: "Certainly I think the people who will be there will understand that Israel has felt it necessary to take action to stop the many thousands of rockets that have been launched from Gaza in the last several years.

"We're not just talking about the last two weeks but over the course of years I think there have been something like 8,000 rockets.

"So, there is an understanding of that position but it's not a rally that is either commending exactly what's going on on day by day, or even, as British Jews and British Christians and others who are coming together, making a statement about the military action - it's a call for peace."
Pro-Palestinian protesters have already been out in force

On Saturday thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through London to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The protest started peacefully but there were confrontations as police tried to move demonstrators away from the gates of the Israeli embassy.

Protests also took place in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Belfast, Newcastle and Southampton.

In Gaza three Palestinians have been killed and dozens more injured by new Israeli tank fire and air strikes, according to medical sources.

Reports of the deaths came hours after Israel dropped leaflets warning Gazans to stay away from areas used by Hamas, saying its operation would escalate.

Some 820 Gazans and 13 Israelis have reportedly died in 14 days of fighting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7822656.stm

Rabbi: "Israeli stupidity breaks my heart"

American Rabbi and political activist, Michael Lerner, says that the Israeli military campaign in Gaza is "understandable, but stupid."

In an article published in The Times, Rabbi Lerner said that a military counterattack is not an acceptable response from the Israeli side, as Hamas can never pose any threat to its existence.

The editor of the progressive Jewish Tikkun magazine said a ceasefire is the only way to end the crisis in Gaza, adding that speaking in an empathic language "toward the suffering of each people in a climate of discourse in which both sides' stories are heard and understood", guarantees the existence of any declared ceasefire.

Rabbi Lerner, who is also the founder of the Beyt Tikkun Synagogue, proposed that the declared ceasefire entail the following clauses:


Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine.

1- Hamas should stop the firing of missiles and other violent actions including any cooperation in actively jailing individuals from different factions.

2- Israel should stop bombings, targeted assassinations or other violent actions aiming to kill activists in the West Bank or Gaza.

3- Israel must open the border with Gaza and allow free access to and from the occupied territories. Israel must allow the free travel of food, gas, electricity, water and consumer goods.

4- Israel must release all Palestinians in detention and return them to the West Bank or Gaza. Hamas must release Gilad Schalit and anyone else held by Palestinian forces.

5- Both sides must invite an international force to implement these agreements.

6- Both sides must agree to end teaching and/or advocacy of violence against the other side in and outside educational institutions and the media.

7- This ceasefire would last for 20 years. The NATO, the UN, and the US must all agree to enforce this agreement and impose severe sanctions in the event of any violations.

Rabbi Lerner proposed that as the first step Israel implements a massive Marshall Plan in Gaza and the West Bank with the aim of tackling poverty and unemployment.

Israel would also have to rebuild infrastructure, encourage investment, and dismantle settlements or compel settlers to become citizens of a Palestinian state.

Rabbi Lerner also called on Tel Aviv to allow the return of 30,000 Palestinian refugees and recognize a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the 2003 Geneva Accord.

PKH/HGH

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=81611&sectionid=3510203

Student to Israeli President: "I will not shake hands with a murderer of children"

Saed Bannoura
On November 2nd, Hebrew University student Ali Bahar was detained for three hours after refusing to shake hands with Israeli president Shimon Peres. Peres was visiting the university as part of a public relations tour.

When the President approached Bahar to shake his hand, the student refused, stating QUOTE "I will not shake hands with a murderer of children."

Bahar was referring to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land, which has cost the lives of one thousand and fifty Palestinian children since 2000. In the same time period, one hundred twenty three Israeli children have been killed by Palestinian fighters.

Immediately following his encounter with the Israeli President, Bahar was detained by university security personnel and his student ID was confiscated.

http://www.imemc.org/article/57591

Report: UN to demand Israel pay Lebanon $1 billion

Lebanese media say Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to instruct Israel to take responsibility for environmental damages caused by 2006 war, including oil spill following bombing of Beirut power plant

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will demand that Israel pay Lebanon $1 billion in compensation over damages caused during the Jewish state's 2006 war against Hizbullah, Lebanese media reported Saturday.


According to the report, the sum, based on World Bank appraisals, is aimed at covering the environmental and material damages caused by the Second Lebanon War, to neighboring countries as well.

The fundamental part of the compensation demanded is for the damage caused to the Lebanese coast due to an oil spill following an Israeli bombing of a southern Beirut power plant, which the Lebanese said had caused "an ecological disaster."

According to the report, Ban plans to submit a report to the United Nations General Assembly at the end of the month, stating that damage Israel caused to the oil reservoir polluted Lebanon's coast, and that the pollution spread to neighboring countries, especially Syria.

Ban further notes that the UN rehabilitation plan managed to clean some of the oil spill in several areas in northern Lebanon seashores.

The oil spill, which was defined the greatest natural disaster in Lebanon's history, took place after Israel Air Force planes hit a power plant and caused some 110,000 oil barrels to leak into the Mediterranean Sea.


The report said that the UN wants Israel to compensate the countries harmed by the oil spill and restore the environmental situation along the Lebanon coast. The Jewish state has yet to respond to the demand, despite messages conveyed in August 2007.

About half a year ago, new agencies reported that the German government granted Lebanon 4.5 million euros (about $6.4 million) to help finance environmental projects and damage restoration activities following the war.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3592764,00.html

War in Georgia: The Israeli connection

For past seven years, Israeli companies have been helping Gerogian army to preparer for war against Russia through arms deals, training of infantry units and security advice

The fighting which broke out over the weekend between Russia and Georgia has brought Israel's intensive involvement in the region into the limelight. This involvement includes the sale of advanced weapons to Georgia and the training of the Georgian army's infantry forces.

The Defense Ministry held a special meeting Sunday to discuss the various arms deals held by Israelis in Georgia, but no change in policy has been announced as of yet.


Advice
Foreign Ministry warns Israelis against traveling to Georgia / Roee Nahmias

Ministry ups travel warning due to ongoing military conflict with Russia, asks Israelis already in Georgia to contact embassy in Tbilsi or ministry's situation room in Israel

"The subject is closely monitored," said sources in the Defense Ministry. "We are not operating in any way which may counter Israeli interests. We have turned down many requests involving arms sales to Georgia; and the ones which have been approves have been duly scrutinized. So far, we have placed no limitations on the sale of protective measures."

Israel began selling arms to Georgia about seven years ago following an initiative by Georgian citizens who immigrated to Israel and became businesspeople.

"They contacted defense industry officials and arms dealers and told them that Georgia had relatively large budgets and could be interested in purchasing Israeli weapons," says a source involved in arms exports.

The military cooperation between the countries developed swiftly. The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation.

"His door was always open to the Israelis who came and offered his country arms systems made in Israel," the source said. "Compared to countries in Eastern Europe, the deals in this country were conducted fast, mainly due to the defense minister's personal involvement."

Among the Israelis who took advantage of the opportunity and began doing business in Georgia were former Minister Roni Milo and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of the Military Industries, Brigadier-General (Res.) Gal Hirsch and Major-General (Res.) Yisrael Ziv.

Roni Milo conducted business in Georgia for Elbit Systems and the Military Industries, and with his help Israel's defense industries managed to sell to Georgia remote-piloted vehicles (RPVs), automatic turrets for armored vehicles, antiaircraft systems, communication systems, shells and rockets.


According to Israeli sources, Gal Hirsch gave the Georgian army advice on the establishment of elite units such as Sayeret Matkal and on rearmament, and gave various courses in the fields of combat intelligence and fighting in built-up areas.

'Don't anger the Russians'

The Israelis operating in Georgia attempted to convince the Israeli Aerospace Industries to sell various systems to the Georgian air force, but were turned down. The reason for the refusal was "special" relations created between the Aerospace Industries and Russia in terms of improving fighter jets produced in the former USSR and the fear that selling weapons to Georgia would anger the Russians and prompt them to cancel the deals.


Israelis' activity in Georgia and the deals they struck there were all authorized by the Defense Ministry. Israel viewed Georgia as a friendly state to which there is no reason not to sell arms systems similar to those Israel exports to other countries in the world.

As the tension between Russia and Georgia grew, however, increasing voices were heard in Israel – particularly in the Foreign Ministry – calling on the Defense Ministry to be more selective in the approval of the deals with Georgia for fear that they would anger Russia.



"It was clear that too many unmistakable Israeli systems in the possesion of the Georgian army would be like a red cloth in the face of a raging bull as far as Russia is concerned," explained a source in the defense establishment.

For inctance, the Russians viewed the operation of the Elbit System's RPVs as a real provocation.

"It was clear that the Russians were angry," says a defense establishment source, "and that the interception of three of these RPVs in the past three months was an expression of this anger. Not everyone in Israel understood the sensitive nerve Israel touched when it supplied such an advanced arms system to a country whose relations with Russia are highly tense."

In May it was eventually decide to approve future deals with Georgia only for the sale of non-offensive weapon systems, such as intelligence, communications and computer systems, and not to approve deals for the sale of rifles, aircraft, sells, etc.
A senior source in the Military Industry said Saturday that despite some reporters, the activity of Georgia's military industry was extremely limited.

"We conducted a small job for them several years ago," he said. "The rest of the deals remained on paper."

Dov Pikulin, one of the owners of the Authentico company specializing in trips and journeys to the area, says however that "the Israeli is the main investor in the Georgian economy. Everyone is there, directly or indirectly."


Georgian minister: Israel should be proud
"The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday.

Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. "We are now in a fight against the great Russia," he said, "and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own.


"It's important that the entire world understands that what is happening in Georgia now will affect the entire world order. It's not just Georgia's business, but the entire world's business."


One of the Georgian parliament members did not settle Saturday for the call for American aid, urging Israel to help stop the Russian offensive as well: "We need help from the UN and from our friends, headed by the United States and Israel. Today Georgia is in danger – tomorrow all the democratic countries in the region and in the entire world will be in danger too."

Zvi Zinger and Hanan Greenberg contributed to this report

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3580136,00.html

What Were The Mossad And Fake New Zealand Passports Doing In Iraq?

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Palestinians Face Home Demolitions Spree by Israel

By JONATHAN COOK

In the first hours of dawn, Nader Elayan was woken by a call from a neighbor warning him to hurry to the house he had almost finished building. By the time he arrived, it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing down the walls. More than 100 Israeli security guards held back local residents.

The demolition, carried out four years ago, has left Mr Elayan, his wife, Fidaa, who is now pregnant, and their two young children with nowhere to live but a single room in his brother’s cramped home. It is the only land he owns and he had invested all his savings in building the now destroyed house.

Over the past few years, the Elayans’ fate has been shared by two dozen other families in the Palestinian village of Anata, on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. Hundreds more families have demolition orders hanging over their homes. “Not one person in my neighbourhood has a building permit,” Mr Elayan, 37, said.

The problem of house demolitions affects Palestinians throughout the occupied territories. But according to Hatem Abdelkader, an adviser to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, the situation is particularly acute in the East Jerusalem area.

He noted that Israel’s policy of refusing building permits to many of the 250,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem has resulted in the classification of 20,000 city homes as illegal since the occupation began in 1967. Last year alone, the Jerusalem municipality issued more than 1,000 demolition orders for “illegal dwellings”. It is believed that three out of every four Palestinian homes in the city are now built without a permit.

“Illegal building is simply a pretext for destroying Palestinian families’ homes and lives,” says Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).

“The demolitions are part of a policy to stop the natural expansion of Palestinian communities in and around Jerusalem, freeing up the maximum amount of land for use by Israeli settlers,” Halper continues. “The demolitions increase the pressure on Palestinians to move into the West Bank, so that they will lose their residency rights in the city.”

In an act of defiance, Halper’s organization and 40 international volunteers helped the Elayans to rebuild their home this week in an attempt to highlight what the committee calls the “quiet ethnic cleansing” of East Jerusalem. The work was carried out during a two-week summer camp funded by the Spanish government. Madrid also paid for 18 Spanish volunteers to participate.

“This is the first time a government has supported the rebuilding of an ‘illegal’ Palestinian home demolished by the Israeli authorities,” Halper says.

The issue of house demolitions is back in the spotlight now after two separate incidents in July in which Palestinians, both of whom were residents of Jerusalem, rampaged through the city in bulldozers, killing three Israelis and injuring many more. Although the two Palestinians were shot dead at the scene, Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak, the defence minister, are calling for their homes to be destroyed, making their families homeless, to deter others from following in their path.

Such punitive destruction of homes was stopped in 2005, under the threat of legal challenge, but not before some 270 homes were razed on security grounds in the first years of the intifada.

According to Halper, however, the use of demolitions against Palestinians accused of illegal building is a far more significant problem. “We estimate that there have been at least 18,000 homes destroyed during the four decades of occupation.”

In fact, Halper believes the true number of demolitions is likely to be double the official figure. Many razings are unrecorded, carried out by Palestinians themselves fearing a heavy fine if the Israeli army enforces the demolition order.

“Most demolitions are of multi-storey buildings that are home to several families, meaning that well in excess of 100,000 Palestinians may have been made homeless by Israeli administrative policies,” he said.

Since its founding a decade ago, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions has rebuilt 150 Palestinian homes as part of its campaign to bring the issue of demolitions to the attention of Israeli Jews and the international community. It has been an uphill struggle, Mr Halper said. The European Union, which recently upgraded its relations with Israel, announced this month that it was withdrawing ICAHD’s funding.

But this year’s work camp may make the continuing demolition of homes in Anata a little harder, Halper reckons “it’s one thing to destroy a home supposedly built illegally by a Palestinian, but another to destroy one built with money provided by the Spanish government.”

Halper also believes that, by exposing such groups as the summer camp volunteers to the Palestinians’ plight, public perceptions may begin to change.

Alonso Santos, a 21-year-old architecture student from Madrid, said he learnt much from seeing at close hand Palestinian life under occupation.

“It was an eye-opener to realise that the principles of urban planning we are taught at the university are being used by the Israelis, but for exactly the opposite purpose from the one usually intended. The planning rules here are designed not to improve the Palestinians’ lives but to make them more miserable.”

The volunteers were hosted at a peace centre in Anata erected on the site of Salim Shawamreh’s home, which was demolished four times by Israeli authorities. Known as Arabiya House, after Shawamreh’s wife, the building is decorated on one side with a mural depicting the death of Rachel Corrie, the US peace activist, by an Israeli bulldozer that had been demolishing homes in Gaza.

“Imagine your children leaving in the morning for school and returning later in the day to find their home, their whole world, has disappeared while they were gone,” Shawamreh said. “It’s happened to my children four times. It’s cruelty beyond words.”

Shawamreh, whose family were refugees from the northern Negev in 1948, said he and ICAHD established the peace centre to highlight the plight of the Palestinians in Anata. Today the house is overlooked by an Israeli police station across the valley, part of the advance growth of a large Jewish settlement, Maale Adumum, that Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups believe is cutting the West Bank in two.

The peace centre is also close both to the snaking route of Israel’s separation wall and to a new bypass road – part of what critics call an apartheid road system – being built to ensure that Jewish settlers can drive separately from Palestinians across the West Bank.

Arabiya House is under a temporary reprieve from demolition while Israeli courts determine its status.

Halper says the judges have been reluctant to confirm the destruction order because his group has threatened to take the case to the International Court of Justice if the ruling goes against it.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

This article originally appeared in The National (http://www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Obama's pro-Israel stance no surprise to Arabs

BEIRUT, July 24 (Reuters) - Barack Obama has convinced Arabs and Iranians he will put Israel's interests first if he becomes U.S. president, after a Middle East tour that ended on Thursday.

When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many in the region believe, Obama would display the same bias in favour of the Jewish state that they now expect from any White House occupant — even one with a Muslim name and African roots.

"There will be minor changes if Obama is elected, but he will never side with the Palestinians against the Israelis. He knows he can't afford that," said Lana Bazzi, 20, a student in Beirut, citing the power of the Jewish lobby in America.

The Democratic senator flew to Germany after visits to Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.

Obama told Israelis their nation was a "miracle" and vowed never to seek peace concessions that would harm its security.

Israelis may have qualms at losing George W. Bush, whom they see as the most pro-Israel U.S. president ever, but some queried Obama's enthusiasm to prove his loyalty to the Jewish state.

An editorial in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper said Israel and the region needed diplomatic innovation.

"But it seems that Obama — like his opponent John McCain and Bush before him — is attempting to win the trust of potential Jewish voters at the expense of promoting the peace processes in the region," Haaretz said.

"Instead of talking about a 'united Jerusalem', he needs to become involved in finding a realistic solution for Israel's torn and bleeding capital," it added.

Obama declared last month that Jerusalem must be Israel's undivided capital, infuriating Palestinians who demand the Arab east of the city as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

"Jerusalem will be (Israel's capital) over our dead bodies," said Khalil Abu-Sarhan, a Palestinian living in Dubai. "He speaks as if it belonged to him or the Israelis. It belongs to my ancestors who built it with their sweat and blood."

Obama later said he had used "poor phrasing" and that Jerusalem's fate must be negotiated.


U.S. CREDIBILITY

Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst, said Obama's varying statements worried and disappointed Palestinians, even allowing for the candidate's need to woo Jewish voters.

Palestinian leaders, who met Obama in Ramallah on Wednesday, accepted what he told them regarding Jerusalem, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. "He told us final-status issues would be discussed and resolved by the two parties."

From Gaza to the Gulf, even Arabs generally favourable to the United States are hostile to its pro-Israel policy. The most many hope for from an Obama presidency is a change of style.

"I hope Obama will bring back some of the U.S. credibility lost by Bush's ideological crusade against Arabs and Muslims," said Ibrahim Salameh, a Jordanian businessman.

Emad Gad, an analyst at Cairo's al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said Arabs still felt Obama might be more sensitive to Arabs and Muslims than his Republican opponent. "He will not speak about a clash of civilisations or the negative aspects of Islam. He will concentrate on dialogue."

In Kuwait, Ali al-Baghli, a political analyst and former oil minister, said Obama was "over-zealous" to be seen as a friend of Israel. "But we hope that as a black man Obama will understand the suffering of poor people and the Palestinians."

Amr Sawah, a municipal worker in Damascus voiced cynical pessimism, saying Obama had no vision for the region. "He could even adopt more racist policies against Arabs and Palestinians to prove he is no different from a white president."

Obama has pledged to get involved in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking early on, if elected. He has also said he favoured engaging with Syria and Iran, viewed as enemies in Washington.

In Iran there is some fascination with Obama's middle name Hussein, that of a Shi'ite hero martyred in the 7th century, but more interest in his willingness to negotiate — although Obama said on Wednesday a nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat.

"It may be better for Iranians if Obama is elected," said Iranian analyst Abdolreza Tajik, citing the Democrat's softer tone. "But America's general policies do not change with the change of a president. It is only the method that changes."

Another Iranian analyst, who asked not to be named, said Obama's comments in Israel had eroded Iranian perceptions that he would make a better president than his rival McCain.

He said such perceptions might alter even more in the run-up to the November election "because it is possible that Obama might have to take more radical and anti-Islamic positions in order to prove he is not very close to pro-Muslim sentiment". (Additional reporting by Tala Shukri in Beirut, Edmund Blair and Zahra Hosseinian in Tehran, Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Ulf Laessing in Kuwait, Cynthia Johnston in Cairo, Khaled Yaacoub Oweis in Damascus and Inal Ersan in Dubai)

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=266028

The facts behind the fiction of the Lebanon war of 2006

By Daan de Wit
Today two dead Israeli soldiers have been returned to Israel by Hezbollah who kidnapped them before the Lebanon war. Their kidnapping was the official reason for the war, but was it also the factual reason?
On July 12th 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon. The official casus belli were the killings of three members of the Israeli Army by Hezbollah in Israel and the capture of two others. In actuality Israel prepared for the war in advance and waited for the opportunity to present itself in order to justify an attack. Motives such as these keep coming up for both sides in the border area between the two countries. Critic Noam Chomsky recounts a few of the incidents: 'IDF kidnapping of civilians on June 24, Hamas capture of a soldier the next day, then the huge U.S.-Israeli escalation of attacks on Gaza... then the kidnapping of soldiers by Hezbollah, then the U.S.-Israeli destruction of most of Lebanon, justified by the pretense of outrage over kidnapping, which – to repeat – is demonstrated, conclusively, to be cynical fraud'. While the war was still going on, Israel changed the code name by which military operations were being carried out from Operation Just Cause to Operation Change of Direction.

In March of 2007 Israeli Prime Minister Olmert admitted to the Winograd Commission that approximately three months before the Lebanon War he gave his permission for the operation by accepting a plan from his then-chief of staff Dan Halutz. Shortly after the kidnapping and in the midst of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Halutz sold off his shares, and in so doing avoided the losses that occurred when the market fell by ten percent as a result of the war that followed. Olmert made his admission to the commission in order to demonstrate that the dramatic loss of the war was not due to ill preparedness .

In reality, the Lebanon War was even better planned than Prime Minister Olmert would admit to the commission. In January of 2006, four days after succeeding a comatose Ariel Sharon, Olmert held an initial conversation on a war against Lebanon. But it might be correct to look back even further. The war was 'in a sense' already being planned back in 2000, right after Israel withdrew troops from Lebanon after being there for 18 years, says Professor Gerald Steinberg of Israel's Bar-Ilan University. According to Steinberg, a war of about three weeks had been devised by 2004, after which it was simulated and rehearsed. The actual Lebanon War ended up lasting 34 days, resulting in 159 deaths on the Israeli side and 1125 deaths on the Lebanese side, of which hundreds were children. America was made aware of Israeli plans to attack Lebanon. American and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks were notified approximately one year prior to the war with the help of a PowerPoint presentation, given by a senior Israeli army officer, writes the San Fransisco Chronicle. The meetings in which the plans for war were discussed in detail were held off the record and on the condition that the identity of the officer be kept secret.

After the war questions arise whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair was aware of Israeli plans and whether he might not have attempted more in order to avoid bloodshed. Journalist John Kampfner writes under the headline Blood on his hands: 'I am told that the Israelis informed George W. Bush in advance of their plans to 'destroy' Hezbollah by bombing villages in southern Lebanon. The Americans duly informed the British. So Blair knew'.
Kampfner's information is confirmed by an anonymous source from the English Daily Mail which was quoted in August of 2006 and said that Tony Blair was informed of developments concerning Lebanon by the U.S. At the same time the newspaper quotes another source, this one by first and last name - John Pike, director of Global Security: 'Has the U.S. given Israel a green light to attack Hezbollah and push its troops into southern Lebanon? Yes, of course it has'. According to Pike there is an agreement between Israel and the U.S. that Iranian nuclear plants would eventually have to be bombed - 'probably next year' - to stop the development of a nuclear weapon. Pike feels that once that happens, Iran will order Hezbollah to attack Israel. To him this explains the attack on Lebanon in July of 2006. Pike believes that there was a secret agreement between the U.S. and Israel that at some point before the attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities, Hezbollah had to be disarmed and that as soon as a pretext became available, Israel should use force. Just as in the case of Iran, Israeli interests run parallel to those of the United States.
This also appears to be the case in a 2003 report from the reputable Jane's Intelligence Digest that the U.S. was weighing an attack on Hezbollah. And in 2008 a plan was revealed that was not only considered, but was also approved and carried out. Approved by President Bush and realized by his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - a plan to arm the Palestinian party Fatah. The goal was to provoke a Palestinian civil war in which the democratically elected Hamas would be toppled. The result was the complete control of Hamas over the Gaza Strip.

The armies of both Israel and Hezbollah were criticized in a report by Human Rights Watch for intentionally killing civilians. During the fighting, Israel dropped up to a million cluster bombs, probably acquired from the world's biggest producer of this type of explosive, as well as the one that provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid - the United States. 'We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse', says Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Center, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites. Cluster bombs were first used by the Nazis and are permitted under international law. In January of 2008 the United States resists proposals for stricter laws relating to cluster bombs and said that the explosives aren't bad as long as they are used responsibly. In June Defense Secretary Robert Gates states that by 2018 the military will no longer use cluster weapons with a failure rate greater than 1 percent. In the interim period the US will deplete its existing stockpiles of cluster munitions with a greater than 1 percent dud rate by exporting them to foreign governments that agree not to use them starting in 2018.
In the bombing of Lebanon, Israel may have made use - as it has done for decades - of American intelligence. In the area of psychological warfare, upwards of 700,000 automated voice mails were delivered to Lebanese citizens in and around the time of the war, and 17 million leaflets were dropped above Lebanon during 47 missions, some of which for example depicted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a snake or a scorpion. Israel also interrupted a Hezbollah TV channel in order to show a dead Hezbollah fighter, accompanied by the message that there will be many more such bodies to come. After the war was over, the Beirut advertising agency Idea Creation launched a $100,000 ad campaign at Hezbollah's behest called Divine Victory, delivering the message of a military victory over Israel .

A Middle East expert familiar with the mindset of both the Israeli and American governments says in August of 2006 to journalist Seymour Hersh that the White House had several reasons for supporting the Israeli attack. The most important was Iran. Another source, the neoconservative Middle East expert Meyrav Wurmser, confims this by saying that the main argument by the White House for supporting Israel was that the war 'would damage and weaken Hezbollah so that it would pose less of a threat to Israel in the event of an attack on Iran'. Wurmser is employed by the conservative thinktank Hudson Institute and is the wife of David Wurmser, who up until mid-2007 was the Middle East advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. According to Meyrav Wurmser some of her colleagues are unhappy over what Israel did: 'The thought in America was that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran , but the thought was that its strategic and important ally Syria should be hit. ... The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space for the execution of the war'. Wurmser feels that an attack on Syria would have been a harsh blow to Iran. The great dissatisfaction in the White House - Wurmser even calls it 'anger' at Israel - over the loss of the war is focused on the fact that Israel didn't take the fight to Syria. On 6 September 2007 Israël attacked Syria: Operation Orchard.

When the Nukes Start Dropping

Most men, it is generally agreed, will do anything to survive. In my favorite World War II/Holocaust movie, Lina Wertmuller's 1975 Seven Beauties, a harmless little nebbish of an Italian petty thief, Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini), finds himself in a horrible, hellish Nazi concentration camp; the camp setting is some sort of huge, enclosed, indoor hall, a setting so evil that the inmates never even see the sun.

To survive, Pasqualino agrees to make love to the camp commandant, a ghastly, sadistic, Brobdingnagian-girthed gorgon-like SS officer, played by Shirley Stoler. Pasqualino outlasts both the camp and the war, but his soul dies. He did what he had to do to survive.

Failing being placed in a circumstance where their lives are at stake, there are things that men don't want to do. One of those is to kiss another man. In 1978, on the NBC Network program Saturday Night Live, the troupe performed a skit lampooning the legends of white slaveowners forcing themselves onto their black slaves in the US ante-bellum south. The script called for comedian Bill Murray, playing a slaveowner, to attempt to force his desires on an unwilling slave; the comedy was in that the slave was not a woman, but America's favorite, cheerful, non-threatening African-American of the time, O J Simpson.

The show went out live, and you could clearly see that, as Murray pressed his lips towards Simpson's, Simpson turned his face away; not even as comedy could he kiss another man on the lips. His life was not the line, so Simpson wouldn't do it; at his trial for double murder 17 years later, Simpson, too, proved that he would do anything to survive.

But one thing that men apparently need no threats or intimidation to do is to plan, plot, scheme, even to detail and diagram, the killing of millions of their fellow men, women and children. As evidence of this, I present before the bar of humanity this item I recently came across on the Internet, a report authored by respected military analyst Anthony H Cordesman of the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think-tank, entitled "Iran, Israel and Nuclear War" 1.

I have always enjoyed Cordesman's informed, educated and enlightening commentaries on matters strategic and military, particularly his take on the military and political situation in Iraq. In no way do I think of him as a sort of Dr Strangelove-like figure, from the 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie of the same name, warped in both mind and body from a lifetime of contemplating mass death. But, just as we have extensively studied and documented the effects of nuclear weapons when they detonate, perhaps this is an under-investigated line of inquiry - what happens when they don't.

Remarkable - just the presence of nuclear weapons among them turns even the best of men at least a little bit mad.

The 77-page report is formatted in the US Pentagon's current dominant lingua franca, the ubiquitous Microsoft Powerpoint - my goodness, you'd almost think that it was destined to be shown there! How foolish it was for Osama bin Laden to think he could take down the entire US military with just one plane, or even a dozen, slamming into the Pentagon; a virus or bug that disabled all the Powerpoint software the US Department of Defense runs would have brought the world's most powerful military to its knees. In slide after slide, the report catalogs the weaponry, tactics, targets, contingencies, most importantly the results, that would occur should everybody in the Middle East with a button, perhaps simultaneously, perhaps in sequence, push it.

The first and core scenario of the report involves a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran, some time between 2010 and 2020. It is speculated that during this period, the Iranians would have about 50, mostly minimum-yield, nuclear weapons at their disposal. Thirty would be in the form of missile warheads to be emplaced on their Shahab 3 and 4 intermediate range ballistic missiles, 20 in the form of bombs that would be carried on the now antique F-14 Tomcats bought from the US by the Shah of Iran in the 1970s, along with a few on the old Russian SU-24s, and the more modern SU-37s, that Iran has recently purchased during shopping trips to the world's global arms swap meet.

Israel has been a nuclear-capable power since at least the mid 1960s; it is speculated in the report that by 2010 it will have over 200, higher-yielding nuclear warheads in its arsenal, deliverable by both Jericho 3 ballistic missiles and American-supplied F-16 and F-15 fighter bombers.

The differing technological capabilities of the two countries would dictate their respective strategies once the missiles and bombs started flying. Israel has access to America's super-sophisticated satellite reconnaissance and targeting technology. Besides knowing just where to point their nukes, Israel also possesses the technology that assures that its weapons will fall where desired.

Thus, if Israel decides to commence the war with a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear research and production facilities, shown in the report as lying in a northwest/southeast axis from Lashkar A'bad on the southwestern shores of the Caspian Sea to Gachin, just west of the Strait of Hormuz, it could do so without inflicting the massive casualties of a nuclear strike on Teheran.

Included in the report are satellite images of the Iranian nuclear facilities at Arak and Isfahan; to me, they look a lot like what an Israeli pilot in his F-16, or maybe an American pilot in his F-22, would tape to the canopy of his cockpit in order to provide a visual verification that he was bombing the right target.

The Iranians lack the ability to precision-target their weapons in the same manner in which the Israelis can, so the report postulates that the main targets for their nukes would be the core coastal Israeli metropolis, from Haifa in the north to Ashkelon just north of the border with Gaza. Haifa, the report notes, is surrounded by hills, which means that the destructive force of any nuclear device detonated over the city would bounce off the mountains and double back onto the city, greatly amplifying its damage. Tel Aviv is on a long, flat coastal plain, but it is a very densely populated city, with an estimated 7,445 of population per square kilometer.

Of course, if the war commenced not with the "limited" Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear production facilities (this attack would be classified as "counterforce" by the nuclear cognoscenti ), but with a full-blown "countervalue" Iranian strike against Israel's cities, it is doubtful that the Israelis would feel obligated to limit their retaliatory vengeance to just Iran's military targets.

From out of their hardened silos would fly the Israeli missiles and bombers, with their primary target being Tehran, along with Iran's other population centers. With over 7 million people just within the bounds of Tehran itself, 15 million in the surrounding metropolitan area, the city contains over 20% of Iran's population and is the center of the nation's communications, production, educational and cultural infrastructure.

Casualties from this exchange would be nightmarish, horrific, incalculable - except by Cordesman and his CSIS team.

The lower yield and less accurate Iranian volley, sparing Jerusalem due to its centrality to the Moslem faith, would inflict between 200,000 to 800,000 Israeli fatalities along the coastal plain in the first 21 days. These are called "prompt" casualties; it's who dies before people start dropping from longer-term radiation exposure. Any surviving residents of the central core of urban Tel Aviv would still be exposed to 300 REM (roentgen equivalent man) of radiation 96 hours after the blasts, as opposed to an exposure during an average dental X-ray of about .010 REM.
The more accurate and bigger Israeli nukes, the report speculates, would inflict a far greater toll on Iranian cities - in between 16 million and 28 million in just "prompt" fatalities. The report says that that an Israeli recovery from its damage would be "theoretically possible in population and economic terms", whereas an Iranian recovery would be "not possible in normal terms"; in essence, the Iranian nation will be destroyed.

Thus, what the report is saying is that one day next decade you might wake up with an Iran, after almost 6,000 years as a national entity and still there at sunrise, would be wiped off the map by sunset.

The rest of the report speculates on various other assorted scenarios for Mid-East Armageddon. Syria, generally assumed to be many years away from possessing a nuclear capacity, might, for some reason, decide to launch a CBW (chemical, biological weapon) missile strike on Israeli population centers.

Israeli dead under this scenario would once again be between 200,000 and 800,000. Recovery, however, would be quicker, since this type attack spares civilian buildings and infrastructure. Syria, with 80% of its population concentrated in just 11 cities, would suffer between 6 million and 18 million dead in a counterattack; the higher number would represent about 95% of its estimated 2007 population. Not since the Roman destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC would one nation have made another suffer so dearly as punishment for losing a war.

The report does not speculate as to why this might happen, but if Egypt got drawn into all this the results would be pretty dammed bad for the Western world's cradle of civilization on the Nile as well. From Alexandria in the north to Luxor in the south, with Cairo in between, just a few rounds from Israel's nuclear clip could devastate Egypt's Nile River-based population centers; over 12 millennia of human civilization in the Nile Delta would end.

Once again, not speculating as to why this would happen, the report games out the results of a possible Iranian nuclear strike against the six Arab nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Iranian strike could maybe kill 2 million to 8 million of the 40 million population of the GCC; once again, Iran would suffer many times what it wrought from the inevitable US nuclear retaliation.

Herman Kahn, the physicist turned Cold War nuclear strategist, had a name for these musings of mass murder, these cerebrations of ultimate catastrophe; he called it "thinking the unthinkable".

I was once invited to give an economics guest lecture to a class studying this discipline, the possible scenarios and wargames that were popular intellectual parlor games during the Cold War. Of the 35 students in class, none but one was a young woman. Yes, studying this was OK for men; it wasn't something horrible like kissing another man. As I left the class, the professor gave out the week's homework, to investigate who would be the "winner" of a US/USSR nuclear "exchange" where one country suffered 20 million dead, but whose industrial infrastructure was degraded by a mere 20%, the other lost "only" 7 million dead, but 50% of its industry.

Good question
The extent of these investigations, both the Cordesman study and the reams of similar studies that came out during the Cold War, may be a lot more detailed than necessary or seemly, but they do serve an important purpose. The fear can be controlled, made to serve an important purpose.

In an October 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati, President George W Bush, whipping an America shellshocked by September 11, 2001 into a frenzy against his Oedipal nemesis, Saddam Hussein, warned, "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof - the smoking gun - that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." In this, he turned away from the strategy that won the Cold War, the strategy that allowed the people of the US and USSR a half century of albeit uneasy peace.

Early on in the nuclear age, it was seen, first by America, eventually by the Soviets, that there was no real defense against the new weapons. If you shot down 95% of the conventional bombers of World War II, you were doing very well, yet letting 5% of bombers carrying nuclear weapons past your defenses would devastate your society, and that was before the advent of the infinitively harder to shoot down nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

If you could not defend against the threat, was all hope lost? No, even if you couldn't defend against the threat, you could deter it. If your nuclear force could be deployed in such a way that it would be assured of surviving an opponent's first strike, by being in hardened silos or on hidden submarines, any possible aggressor would know that any potential attack would be pointless, since the surviving retaliatory volley, which also could not be defended against, would then devastate the attacker's society.

Called "mutual assured destruction", and then given the pejorative acronym MAD, the strategy worked; its horrific implications made sure that, when the US and the Soviets came closest to the nuclear brink during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, president John F Kennedy and premier Nikita Khrushchev found a compromise that very quickly pulled their countries away from the precipice.

But the strategy did not guarantee total security, for its operation depended on the existence of those tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. The United States maintained its deployment of Nike anti-aircraft missiles along the nation's periphery into the late 1960s; during that time, it also started to deploy, but then bargained away, a limited, rudimentary anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.

In 1983, president Ronald Reagan proposed the development of the futuristic, space-based "Star Wars" satellite missile defense system. Popular with the public, and effective as a campaign issue, the concept was unpopular with most US military officers, who thought it unnecessary, expensive and ultimately impossible. Quietly, president George H W Bush slashed funding for "Star Wars" during his term following Reagan's.

But after a decade of enjoying the "peace dividend" in the 1990s, America returned its gaze to the world it had been ignoring after 9/11. There it saw a frightening place, filled with mad, irrational terrifying enemies. Like a child wanting the security of a warm blanket during a dark night's thunderstorm, America yearned once again for the its traditional, comfortable security of inviolability.

Even before 9/11, George W Bush saw the political power of this desire - the attacks of that day forced then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to cancel an address she was planning to give that very day in advocacy of missile defense. After 9/11, Bush proposed billions of dollars in new ABM funding, even withdrawing from the 1972 US/USSR ABM treaty to build a small ABM missile station at Fort Greely, Alaska.

Then came the problem with Iraq
As Democrat Senator Hillary Clinton has learned to her regret, after 9/11, no American politician could deny, or even attempt to rationalize away, the seemingly obvious, boiling, eviscerating hatred the Arab and Muslim worlds (few Americans know the difference) held for America. "Why do they hate us?" Americans, whose maximal extent of contact with Arab culture was often just a box of microwaveable couscous mix, asked in fear and trepidation.

Deterrence was never all that popular when applied to the Russians; the American public was told that it was obvious that there was no way it would work against the mad Saddam Hussein and the crazy Arabs. Not willing to entertain the mere possibility that the secular Saddam and the fundamentalist Osama bin Laden were anything but identical hatebots rolling off the same terrible anti-American assembly line, the country was fertile ground for Bush's fearmongering. Saddam was just too mad, insane, suicidal, psychopathic, irrational and megalomaniac to deter - exactly how current Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is described now.

Many observers have noted the similarities between the anti-Saddam public relations campaign of 2002-03 and the anti-Ahmadinejad campaign of the present; it too is said to be sowing the seeds for another attack, this one against Iran.

Can Ahmadinejad be deterred? I have no idea; I'm not an expert on the man, as, of course, are not all those who warn of his status as an implacable and eternal foe of the West. I do know that deterrence did work against Joseph Stalin in the 1950s, who was irrational enough to sacrifice about 50 million of his fellow citizens in the Soviet Union's agricultural collectivizations and political purges of the 1930s.

It worked against Mao Zedong, responsible for about 100 million of his fellow citizens' deaths in the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Neither of these leaders, who possessed both the ideology and capacity to launch a nuclear strike against America, did so. Evidently, they were deterred by America's massive nuclear retaliatory power. Are we really saying that Ahmadinejad is more bloodthirsty and irrational than Stalin or Mao?

The success of deterrence is intimately related to the nature of politics and politicians. From their days in short pants, the world's leaders have dreamt of possessing power and dominion over millions of their fellow citizens; whether they do so through democratic or other means is only a question related to the random chance of what nation they were born in.

After they assume ultimate national power, after a lifetime of political striving and ambition, those who say that deterrence does not work are, in essence, saying that these leaders will put some abstract hatred or ideology above the lives and interests of their fellow citizens who put them into power. The countering argument to this is that you can't rule a country if there's no country to rule.

This is the value of studies such as Cordesman's and their ultra-meticulous details of death. At the end of the study, Cordesman repeats the philosophy expounded by "Joshua", the inquisitive nuclear war-fighting computer of the 1983 movie War Games; "The only way to win is not to play." (The actual line from the movie is. "A strange game - the only way to win is not to play.")

By actually showing how devastating a retaliatory strike against Iran or Syria would be, by showing how the US and/or Israel does not need to launch a pre-emptive attack to be secure, perhaps Cordesman's opus will help the world turn away from the frightful momentum now building for an Iran strike.

There will be 77 days from the November 4 presidential election to the inauguration of a new American president on January 20, 2009. In my mind, that's when Bush has penciled in his final, glorious Gotterdammerung.

Besides not wanting to risk the slaughter of those who put the leader in power, perhaps deterrence works for another reason. In 1985, Sting, in his song, "Russians", sang of an additional factor keeping world leaders fingers off the nuclear button.

There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't believe anymore
Mr Reagan says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us me and you
Is if the Russians love their children too

Jimmy Carter says Israel had 150 nuclear weapons

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line. Carter, who has immersed himself since his presidency in Israeli-Palestinian relations, was highly critical of Israeli settlers on the West Bank, and of Israel's refusal to talk to elected officials of the Islamic party Hamas, although he said that Israel's security was his prime concern.

Carter, whose presidency was dominated by the 444-day siege in which Iran held 52 American diplomats hostage, said "my advice to the US would be to start talking to Iran now" to persuade it to drop its nuclear work. But he cited Israel's nuclear arsenal - and those of the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - in arguing that Iran would find it almost impossible to develop, in secret, many weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4004300.ece

Saudi-Israeli alliance not new

Written By: Claudia Schwartz*

The proverb, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ characterizes the upshot of the current alignment in the Middle East, namely an alliance between two regional powers: Saudi Arabia and Israel. Is this alliance between the kingdom and its innate enemy a novel one? Perhaps to some extent, but it’s certainly not as recent as is being portrayed.

Following the dismantling of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan and the fall of President Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran is stronger than ever. Since then, fear of a “Shiite crescent” dominated by the Islamic republic, but encompassing Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon has spread across the Sunni Arab world, successfully destabilizing the region. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home of its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, is the de facto head of the Muslim world. Iran, not Arab but Persian, not Sunni but Shia, poses both a religious and strategic threat to Saudi Arabia’s dominance over the region. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rants against Israel pander to a Sunni Arab audience. Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal described Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial comments as “courageous,” stating that “Muslim people will defend Iran because it voices what they have in their hearts, in particular the Palestinian people.” This type of Sunni/Shia cooperation in addition to Hamas’ acceptance and use of money from Iran enrages the Saudi royals.

Saudi investment in regional diplomacy can be interpreted as an attempt to contain the growing Iranian/Shiite influence in Palestine — traditional Sunni territory. As King Abdullah asserted in an interview with al-Riyadh “We do not want anyone to exploit our problems in order to reinforce his own positions in his international conflicts. The Palestinian problem must be solved by the Arabs and by nobody else.”

For Israel, the threat of a nuclear Iran whose president wants its destruction is no less alarming. It views it as existential. Consequently, the threat from the so-called Shiite crescent has brought the Jewish state and the Land of the Two Holy Mosques closer than ever, at least in terms of their regional policies.

Publicly, this is far from evident. King Abdullah’s public hand-holding with Ahmadinejad at this year’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit should be contrasted with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal’s refusal to shake Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s hand at the Annapolis conference.

However, these opposite public displays can be understood in the context of Islamic solidarity and the need to preserve Arab consensus, a prerequisite for the head of the Arab and Muslim world. In addition, open support for stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions would not be overlooked by Iran, or indeed go unpunished. Hence, the kingdom maintains an official embargo against Israel, yet a cooperative relationship with Iran.

In fact, should a military conflict between Israel and Iran occur, it is clear which side Saudi Arabia will back, at least in private conversations. Publicly of course, they would condemn Israel whilst secretly benefiting from Iran’s weakening without paying the price.

Deterrence against Iran’s nuclear threat in the region is relied on by Israel. Perhaps this was the motivation behind the 2007 revival of what is known as the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002. Saudi Arabia needs Israel more than ever before. By resolving the Palestinian crisis, the common denominator for all Arab and Muslim states, the kingdom is able to retain its dignity and authority in the face of the neighboring Shiite hegemon.

Analysts and commentators on the region seem to be bewildered by this reconfiguration of forces. Yet despite popular portrayal, this alliance is by no means new. Saudi Arabia and Israel have engaged in clandestine meetings even prior to 2002.

According to statesmen, senior military officers and former intelligence officers, former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar — also known as “Bandar Bush” for his close relationship with Bush the elder — has had contact with Israel since at least 1990. Rumor has it that these relations have occurred as early as 1976 when Saudi Arabia secretly sent a letter via Tunisian Foreign Minister Mohammed Masmoudi to Israel offering a large sum of money in return for withdrawing from the occupied territories.

As former president of the United States Jimmy Carter notes, Saudi rulers have always masked their support for peaceful relations with Israel: “As president, I had strong but private encouragement from Saudi leaders for my peace initiatives, even when their public statements were quite different.”

In spite of all this, it is unlikely that the royal family is going to turn into committed Zionists. Vitriolic anti-Semitic imagery and literature is a daily occurrence in Saudi Arabia, often enshrined in its schoolbooks and used as an outlet for the frustration of its own population. The results of a survey conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow show that a majority of Saudis have an unfavorable opinion of Jews and oppose a peace treaty or any recognition of the state of Israel.

Saudi Arabia remained uncommitted to the Annapolis conference right until the last minute, since it feared that its failure could play into the hands of Iran. Such hesitancy sheds light on its priorities: containing Iran in order to secure its regional standing, not achieving Arab-Israeli peace.

Such concerns may prompt the Saudis to take further steps. King Abdullah recently held a very public meeting with Queen Elizabeth, an historic tête-à-tête with Pope Benedict XVI and even sent a representative to the Annapolis conference. Has a precedent been set for the reform-minded king to engage in future, more open meetings with leaders of the Jewish state?

* Claudia Schwartz is a Legacy Heritage fellow at the Transatlantic Institute in Brussels.

http://www.yobserver.com/opinions/printer-10013570.html

The Big Lie

By Francis A. Boyle

I am not Arab. I am not Jewish. I am not Palestinian. I am not Israeli. I am Irish American. Our People have no proverbial "horse in this race." What follows is to the best of my immediate recollection:

The Big Lie

Growing up in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s while strongly supporting the just struggle of African Americans for civil rights, I was brainwashed at school as well as by the mainstream news media and popular culture to be just as pro-Israel as everyone else in America. Then came the 1967 Middle East War. At that time, my assessment of the situation was that Israel had attacked these Arab countries first, stolen their lands, and then driven out their respective peoples from their homes. I then realized that everything I had been told about Israel was "The Big Lie." Israel was Goliath, not David.

I resolved to study the Middle East in more detail in order to figure out what the Truth really was.

Of course by then I had already figured out that everything I was being told about the Vietnam War also constituted The Big Lie. The same was true for U.S. military intervention into Latin America after the Johnson administrations gratuitous invasion of the Dominican Republic. The same for the pie-in-the-sky "Camelot" peddled by the Kennedy administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion/fiasco and its self-induced Cuban Missile Crisis that was a near-miss for nuclear Armageddon. So I just added the Middle East to the list of international subjects that I needed to pay more attention to in my life.

Chicago

... By the end of Professor Binders course in the Winter of 1970, I had become convinced of three basic propositions: (1) that the world had inflicted a terrible injustice upon the Palestinian People in 1947-1948; (2) that there will be no peace in the Middle East until this injustice was somehow rectified; and (3) that the Palestinian People were entitled to an independent nation state of their own. I have publicly maintained these positions for the past three decades at great cost to myself.

In particular, I have been accused of being everything but a child molester because of my public support for the Palestinian People. I have seen every known principle of Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom violated in order to suppress the basic rights of the Palestinian People. In fact, there is no such thing as Academic Integrity and Academic Freedom in the United States of America when it comes to asserting the rights of the Palestinian People under international law.

... By comparison, Harvards Center for Middle East Studies was then basically operating as a front organization for the . and probably the Mossad as well. No point anyone wasting their time studying Middle East Politics at Harvard.

Nevertheless, I entered Harvard in September of 1971 in order to pursue a J.D. at the Harvard Law School and a . in Political Science at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Government. The latter was the same doctoral program that had produced Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and numerous other Machiavellian war-mongers trained by Harvard to "manage" the U.S. global empire. In other words, Harvard trained me to be one of these American Imperial Managers: "There but for the Grace of God go I!"

For the next seven years at Harvard I was quite vocal in my support for the Palestinian People, including and especially their basic human rights, their right to self-determination, and their right to an independent nation state of their own. ...

While in residence as an Associate at the Harvard Center for International Affairs (CFIA) from 1976-1978, I also came into contact with Walid Khalidi. I was present for the dramatic off-the-record confrontation between him and Shimon Peres at the standing CFIA Seminar on "American Foreign Policy" then conducted by Stanley Hoffmann at their old headquarters on 6 Divinity Avenue. Peres refused to budge even one inch no matter how flexible Khalidi was. A harbinger for the Middle East Peace Negotiations over a decade later.

As a most loyal and grateful Harvard alumnus (J.D. magna cum laude, A.M., Ph.D.), I must nevertheless state that it is shameful and shameless that Harvard never granted a tenured full professorship to Walid Khalidi because he is a Palestinian despite the fact that he is universally recognized as one of the worlds foremost experts on the Middle East. This gets back to my previous observation that there is no point studying Middle East Politics at Harvard. ...

more here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/boylebiglie.html

Lebanese army: 12 IAF jets fly over Beirut, Lebanese areas

By The Associated Press
BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Lebanese army said Monday that Israel Air Force warplanes have violated their airspace by flying missions over Beirut and elsewhere in the country.

The Lebanese army said in a statement that "12 enemy Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace before noon Monday, four flew over the Mediterranean off the coastal city of Byblos in the north and headed toward the eastern province of Hermel."

It added that eight other Israeli warplanes flew over the southern town of Rmeish, then headed north to Beirut, the Chouf mountains, southeast of the capital, and Hermel before flying back.
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The Israeli overflights lasted about an hour, the statement said.

The Israel Defense Forces when asked about the alleged flyover said "it is our policy not to comment on our operations."

IAF warplanes frequently fly over Lebanese airspace in what Israel says are reconnaissance missions.

Israeli overflights have been a constant source of tension between the Israel and Lebanon. Before the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and the Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based guerilla group habitually opened fire on Israeli planes, with shrapnel from the anti-aircraft fire falling on Israeli communities across the border, causing some casualties.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978711.html