Category: Israel

The Invasion of Gaza: “Operation Cast Lead”, Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda

by Michel Chossudovsky

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11606

The aerial bombings and the ongoing ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli ground forces must be analysed in a historical context. Operation “Cast Lead” is a carefully planned undertaking, which is part of a broader military-intelligence agenda first formulated by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001:

“Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.”(Barak Ravid, Operation “Cast Lead”: Israeli Air Force strike followed months of planning, Haaretz, December 27, 2008)

It was Israel which broke the truce on the day of the US presidential elections, November 4:

“Israel used this distraction to break the ceasefire between itself and Hamas by bombing the Gaza strip. Israel claimed this violation of the ceasefire was to prevent Hamas from digging tunnels into Israeli territory.

The very next day, Israel launched a terrorizing siege of Gaza, cutting off food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities in an attempt to “subdue” the Palestinians while at the same time engaging in armed incursions.

In response, Hamas and others in Gaza again resorted to firing crude, homemade, and mainly inaccurate rockets into Israel. During the past seven years, these rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 17 Israelis. Over the same time span, Israeli Blitzkrieg assaults have killed thousands of Palestinians, drawing worldwide protest but falling on deaf ears at the UN.” (Shamus Cooke, The Massacre in Palestine and the Threat of a Wider War, Global Research, December 2008)

Planned Humanitarian Disaster

On December 8, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was in Tel Aviv for discussions with his Israeli counterparts including the director of Mossad, Meir Dagan.

“Operation Cast Lead” was initiated two days day after Christmas. It was coupled with a carefully designed international Public Relations campaign under the auspices of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Hamas’ military targets are not the main objective. Operation “Cast Lead” is intended, quite deliberately, to trigger civilian casualities.

What we are dealing with is a “planned humanitarian disaster” in Gaza in a densly populated urban area. (See map below)

The longer term objective of this plan, as formulated by Israeli policy makers, is the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestinian lands:

“Terrorize the civilian population, assuring maximal destruction of property and cultural resources… [T]he daily life of the Palestinians must be rendered unbearable: They should be locked up in cities and towns, prevented from exercising normal economic life, cut off from workplaces, schools and hospitals, This will encourage emigration and weaken the resistance to future expulsions” Ur Shlonsky, quoted by Ghali Hassan, Gaza: The World’s Largest Prison, Global Research, 2005)

“Operation Justified Vengeance”

A turning point has been reached. Operation “Cast Lead” is part of the broader military-intelligence operation initiated at the outset the Ariel Sharon government in 2001. It was under Sharon’s “Operation Justified Vengeance” that F-16 fighter planes were initially used to bomb Palestinian cities.

“Operation Justified Vengeance” was presented in July 2001 to the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon by IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, under the title “The Destruction of the Palestinian Authority and Disarmament of All Armed Forces”.

“A contingency plan, codenamed Operation Justified Vengeance, was drawn up last June [2001] to reoccupy all of the West Bank and possibly the Gaza Strip at a likely cost of “hundreds” of Israeli casualties.” (Washington Times, 19 March 2002).

According to Jane’s ‘Foreign Report’ (July 12, 2001) the Israeli army under Sharon had updated its plans for an “all-out assault to smash the Palestinian authority, force out leader Yasser Arafat and kill or detain its army”.

“Bloodshed Justification”

The “Bloodshed Justification” was an essential component of the military-intelligence agenda. The killing of Palestinian civilians was justified on “humanitarian grounds.” Israeli military operations were carefully timed to coincide with the suicide attacks:

The assault would be launched, at the government’s discretion, after a big suicide bomb attack in Israel, causing widespread deaths and injuries, citing the bloodshed as justification. (Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel’s move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001, emphasis added)

The Dagan Plan

“Operation Justified Vengeance” was also referred to as the “Dagan Plan”, named after General (ret.) Meir Dagan, who currently heads Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

Reserve General Meir Dagan was Sharon’s national security adviser during the 2000 election campaign. The plan was apparently drawn up prior to Sharon’s election as Prime Minister in February 2001. “According to Alex Fishman writing in Yediot Aharonot, the Dagan Plan consisted in destroying the Palestinian authority and putting Yasser Arafat ‘out of the game’.” (Ellis Shulman, “Operation Justified Vengeance”: a Secret Plan to Destroy the Palestinian Authority, March 2001):

“As reported in the Foreign Report [Jane] and disclosed locally by Maariv, Israel’s invasion plan — reportedly dubbed Justified Vengeance — would be launched immediately following the next high-casualty suicide bombing, would last about a month and is expected to result in the death of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians. (Ibid, emphasis added)

The “Dagan Plan” envisaged the so-called “cantonization” of the Palestinian territories whereby the West Bank and Gaza would be totally cut off from one other, with separate “governments” in each of the territories. Under this scenario, already envisaged in 2001, Israel would:

“negotiate separately with Palestinian forces that are dominant in each territory-Palestinian forces responsible for security, intelligence, and even for the Tanzim (Fatah).” The plan thus closely resembles the idea of “cantonization” of Palestinian territories, put forth by a number of ministers.” Sylvain Cypel, The infamous ‘Dagan Plan’ Sharon’s plan for getting rid of Arafat, Le Monde, December 17, 2001)

From Left to Right: Dagan, Sharon, Halevy

The Dagan Plan has established continuity in the military-intelligence agenda. In the wake of the 2000 elections, Meir Dagan was assigned a key role. “He became Sharon’s “go-between” in security issues with President’s Bush’s special envoys Zinni and Mitchell.” He was subsequently appointed Director of the Mossad by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in August 2002. In the post-Sharon period, he remained head of Mossad. He was reconfirmed in his position as Director of Israeli Intelligence by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in June 2008.

Meir Dagan, in coordination with his US counterparts, has been in charge of various military-intelligence operations. It is worth noting that Meir Dagan as a young Colonel had worked closely with defense minister Ariel Sharon in the raids on Palestinian settlements in Beirut in 1982. The 2009 ground invasion of Gaza, in many regards, bear a canny resemblance to the 1982 military operation led by Sharon and Dagan.

Continuity: From Sharon to Olmert

Olmert and Sharon

It is important to focus on a number of key events which have led up to the killings in Gaza under “Operation Cast Lead”:

1. The assassination in November 2004 of Yaser Arafat. This assassination had been on the drawing board since 1996 under “Operation Fields of Thorns”. According to an October 2000 document “prepared by the security services, at the request of then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, stated that ‘Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state [of Israel] and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence’”. (Tanya Reinhart, Evil Unleashed, Israel’s move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making, Global Research, December 2001. Details of the document were published in Ma’ariv, July 6, 2001.).

Arafat’s assassination was ordered in 2003 by the Israeli cabinet. It was approved by the US which vetoed a United Nations Security Resolution condemning the 2003 Israeli Cabinet decision. Reacting to increased Palestinian attacks, in August 2003, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared “all out war” on the militants whom he vowed “marked for death.”

“In mid September, Israel’s government passed a law to get rid of Arafat. Israel’s cabinet for political security affairs declared it “a decision to remove Arafat as an obstacle to peace.” Mofaz threatened; “we will choose the right way and the right time to kill Arafat.” Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN he thought Arafat was the next target. CNN asked Sharon spokesman Ra’anan Gissan if the vote meant expulsion of Arafat. Gissan clarified; “It doesn’t mean that. The Cabinet has today resolved to remove this obstacle. The time, the method, the ways by which this will take place will be decided separately, and the security services will monitor the situation and make the recommendation about proper action.” (See Trish Shuh, Road Map for a Decease Plan, www.mehrnews.com November 9 2005

The assassination of Arafat was part of the 2001 Dagan Plan. In all likelihood, it was carried out by Israeli Intelligence. It was intended to destroy the Palestinian Authority, foment divisions within Fatah as well as between Fatah and Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas is a Palestinian quisling. He was installed as leader of Fatah, with the approval of Israel and the US, which finance the Palestinian Authority’s paramilitary and security forces.

2. The removal, under the orders of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, of all Jewish settlements in Gaza. A Jewish population of over 7,000 was relocated.

“It is my intention [Sharon] to carry out an evacuation – sorry, a relocation – of settlements that cause us problems and of places that we will not hold onto anyway in a final settlement, like the Gaza settlements…. I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza,” Sharon said.” (CBC, March 2004)

The issue of the settlements in Gaza was presented as part of Washington’s “road map to peace”. Celebrated by the Palestinians as a “victory”, this measure was not directed against the Jewish settlers. Quite the opposite: It was part of the overall covert operation, which consisted in transforming Gaza into a concentration camp. As long as Jewish settlers were living inside Gaza, the objective of sustaining a large barricaded prison territory could not be achieved. The Implementation of “Operation Cast Lead” required “no Jews in Gaza”.

3. The building of the infamous Apartheid Wall was decided upon at the beginning of the Sharon government.

4. The next phase was the Hamas election victory in January 2006. Without Arafat, the Israeli military-intelligence architects knew that Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas would loose the elections. This was part of the scenario, which had been envisaged and analyzed well in advance.

With Hamas in charge of the Palestinian authority, using the pretext that Hamas is a terrorist organization, Israel would carry out the process of “cantonization” as formulated under the Dagan plan. Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas would remain formally in charge of the West Bank. The duly elected Hamas government would be confined to the Gaza strip.

Ground Attack

On January 3, Israeli tanks and infantry entered Gaza in an all out ground offensive:

“The ground operation was preceded by several hours of heavy artillery fire after dark, igniting targets in flames that burst into the night sky. Machine gun fire rattled as bright tracer rounds flashed through the darkness and the crash of hundreds of shells sent up streaks of fire. (AP, January 3, 2009)

Israeli sources have pointed to a lengthy drawn out military operation. It “won’t be easy and it won’t be short,” said Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a TV address.

Israel is not seeking to oblige Hamas “to cooperate”. What we are dealing with is the implementation of the “Dagan Plan” as initially formulated in 2001, which called for:

“an invasion of Palestinian-controlled territory by some 30,000 Israeli soldiers, with the clearly defined mission of destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian leadership and collecting weaponry currently possessed by the various Palestinian forces, and expelling or killing its military leadership. (Ellis Shulman, op cit, emphasis added)

The broader question is whether Israel in consultation with Washington is intent upon triggering a wider war.

Mass expulsion could occur at some later stage of the ground invasion, were the Israelis to open up Gaza’s borders to allow for an exodus of population. Expulsion was referred to by Ariel Sharon as the “a 1948 style solution”. For Sharon “it is only necessary to find another state for the Palestinians. -‘Jordan is Palestine’ – was the phrase that Sharon coined.” (Tanya Reinhart, op cit)

January 4, 2009

THE DEBKA REVIEW – A WEEK AT GLANCE


Summary of DEBKAfile Exclusives in Weeks Ending Dec. 25, 2008
Kidnap, glider attacks in Jerusalem foiled. Two Palestinians arrested 14 Dec.: DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that two residents of the Jerusalem village of Isawiya, Iyad Abid, 20, and Abdullah Abid, 21, were indicted before Jerusalem district court Sunday, Dec. 14, on charges of plotting a series of terrorist attacks on Israeli Border Guard and army officers on duty in the neighborhood of their village. One plan was to ram a border patrol jeep, use electric shockers to stun the officers and take them hostage against the release of jailed Palestinians, including members of their family. Isawiya is strategically located close to the Hebrew University, Hadassah hospital which serves the neighborhood, Mount Scopus, French Hill and the Jerusalem-Maaleh Adummim highway. The two accused Palestinians, brothers and Hamas members, also conspired to crash a glider loaded with explosives on the IDF electronic early warning station on Mount Scopus. Russia considers first Israeli military purchase – spy drones 16 Dec.: A $10-12 million transaction for Moscow to purchase Israeli spy drones for the Russian army is in negotiation with Israel’s Aerospace Industries’. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the sale, if finally approved by the defense ministry in Tel Aviv, would be Israel’s first advanced hardware sale to Russia. It would also mark a reversal of Israeli policy, since the Russian army would almost certainly use the drones in another future round of hostilities with Georgia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A drone transaction with Moscow would give the Russian army a technological-intelligence edge over Caucasian and Caspian nations, like Georgia and Azerbaijan, and therefore place in doubt their future arms purchases from Israel. Crowded Sderot shopping center takes direct Qassam hit from Gaza, 12 injured 17 Dec.: The 15th missile of Wednesday, Dec. 17, from Gaza, which injured 12 people – three from shrapnel, the rest in shock – exploded in the Sderot supermarket parking area, destroying shops and cars and scattering crowds of panicky Hanukah shoppers. The attack capped two days of a massive Palestinian missile and mortar barrage against several Israeli towns and villages without an Israeli military response. Only after the Sderot shopping center was ravaged did the Air force go into action against the Palestinians launching missiles from Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip. Even then, the Palestinians kept on firing raising the day’s number of missiles to 21. Olmert’s bid to revive Syrian track runs into blank walls 19 Dec.: Israeli caretaker prime minister Ehud Olmert has been warned that the trip he booked to Ankara for next Monday will be an exercise in futility. Damascus let it be known Friday. Dec. 19, that acceptance in advance of its “borders document” was the pre-condition for direct peace talk. This six-point document covers Israel’s withdrawal – not only from the Golan but also from another slice of territory, the northeastern bank of the Sea of Galilee and Hamat Gader region, which is part of pre-1967 Israel. This maximalist approach, say DEBKAfile’s sources, aims at notifying US president-elect Barack Obama and designated secretary of state Hillary Clinton that Damascus’ “borders document” is a take-it-or-leave it proposition. Syrian leaders appear to believe that after he takes office, Obama will assign American partners to the negotiations, who will tilt the talks in Syria’s favor. Opposition Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu said the post-election government he expects to lead next year would not be bound by any “Olmert-Livni concessions to Syria” or abandon the Golan. US-Russian in race to arm Lebanon with heavy weapons DEBKAfile Exclusive Report 20 Dec.: In their race to arm the Lebanese army with heavy weapons, which Israeli diplomacy has failed to deter, the United States and Russia have no way of keeping them out of Hizballah hands; Shiite soldiers make up nearly half the force and Hizballah’s hands are on the levers of the Beirut government. Israel’s tardy diplomatic efforts to forestall the flow fell on deaf ears in Moscow and Washington. David Hale of the state department announced the US package for Lebanon Friday, Dec. 19, while denying Washington was competing with Moscow. He said that in addition to M-50 Supersherman tanks, the US package for Lebanon included “air support capabilities (helicopters) with precision weapons and urban combat gear.” The US was helping the Lebanese army “to maintain internal security and fighting terrorism in Lebanon,” he said. DEBKAfile also reveals that a group of Hizballah operatives recently paid a secret visit to Moscow and asked for Russian hardware. Jerusalem is too busy spinning fairy tales about the feasibility of peace with Syria to pay enough attention to the hectic, hostile activity on Israel’s northern border. Israeli government again backs down as Gaza missile war boils over 21 Dec.: No military action to stamp out the Palestinian missile blitz against southwestern Israel will be undertaken before “international support” is organized and an attempt to renew the “ceasefire” with Hamas is undertaken. This was the gist of the Israeli cabinet decision Sunday morning as Palestinian missile fire continued. Schoolchildren were told to stay in their classrooms and forbidden the playground. Magen David Adom’s first aid services are on high alert. Hamas leaders have gone into hiding in the smuggling tunnels honeycombing the southern Gaza Strip in case Israel goes back to targeted assassinations. Iraq orders Iranian exiles to leave ahead of PM Maliki’s Tehran visit 22 Dec.: Days before Iraqi Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki visits Tehran, his government has told the opposition People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) it is no longer welcome in Iraq and the 3,500 Iranian exiles would be deported. Cont. Next Column	DEBKAfile reports they have nowhere to go. No government has offered the group asylum although Jordan has supported the PMOI’s claim to remove its terrorist listing by the European Union, based on its having laid down arms and renounced violent action in 2001. From 2003, Ashraf Camp came under US protection after the US military destroyed more than 2,000 tanks, armored personnel carries and other weapons. But the handover of security to the Iraqi government has left the organization in the lurch. First Palestinian anti-air gun fire against Israel helicopters. Military option still on ice 22 Dec.: For the first time in 9 years of Palestinian warfare, anti-air gun fire was directed from the ground against Israeli aircraft, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. The guns opened up Sunday night, Dec. 21, against Apache helicopters before they crossed into Gaza air space from Nahal Oz to strike missile crews. The helicopters returned the fire which came from hideouts in the orchards of northern Gaza. In line with the government’s decision Sunday to seek international backing for a potential military operation Gaza, Israel complained to the UN about the Palestinian missile and mortar attacks from Gaza terrorizing its southwestern population and asserted its right to exercise its military option to defend the population of the targeted region. Notwithstanding the severe escalation of Gaza attacks, a senior military source told DEBKAfile that a substantive military raid is not on the IDF’s immediate agenda. The government led by Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak would prefer its postponement to mid-2009 or later. Kings Abdullah of Jordan and Saudi Arabia showered $316,000-worth of precious jewelry on Condoleezza Rice 23 Dec.: They included an emerald and diamond necklace, ring, bracelet and earrings set from Abdullah II and Queen Rania and a ruby and diamond necklace with matching earrings, bracelet and ring from Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. US: Russia’s S-300 missile sale to Iran is Israel’s decision point 23 Dec.: An American military intelligence official says Russia’s sale of S-300 long-range missiles to Iran presents a “decision point for Israel, since once the anti-aircraft system is in place it could deter any strike” against Iran’s nuclear sites. State department spokesman Robert Wood said Monday, Dec. 22: “We have repeatedly made clear… that we would strongly oppose the sale of S-300.” From Iran, they could reach American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and shift the Middle East military balance of power. Amid the confusion contrived by Moscow about the state of the consignment, an American source said Tuesday: “The US believes it is taking place.” In Moscow, a “military-diplomatic source in Moscow” said Monday the S-300 systems are being packed up… and expected to be delivered from the defense ministry’s warehouses.” The latter statement indicates the missiles going to Iran straight from Russia’s own emergency stores and not waiting to come off production lines. Large-scale missile defense exercise 23 Dec.: A big missile defense exercise was conducted Tuesday in the southern Israeli towns of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Kiryat Malachi, Kiryat Gat, Gedera, Yavne. Gaza clash impending – Israel air strikes versus Palestinian long-range missiles DEBKAfile Exclusive Report 24-25 Dec.: The fifty or so missiles Hamas sent crashing into Israel Wednesday, Dec. 24, represented only a quarter of its capability of up to 200 missiles per day on a par with Hizballah’s barrage against Galilee in the 2006 Lebanon war. They can reach a distance of 42 km – an area far broader than the strip taking hits from Gaza Wednesday which was delimited by Ashkelon to the north and Netivot to the east. Therefore an outer rim of 30 locations 30 km distant from the Palestinian enclave has now been connected to the Homeland Command’s early warning system, including Kiryat Gath, Kiryat Malachi, the Lachish Region and Ashdod. The Israeli security cabinet meeting Wednesday approved military action to extinguish the escalating Palestinian offensive which Wednesday left a trail of 57 shock victims – half of them children – and wrecked homes, vehicles, shops, workshops and roads. The ministers took into account that Hamas might counter effective Israeli air strikes in Gaza with its long-range missiles. Former national security adviser Giora Eiland urged the government in a radio interview to start treating the Gaza Strip like a neighboring hostile state and hold its Hamas regime responsible for the insupportable missile aggression. Israel must fight back – not just against the missile teams, but go for the belligerent Palestinian government’s infrastructure, even if 100 civilians are killed every day, because this would finally give Hamas a strong incentive to live in peace instead of making war. Tehran deflects Hamas SOS for intervention against an Israeli attack in Gaza DEBKAfile Exclusive Report 25 Dec.: Hamas asked Tehran Dec. 25, for its support by a threat to intervene if Israeli launched an attack on Gaza, DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report. Tehran gave Hamas no promises, saying it was watching to see how Israel’s military operation evolved. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert meanwhile strongly urged Gazan Palestinians to stand up to Hamas and stop them shooting missiles to ward off Israel’s military operation. He addressed them over al Arabiya television. In Cairo, foreign minister Tzipi Livni said after talks with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak that she did not ask Egypt for permission to embark on military action in the Gaza Strip. This decision was solely Israel’s, she said. Our sources note that the Iranian regime is thinking twice before making any military commitments for deterring Israel. For one thing, they believe it would have the opposite effect and offer Israel vindication for a major campaign. In southern Lebanon, close to the Israeli border, Lebanese army sappers defused seven Katyusha rockets fitting with timing devices a short time before they were set for launching against Galilee. There is no word who rigged them, but they apparently came out of Hizballah’s arsenal.

December 31, 2008

Israel’s Wanton Aggression On Gaza

By Stephen Lendman

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11526

Global Research, December 30, 2008

It’s not the first time and won’t be the last. On December 27, AP reported that:

“Israeli aircraft struck Hamas security compounds across Gaza on Saturday in unprecedented waves of simultaneous attacks, and Hamas and medics reported dozens of people were killed.”

Haaretz headlined:

“Israel launched (Operation Case Lead) Saturday morning (at around 11:30AM with no warning) the start of a massive offensive against Qassam rocket and mortar fire on its southern communities, targeting dozens of buildings belonging to the ruling Hamas militant group.”

AlJazeera.net reported that “Israeli missiles target Gaza,” and continued:

“Israel has launched air strikes on Hamas installations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 155 people and causing heavy damage, according to officials and witnesses.”

“At least 30 missiles (later over 100 reported) were fired at targets on Saturday (morning), with the head of emergency services in Gaza saying at least 200 people were also wounded.” By Sunday afternoon, Ma’an News reported much higher numbers – at least 285 known dead, more expected, and over 900 injured, many seriously.

Among the dead was Gaza’s police chief, Tawfiq Jabber, after a missile struck a police graduation ceremony in Gaza City. Other “casualties” (presumed killed) were governor of the Al-Wusta (central) Districts, Ahmad Abu Aashur, and commander of Security and Protection Services (in the government police), Ismail Al-Ja’bari.

The Strip’s interior ministry reported that all Gaza security compounds were destroyed. According to Hamas’ deputy leader, Mousa Abu Marzook: So far “the aggression (hasn’t) stop(ped)….they are targeting all the police headquarters and offices. We will defend our people, we will retaliate against this aggression….our military will retaliate.”

Marzook asked the international community to condemn Israel’s wanton state terrorism. “Nobody in this world can accept what happened….the international community (must) stand against this and say that it is not acceptable.” Former Palestinian information minister, Mustafa Barghauthi, said: Israel didn’t attack Hamas, it attacked “the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza. (Israel is guilty of) war crimes.” Hamas’ leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said “Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre.”

In Damascus, Khled Meshal, Hamas’ political leader in exile, said Hamas pursued “all peaceful options without results” in calling for new Intifada resistance. The Arab League was tepid in its response. It called an “emergency” Sunday meeting in Cairo, then postponed it until Wednesday, December 31.

Meanwhile, the raids continue; the death and injury toll mounts; vast amounts of despair, anger, and destruction as well; and Fatah leader and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (from Cairo) blamed Hamas for the violence. That provoked outrage from Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. He accused Abbas of “downplay(ing) the sufferings of our people in Gaza, belittl(ing) their pains, (and) providing justification of the holocaust and war waged by Israel.”

As always, most of the dead and wounded are civilian men, women and children. No matter, according to Israeli military spokesman Avi Benayahu saying: Saturday’s attack is “only the beginning. The operation was launched following the violation of the terms of the lull by Hamas and the unceasing attacks by Hamas authorities on Israeli civilians in the south of the country.”

In fact, “attacks” were the pretext, not the cause of Israel’s aggression. Since Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in January 2006, Israel, Washington and the West withheld recognition and more. All outside aid was cut off, an economic embargo and sanctions were imposed, and the legitimate government was isolated and vilified.

The leading candidate to become Israel’s next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, vows as a “strategic objective” to overthrow Hamas by military, economic and diplomatic means. Her main opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, pledges to “topple the Hamas regime” and end its effective resistance against an oppressive occupation.

All along, Hamas has been conciliatory to no avail. Earlier in the year, its leaders agreed to a ceasefire and observed months of it unilaterally, despite repeated Israeli violations and Gaza being under siege. On November 4, it ended after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Strip (without cause) and killed six Hamas officers supposedly to close off tunnels close to the Kisufim roadblock. Thereafter, in spite of both sides calling for peace, IDF hostilities continued.

Israel is a serial aggressor. Hamas responds in self-defense as international law allows. Article 51 of the UN Charter permits the “right of individual or collective self-defense (against an armed attack) until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security.”

On December 21, 1965, the UN General Assembly adopted Res. 2131 titled: “Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty.” It called armed intervention, subversion, and all forms of indirect intervention synonymous with aggression and, for the first time, recognized “the legitimacy of struggle by the people under colonial rules (including occupation) to exercise their rights to self-determination and independence.”

On November 22, 1974, the General Assembly passed Res. 3236 recognizing that Palestinians have the same right to self-determination as other sovereign states.

On June 8, 1977, Protocol 1 to the August 1949 Geneva Conventions was passed – “relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.” It declared the legitimacy of armed struggle (or resistance) to achieve self-determination as long as no proscribed methods are used. Further, “all states (are urged) to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial territories (including occupied people seeking freedom).”

Rarely do Palestinians get any, and, since 1967, have been some of the most isolated people in the world. For Gazans, no outside aid gets in, except for what Israel occasionally lets UN and humanitarian agencies supply and the little coming through tunnels on Egypt’s border. It’s never enough and falls woefully short of minimum amounts needed to survive. The result is a growing humanitarian crisis, an entire people on the verge of breakdown, compounded by mass slaughter, destruction, and it’s “only beginning” according to the IDF spokesman.

The world community is silent and lets Israel do as it pleases – despite repeated international law violations, willful acts of aggression, grievous harm to four million people under occupation, including 1.5 million under a medieval Gaza siege, now under attack.

Reports were that EU nations and Russia called for (but didn’t demand) an end to hostilities. According to Reuters, Washington urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties but stopped short of calling for an end to the attacks. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe blamed Palestinians in saying “Hamas’ continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop.” Unsaid was that they respond to IDF violence or that until December 27 no Israeli was killed or injured.

Blame the Victim, Not the Aggressor

On Saturday, Condoleeza Rice accused Hamas for the violence. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon could only express “deep alarm,” and where was Barack Obama? An AP photo showed him on vacation “working out” at the Semper Fit Center at the Marine Corp Base Hawaii in Kailua, Hawaii on Saturday, and CBS News reported that he’s “closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time,” according to Brooke Anderson, his chief national security spokesperson.

In a July 2008 interview, The New York Times asked Obama if Israel should negotiate with Hamas in Gaza. He replied that “I don’t think any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens….I expect Israelis to do (all they can to stop them)….In terms of negotiating with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, (and) has consistently used terror as a weapon. Hamas is a terrorist organization….it’s hard for Israel to negotiate with a country like that.”

Hamas was democratically elected. It’s the legitimate Palestinian government. It’s falsely called a terrorist organization, and it has every right to resist an illegal occupation under international law. It observed a unilateral ceasefire for months and extended peace overtures numerous times in the past. Israel spurned them by dividing Gaza and the West Bank, co-opting Mamoud Abbas, inciting Fatah against Hamas, isolating Gaza, and pursuing a policy of aggression, killings, targeted assassinations, mass incarcerations, and torture with full support from Washington, the West, and (from his comments above) the incoming Obama administration.

The UN Refugee Works Relief Agency’s (UNWRA) operations head for Palestinian refugees, John Ging, expressed outraged on what’s happening. Earlier he said: Gazans got nothing from the months of ceasefire. There was no “restoration of a dignified existence. We had our supplies restricted (during the period) to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position” with very little food left until it ran out.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) campaigns for Palestinian justice in areas of civil, human and political rights according to international law. Along with the Palestine Return Centre (PRC), the Palestinian Forum of Britain (PFB), the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), Stop the War, Friends of al Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and Respect, Islamic Human Rights Commission it organized emergency protests opposite Israel’s London Embassy on December 28 and 29 to demand an end of the Gaza siege and ongoing aggression. The urgency was highlighted by saying: Israel’s Cynicism (Is) Supported by the West’s Complicity” as it called for public solidarity to end it.

For her part, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni ordered the Ministry to “take emergency measures (to) open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign,” according to Haaretz. In other words, Israel will spin its wanton aggression into justifiable self-defense and get dominant media help to sell it.

On December 27, The New York Times took the lead. It reported that “Israeli airstrikes hit Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire….Israeli military officials (called the attack) an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. Thousands of Israelis hurried into bomb shelters amid the hail of rockets,” making it seem like Israel resembled London during the blitz when, in fact, Hamas attacks are mere pin pricks and only respond to first-strike Israeli attacks.

The Times and dominant media are silent on this. They continue spreading spurious lies about Hamas being “officially committed to Israel’s destruction, and when it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and then ‘forcibly’ took over Gaza in 2007, it said it would not recognize Israel, honor previous Palestinian Authority commitments to it, or end its violence against Israelis.”

All of the above is untrue. The Times continues to report falsely. Hamas wants peace, has repeatedly been conciliatory, and its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said earlier that armed struggle would end “if the Zionists ended (their) occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians.”

Israel rejects all overtures. More recently, Hamas offered peace and Israeli recognition in return for a Palestinian state inside pre-1967 borders – its Occupied Territories that it’s entitled to under international law.

As early as 1988, the PLO under Yasser Arafat accepted a two-state solution with Palestinians willing to settle for only 22% of their pre-1948 homeland – a generous offer that, if accepted, would have had two sovereign states living peacefully alongside each other as neighbors.

Israel rejects this out of hand. It chooses dominance over peace, violence over reconciliation, and imperial conquest above the rule of law. It’s colonizing the West Bank, ethnically cleansing the population, and continues to terrorize Gaza. “The newspaper of record” is selective about “fit news to print,” so uncomfortable truths are suppressed. It reported that one Israeli was killed Saturday and another four wounded, one seriously, but didn’t explain that previous rocket attacks caused no deaths or injuries.

After many months of siege compounded by ongoing attacks, Gaza is gravely affected, but so is the West Bank. Under the Fatah government, no rockets are launched, yet Israel maintains a violent occupation, continues to seize Palestinian land, expand its illegal settlements, and lets its residents terrorize Palestinians with impunity, even in cases of wanton killings and destruction of property.

Early Reports on the Ground and from Israel

On Saturday, Haaretz reported that 60 warplanes hit 50 targets simultaneously, then 20 more “struck 50 Palestinian rocket launchers in an effort to minimize Hamas’ retaliatory strikes.” The attack hit civilians with the IDF stating that those near targeted sites were “liable to get hurt.” Some were children leaving school when the strikes were launched.

Haaretz writer Amos Harel called them “the harshest IDF assault on Gaza since the territory was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967.” Palestinian sources described a massive attack, like “shock and awe,” destroying about 40 targets in three to five minutes. The IDF spent months picking sites, and dozens more may “come under attack in the coming days. Little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians. From Israel’s standpoint, Hamas” brought this on itself. In Pentagon-speak, civilians are “collateral damage,” but pictures of the slaughter show otherwise – stark evidence of crimes of war and against humanity that no authority will punish.

Also at issue is whether IDF ground forces will follow the air attacks, and if so, it won’t be the first time. The right-wing Jerusalem Post quoted president Shimon Peres saying: “Israel will take all steps demanded of it to stop the rocket fire (but) we will not go into Gaza. There are other ways – we didn’t leave Gaza in order to go back.”

The Ma’an News Agency reported (through Monday AM) at least 310 killed and over 1000 wounded with medical sources saying arrivals at Gaza City hospitals are in “pieces.” In addition, the Head of Emergency and ambulance department, Muawiya Hassanain, confirmed that medical crews continued pulling dozens from under rubble.

Things are desperate as he asked all Arab states for aid in the form of medications and operating supplies for those too badly injured to be moved. Hospital corridors are filled with bodies and gurneys, and local morgues are out of space.

Israeli defense minister and former prime minister, Ehud Barak, declared Gaza’s 20 square kilometers a “special military zone” – a classification just short of a declaration of war. It already is for its people, and here’s how Al-Azhar University professor Said Abdelwahed described conditions late Saturday:

“It is horrible outside! Minutes ago I heard the hissing of a Palestinian Qassam rocket, then another one accompanied by an explosion. It seems that the second one was hit by an Israeli aircraft that may have been targeting the Palestinian group. The news now is saying that an Israeli Apache helicopter has targeted a recreation ground with fish ponds.”

“Al-Shifa hospital said that there are more than 195 dead and over 570 injured there. Every minute the number of casualties goes up. These are the figures in Gaza, but there are still no official statements from other towns and villages and refugee camps. Near our apartment, my youngest son was waiting for his school bus when the preventive security department was hit 50 meters from where he was standing. Two men and two young girls died immediately.”

“It is utterly dark now. I am operating a small generator to contact the world via internet. Tonight everyone in Gaza is scared. It’s totally dark (there’s no power); children cry from fear; (at least) 206 people are dead. They (and the injured) line the floor at Al-Shifa hospital, but (it’s) poorly equipped. (Its) administration called on people to donate blood. The teachers’ syndicate declared a three days strike in protest….”

“Just in, Israeli aircraft (Saturday night) hit places east of Gaza City where a number of people were killed and injured. Casualties are rising. People remain under rubble. One mother lost two young daughters and a son as they were heading to school.”

“Tonight is cold mainly for those whose windows (were) shattered by explosions.” With Gaza under siege, “there is no glass available” to replace them. “In the apartment building where I live, 7 apartments witness freezing cold nights. They use blankets to cover in the place of the broken windows. Hundreds of homes” are in the same condition. Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh “gave a televised speech….to raise morale and to reconfirm that Hamas will not surrender. The death toll reached 210″ and number of seriously injured is now up to 200. Another air raid” is now in progress north of Gaza City.

UNRWA Expresses “Horror”

The UN Relief and Works Agency commissioner Karen AbuZayd was outraged over Israel’s attack, the mass killings and destruction, and expressed her “deep sadness at the terrible loss in human life.” She reminded Israel that it’s a signatory to “international conventions that protect non-combatants in times of conflict (and added that) these conventions are worthless if they are not upheld.” A statement said that UNRWA will “exert all efforts to respond as quickly as possible to relieve suffering and pain (and added that today’s attacks follow) weeks of a tight blockade that prevented UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies from assisting the population (that’s) unable to (meet) their basic needs, and now” they’re under attack.

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) Expresses Outrage in Calling for An Immediate End of the Attacks.

It blamed the suffering in Israel and Gaza “squarely with successive Israeli governments” in citing 41 years of “increasingly oppressive Israeli Occupation without a hint that a sovereign and viable Palestinian state will ever emerge.”

Why so? Because Israel and Washington won’t tolerate one beyond the fiction of isolated, surrounded, impoverished, and impotent bantustan outposts that IDF forces can enter at will and wreak havoc on a helpless population.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad Response

After the air strikes, Hamas ordered its Al-Qassam Brigades to respond “by any means necessary.” Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called for a “massive response” and for renewal of others inside Israel. Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batsh called Israel’s attack “open war.” He also condemned the world community and Arab states for their “silence on such massacres” and vowed that Israel “would never make the resistance factions surrender.”

West Bank Protests

Demonstrations erupted across the West Bank, including in Bethlehem, Ramallah city center, the Ad-Duheisha refugee camp, Hebron, Tulkarem, and East Jerusalem. Violent clashes broke out between Palestinian youths and IDF forces in Shufat refugee camp on the northern outskirts of East Jerusalem. Also in Qalandia, Ar-Ram and Al-Isawiya. Dozens of injuries and arrests were reported. Black flags were hung around the city and a commercial strike was declared.

Tulkarem governor Talal Duweikat and Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member Hasan Khriesah joined hundreds of others in the streets. The city declared a day of mourning in response.

In Hebron, hundreds of university students protested for an end to violence. They chanted anti-occupation slogans and called for Fatah and Hamas to unify for a common purpose. The group marched to the Bab Az-Zawiyah neighborhood where confrontations erupted with IDF forces, and they, in turn fired suffocating amounts of tear gas.

In Ramallah, Fatah organized a rally for hundreds and called for a general strike to close all city shops for the day. Demonstrators and international community institutions raised banners with slogans saying “one blood, one nation, Gaza and we are with you.” Ministry of Prisoners Affairs, Ziyad Abu Ein, called on all Palestinians to unite in dark days. PLC member Mustafa Barghouthi called Israeli violence “their harshest crimes against Palestinians” and condemned world and Arab leaders for their silence.

In Bethlehem, protests erupted in the Ad-Duheisha refugee camp (south of the city) and a larger crowd assembled in the city.

A December 27 Palestinian press release read:

“A demonstration to condemn the massacres being committed in Gaza.”

“Palestinian Civil Society organizations in the Bethlehem area, people of various political affiliations, Christians, and Muslims, and all people of conscience in the Bethlehem area are gathering at 5PM (Saturday) in front of the Church of Nativity and Omar’s mosque in Bethlehem.”

Through Sunday afternoon, around 300 people were massacred by bombing besieged Gaza. Over 1000 were reported injured as well. The victims include men, women, and children, and the numbers keeps rising. “Join us today as we call for ending the massacres, ending the siege on Gaza, for reconciliation between all Palestinians, and for freedom.”

Signed:

Khalid AlAzza
Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh
Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour

The Union of Health Work Committees – Gaza – Late Saturday Press Release – from Executive Director Yousef Momeusa

After two waves of Israeli air attacks, “television footage showed dead bodies scattered on a road and wounded and dead being carried away by distraught rescuers. There was widespread damage to buildings.” The number of dead exceed 200 and is rising. At “least 750 were wounded, 125 with critical injuries.” Updated numbers are much higher and continue climbing.

“The military operation makes the Palestinian blood fall like rain. As a consequence, the civilian population in the cities of Rafah, Khan-Younis, middle camps, Gaza City, Beit-Hanoun and Beit-Lahiya and in the refugee camp of Jabalia are suffering from the most horrible onslaught of Israeli military power….The number of dead and injured are increasing by the minute.”

“The infrastructure is being destroyed leaving many areas without power and water. Medical supplies in the hospital are largely exhausted (and) food supplies are dwindling.” A real health crisis looms. UHWC is working “around the clock at the risk to themselves to deal with the crisis….The entire world is witnessing these scandalous and outrageous acts, and yet no concrete steps have been taken!!”

“UHWC asks you to issue a strong Last Appeal Statement condemning Israel’s human rights violations against the Palestinian people and to demand a cessation of this military offensive….There are no political considerations which can justify the silence of the international community any longer.”

Signed,

Dr. Yousef Momeusa
Executive Director

Professor Said Abdelwahed of Al-Azhar University, Gaza
on the End of the Six-Month Ceasefire

Prior to Israel’s December 27 attack, he feared the worst and said it “means escalation; bombardment, air raids. It means military activities on the border. The last six months brought big pressures on our social life, on resources, all due to the Israeli siege.” With it were high prices on goods able to enter from Egypt through tunnels that for the most part Israel allows given the dire situation on the ground.

“I can’t see any progress being made towards a united Palestinian government. I think both sides” lose out as a result, “but Israel takes (full) advantage….The students (at my university) are deprived of many things. They are disappointed young people with no hope or future in front of them, so they are in bad shape.”

Abdelwahed mentions a Gaza City health worker “expect(ing) the situation to deteriorate (further): more incursions and more military operations in border areas. While the world is busy with Christmas, Israel can take action. (Already) we have 16 hours of power cuts a day. Hospitals have to run generators for hours at a stretch, which they weren’t designed for. So they break down – and because of the closure we have no spare parts….I cannot see the internal situation improving soon. We’re short of everything. Eighty per cent of people in Gaza (rely) on food assistance. It’s a big problem.” It’s now much bigger.

At 11PM on Saturday, Abdelwahed reported new air raids were in progress concentrating on the “eastern parts of the city of Gaza. One woman lost 10 of her family. Only she and a daughter remain alive. The daughter couldn’t speak to the media because she didn’t (understand) what happened. Panic is everywhere in the city and we anticipate (worse still) to come. Demonstrations erupted in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.” The death toll keeps climbing. “An Israeli caller just rang us up. My youngest son answered. The caller threatened that if I have any weapons they will hit my place!!!”

There have been “five air raids in 10 minutes. Targets are societies and groups of social works in thickly populated areas. One mosque was hit as well. I am without electricity for 30 hours so far. I am still operating a small generator to contact the world via internet.”

Abdelwahed sent this email on Sunday. “My family and I are okay but stressed….the building adjacent to (ours) was hit by a small rocket from a helicopter. (The) situation is horrible and people are really panicked.”

“Last night, F16s targeted Al-Aqsa satellite channel and leveled it to the ground.” Surrounding buildings are impossible to live in. “One small mosque across the street from Al-Shifa Hospital was (demolished).” Homes were badly damaged as well, one “belong(ing) to a friend of mine; he told me that what he witnessed was hard to describe in words….Also his sister was severely injured.”

A medical doctor friend “told me that the death toll climbed to about 500 (though the media reports around 300) and more than 1000 injured.” Israelis are targeting Rafah tunnels. “Hundreds of Palestinians stormed the Egyptian border with a bulldozer and on foot but failed to (get across) as the Egyptians shot live at them.”

A “new air raid on different targets (reported) minutes ago. Many died and injured. My window glass (is) shattered. (The) Customs house and passport department have been demolished minutes ago. Aircraft are still in the sky operating.”

“F16s (just) destroyed the largest security building in Gaza….Four missiles leveled the building to the ground; also police stations were hit and totally destroyed today. (We’re hearing that many areas) were targeted by Israeli warplanes. Large numbers of civilians, including children died and were injured in today’s attacks. At Rafah border, one Palestinian was shot dead (by the Egyptians). The situation on the border is terribly bad. An Israeli ground attack seems possible.”

Ma’an News Agency Updated Timeline Late Saturday Through Mid-Day Sunday, December 28 and 29

— 10:15PM – 2 more air strikes; at least 3 killed and 4 injured in Zaitoun neighborhood, Gaza City, and Jabalia in the north;

— 11:30PM – Israeli air strikes hit the Al-Mansura neighborhood east of Gaza City; 3 Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades deaths are reported;

— 11:50PM – air strikes hit Khan Younis in southern Gaza and several northern areas;

— 1:01AM Sunday – Israeli jets strike the security room in front of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; a close by mosque is hit killing at least 2 and injuring 7;

— 6:30AM – a medical storehouse in the Al-Junayna neighborhood and a fuel storage facility with diesel and benzene in the Tal As-Sultan area are hit – both near Rafah in the south; buildings and vital civilian supplies were destroyed; at least 3 deaths were reported;

— 6:45AM – Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood is bombed; several were injured and a police center destroyed;

— 8:00AM – Hamas police headquarters was attacked in the evacuated Israeli kfar Darum and Al-Matahin settlements;

— 10AM – a police station in the Shuja’iyya Gaza City neighborhood was bombed; also three homes in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood west of the city were destroyed;

— 10:30AM – a jeep in Gaza City’s Zaitoun neighborhood was attacked killing one child; a second strike targeted the Jabalia area; no casualties were reported so far;

— 11:00AM – the temporary headquarters of the Rafah governorate was bombed injuring several people; the original building was destroyed on Saturday;

— 11:45AM – the government municipal council offices were bombed in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza; several injuries were reported;

— Noon – the As-Saraya government compound was attacked, killing one child and injuring several others;

— Monday, December 28 – Israel’s assaults continue with no letup; Haaretz reported that the Islamic University and another government compound in Gaza City were destroyed; other targets hit included a guest palace and at least some residential homes; “at first light Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites in Gaza City over deserted streets,” punctuated by new explosions; Ehud Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said military action would continue until Israel “no longer (fears) terror (from) rocket barrages.”

Throughout the attacks, images and reports on the ground are horrific and disturbing. All around is death and destruction. Amputated bodies fill Al-Shifa Hospital hallways. In one corner, a dead seven-year old boy is in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover him.

One man is dazed after watching his son killed during the police graduation ceremony. Another father stood next to his son as he was decapitated. He’s still screaming. In a hospital waiting room, a mother is silent after her son was pronounced dead.

Carnage is everywhere, inside and on the streets – body parts, blood, strewn clothing and other items. Twelve-year old Ayaman is screaming as his father tries not to let him see the bodies of his brother and uncle torn to pieces under sheets.

Yaha Muheisen stops searching for his son’s body and Nawal Al-Lad’a can’t find her two sons bodies in the hospital so she searches through rubble.

Gaza medical personnel confirm that the majority of the dead are civilians, including men, women and children. Most were torn to shreds. Bodies continue to be pulled from rubble. Some Palestinians say images resemble the 1982 (Beirut) Sabra and Shitila massacres of about 3000 men, women, children and infants during a 62-hour (proxy) Phalange militia force rampage while the IDF stood by and let it happen.

Ariel Sharon was defense minister at the time. After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1981, he authorized the operation, and in his autobiography confirmed that he negotiated it with Lebanon’s president-elect Bashir Gemayel. Afterward, journalist Robert Fisk called it “one of the most shocking war crimes of the 20th century.” Another in Gaza remains ongoing.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote that “The neighborhood bully strikes again….Once again, Israel’s violent responses….exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom. What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime….Once again the commentators sat in television studios and hailed the combat jets” that killed the innocent. “Once again, they urged (not) letting up….Once again, they described” disturbing images as a “difficult scene….When the bully is on a rampage, nobody can stop him.”

Journalist Amira Hass called Gaza “Little Baghdad, bombs everywhere, smoke, fire, people not knowing where to hide, fear everywhere, rage and hatred.” She wrote painfully of carnage and death, of the living searching for loved ones, of no electricity, no gas, no flour, no bread for the past week, just despair and destruction as Israeli attacks continue.

Harold Pinter on Israel

On December 24 at age 78, Harold Pinter lost his long battle with cancer. He was the most influential playwright of his generation, the 2005 Nobel laureate for literature, a voice of political protest, and a passionate campaigner against human rights abuses. The Nobel academy citation called him an author “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed room.” For some, he was a “permanent public nuisance, a questioner of accepted truths, both in life and art.”

Too ill with cancer, he recorded his award ceremony speech on videotape, voiced strong opposition to the Iraq war, Britain’s role in it, and called the invasion a “bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.” Would he say less about Israel’s current assault?

Pinter was Jewish, a critic of Israel’s illegal occupation, and its brutality inflicted on Gazans. He was one of 105 prominent Jewish signers of an April 2008 “We’re not celebrating Israel’s Anniversary” petition. Its last paragraph read:

“We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on (Gaza) civilians and that continues to deny to Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.” Pinter called George Bush a “mass murderer.” He felt no different about merciless Israeli leaders.

A Possible Ground Invasion?

On Sunday, Haaretz reported that the IDF “will call 6500 reservists to duty, as part of the largest Israeli offensive on (Gaza) since it” seized the Territory in 1967. Defense officials said that the call-up is part of military preparations for a possible escalation of fighting. Meanwhile, IDF infantry and armored troops (including tanks) man Gaza’s border for a possible ground invasion, and Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak warned that “The operation will be deeper and expanded as much as necessary.”

“The Bloodiest Day in the History of Occupation”

That’s from a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights PCHR) December 27 press release that “condemn(ed) in the strongest terms the war waged by” the IDF on Gaza. As it’s done many times before, PCHR calls on the international community and High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War to intervene immediately, to stop the killings, and to end the unprecedented devastation and deteriorated humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

The Gaza-based One Democratic State Group called for “all civil society organizations and freedom loving people to act immediately (to pressure their governments) to end diplomatic ties with Apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it.” It’s press release headlined: “Stop the Massacre in Gaza – Boycott Israel Now!”

The “Stench of Death Hangs Over Gaza,” wrote Ola Attallah, IslamOnline correspondent from Gaza City. Can we sense it, smell it, feel it, anguish over it, and decide once and for all this won’t stand! If not now, when? If not us, who? If wanton butchery isn’t incentive enough, what is?

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

December 30, 2008
Cyprus Dimension of Turkish Foreign Policy

Cyprus that is located in Eastern Mediterranean has a great strategic importance for European countries as much as other North Africa and Middle East have. Sovereign states made big wars especially to keep the artery of commerce under control and the island was occupied by so many forces throughout the history. (more…)

December 29, 2008
Ergenekon agent spent time in northern New Jersey prior to 9/11

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Dec 10, 2008, 00:22

(WMR) — Tuncay Guney, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) agent who was a key player in the right-wing “Deep State” Ergenekon movement that attempted to overthrow the Turkish government, spent time in North Jersey in the months prior to the 9/11 attacks, according to a reliable source who spoke to WMR.

Guney now claims to be a rabbi but his status as a rabbi has been rejected as a falsehood by Turkey’s Jewish community leaders. Guney is listed as a rabbi at Jacob House (“B’nai Yakov”) Jewish Community Center in Toronto but the Toronto Board of Rabbis and the Turkish Jewish Congregation have no records of a Rabbi Tuncay Guney or “Daniel Levi,” an alias used by Guney. It is believed that “Jacob House” is a front for intelligence operations and not an actual synagogue. Jacob House shares an address with the New York Institute, which also maintains an address in New Jersey.

Guney was arrested by Istanbul’s Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Department on March 8, 2001, after a police search of his home turned up two guns, fake license plates, a number of Turkish identity cards, over a hundred fake diplomas, and other Ergenekon evidence. The head of the Istanbul police unit, Adil Serdar Saçan, suspected Guney was a key player in Ergenekon. However, Sacan was, himself, later arrested and charged with being a member of Ergenekon. However, WMR has learned from its Turkish sources that Sacan is honest and was set up in an attempt to tarnish his image after he discovered an Israeli connection to the powerful Ergenekon movement.

As a member of the Turkish police JITEM unit, Guney reportedly spied, under cover as a journalist, on Iraqi Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Talabani is now the President of Iraq.

After Guney’s release on bail on March 9, 2001, Şenkal Atasagun, MIT’s undersecretary, asked the CIA to exfiltrate Guney to the United States. Guney was flown on Turkish Airlines to New York. Guney eventually ended up, according to our sources, living in North Jersey and making a living pumping gas.

Guney lived in the “973” area code zone, an area that encompasses East Rutherford and Fairlawn, towns that were centers of activity for Israeli Mossad Urban Moving System operatives who were spotted celebrating the 9/11 attacks from at least two locations — Liberty State Park in Jersey City and an apartment complex on the Jersey Palisades above Weehawken, the headquarters of Urban Moving Systems. The FBI and CIA later identified Dominick Suter, the manager of Urban Moving Systems, as a Mossad intelligence officer. Five Urban Moving Systems employees were arrested in their van in East Rutherford during the afternoon of September 11, 2001, after they were seen traveling toward the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan. Their Urban Moving Systems van tested positive for the presence of explosives. Suter fled the United States and the five Israelis, some of whom were identified as Mossad in an FBI/CIA database, were released after a few months in jail after heavy pressure was applied on the U.S. government by Israel.

Guney is also suspected of acting as an agent for Mossad, as well as the CIA. His presence in North Jersey, a “hot zone” for Israeli intelligence before and during the 9/11 attacks, points to a possible Turkish connection to the attacks.

On August 7, 2005, WMR reported on details of the apprehension of the Israelis for their false flag actions: “Jersey City was a major base of operations for the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The Ryder van used in that attack was rented from a Jersey City rental agency . . . there was a call placed to the Jersey City Police Department that claimed ‘Palestinians’ in Arab clothes were seen celebrating the attacks. Although the Jersey City Police discovered their 911 system tapes on September 11, 2001 disappeared from their servers and achives after ISI [of Mount Laurel, NJ] took over the contract, some tapes implicating “Arabs” found their way into the hands of WNBC-TV in New York in June 2002. WNBC played transcripts of 911 calls from the Jersey City Police:

Dispatcher: Jersey City police.
Caller: Yes, we have a white van, 2 or 3 guys in there, they look like Palestinians and going around a building.
Caller: There’s a minivan heading toward the Holland tunnel, I see the guy by Newark Airport mixing some junk and he has those sheikh uniform.
Dispatcher: He has what?
Caller: He’s dressed like an Arab.

“It is clear that the Jersey City Police Department’s 911 call tapes were manipulated to delete any calls that might implicate the Israelis. The one call provided to WNBC was clearly an attempt at a ‘false flag” operation implicating ‘Palestinians’ wearing ‘sheik uniforms’ as the culprits in at least one of the white vans driven by Israeli ‘movers’ on the morning of September 11. After the van was traced to the Israeli moving company, the BOLO [Be On Look Out for message] went out for the arrest of the vehicle’s driver and passengers. An East Rutherford policeman directing traffic away from the closed Lincoln Tunnel on Route 3 East noticed the van was driving slowly on the service road towards the tunnel. The tag of the vehicle was only off by one letter from what was contained in the BOLO (JRJ 13Y) and the front New Jersey plate had been removed. It is very possible that to confuse the police, the Israelis were using NJ plate JRJ 13Y as the rear tag on two white vans – the one sighted in Liberty State Park and the other in Maria’s apartment building parking lot. In fact, local police reported a number of white van sightings during September 11, with a number of them phoned into the police. Maria told ABC News she phoned tag number JRJ 13Y to the Jersey City Police after seeing the Israelis driving in a white van celebrating the first plane’s impact, while Liberty State Park witnesses said the same tag number — JRJ 13Y — had been passed to the police and FBI after a white van with ‘celebrating Arabs’ had been chased from the park by the park’s chief ranger after the first plane impact.[11] It was clear that officials of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection in Trenton, which has authority over the state’s parks, ordered Liberty State Park officials not to talk to the media about September 11 and the Israeli van.”

The man who then New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey placed in charge of his liaison to New Jersey’s security and law enforcement agencies, Golan Cipel, later was allegedly identified by U.S. intelligence as a gay “honey trap” Mossad officer tasked with entrapping and blackmailing McGreevey. McGreevey resigned as governor after details of the homosexual affair became public.

Ergenekon has been accused of carrying out terrorist attacks and assassinations in Turkey as “false flag” operations to discredit, undermine, and eventually overthrow Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Former FBI Turkish and Persian translator Sibel Edmonds told the Sunday Times of London earlier this year that her translations of wiretaps of Turkish, Iranian, Israeli, and American individuals pointed to Turkish training for the 9/11 hijack ring. Edmonds said that an “Al Qaeda” leader, a Syrian named Louai al-Sakka, had trained 9/11 hijackers at a military base in Turkey, under the watchful eyes of the Turkish military, which we now know was riddled with Ergenekon agents up and down the chain-of-command, four star generals to non-commissioned officers. Al-Sakka was convicted in 2007 for his role in a series of 2003 bombings in Istanbul that targeted the British Consulate, two HSBC bank branches, and two synagogues and his now serving a life prison sentence. The Turkish ring may have been involved or known about several beheadings of Western prisoners in Iraq that were blamed on “Al Qaeda.”

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA station chief in Istanbul, wrote the following in the Dallas Morning News: “Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation.”

Coupling the Turkish official investigation of Ergenekon with Edmonds’ information, there is more than a smoking gun pointing to 9/11 as a “false flag” operation involving Turkish, Israeli, and U.S. intelligence operatives. The Saudi and Pakistani financial connection to the 9/11 hijackers and the “false flag” operation has already been well-documented.

It is time for the incoming Obama administration to seriously consider appointing a new 9/11 commission, sans enablers and possible conspirators in the 9/11 false flag attack on the United States. Thousands of pages of documents are now available in Turkey, the United States, Britain, India, France, and other countries that will prove that 9/11 involved a network much larger than a former CIA asset hiding in an Afghan cave, Osama Bin Laden, and 19 ne’er-do-well “hijackers,” some of whom were more interested in going to strip joints and bars in the days before they decided to take express flights to “heaven” to spend eternity with Allah.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

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Email Online Journal Editor

Source: onlinejournal.com, Dec 10, 2008

[2]

Mossad implicated in a coup plot in Turkey, a NATO country; CIA fingerprints also found on attempt

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Dec 4, 2008, 00:20

(WMR) — Fresh from revelations, reported by WMR, that Israel’s Mossad and Chabad House-based criminal syndicates were targets in a criminal gangland retribution attack by a notorious Muslim gang in Mumbai, comes word that Mossad has, once again, been implicated in an intelligence and criminal network, this time in Turkey.

What makes this latest example of Israel’s failure to stem the criminal activities of its intelligence service and criminal syndicates worse is that Turkey, unlike Israel, is a NATO ally of the United States and, therefore, the United States is bound by treaty to protect NATO allies from aggression by non-NATO states, including Israel.

The Turkish and other Middle East media are reporting that the Mossad has been fingered in connection with a right-wing Turkish criminal and intelligence gang, known as Ergenekon, that stands accused of attempting to overthrow Turkey’s democratically-elected Justice and Development (AKP) Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul. Several Turkish papers have named a Turkish rabbi, Tuncay Guney, aka Daniel T. Guney and Daniel Levi and code-named “Ipek” or “Silk,” as having served as a double agent for the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) tasked with infiltrating the shadowy but powerful “state within a state” group Ergenekon. Guney had been arrested by Turkish authorities in 2001 for distributing fake drivers’ licenses and phony license plates for luxury cars. A document recently uncovered by the Turkish press revealed that Guney had also infiltrated a police intelligence unit (JITEM) working with Ergenekon to destabilize Turkey. Guney was exfiltrated to the United States and he now heads up the B’nai Yaakov Synagogue and Community Center in Toronto, Canada. Guney has denied that he has been an agent for Israel, Turkey or the United States but the MIT has confirmed the document identifying Guney as an agent for MIT is authentic.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet has reported that Guney served in MIT’s Counter-terrorism Unit (CTU) and in the MIT unit that monitors Iran. Hurriyet also reported that Guney had developed a contact at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Muhsin Karger, the consulate’s political affairs undersecretary.

Guney also has claimed to be a journalist and it is also alleged that he was a member of the PKK. Silvyo Ovaydo, the leader of the Turkish Jewish community, called Guney a fraudulent rabbi and said he was not even registered as a rabbi at the B’nai Yaakov synagogue in Toronto. Guney is said to have once worked for Islamist media organizations in Turkey but suddenly converted to Judaism and became an “instant rabbi” in Toronto.

At the heart of the Ergenekon story lies Mossad and its reported attempts to turn Turkey into another Lebanon or West Bank/Gaza, a country wracked by internal strife and constant warfare that would usher into power a strong right-wing military dictatorship. In the trial of one of the accused murderers of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the lawyer for one of the accused murderers asked another accused murderer, Erhan Tuncel, a one-time police informer like Guney, if he had an Israeli girlfriend. Tuncel refused to answer the question, citing an invasion of his privacy. However, it was clear that what the lawyer was driving at was a Mossad connection to the murder of Dink, a murder that was being pinned on Turkish anti-Armenian nationalists by the corporate and heavyily Israeli Lobby-influenced media in the West.

When 89 suspects were named in a 2,455-page indictment by a criminal court in Istanbul last July, many retired Turkish army officers, the neocon network, especially in Washington, which is their major citadel, along with Jerusalem and London, began to throw cold water and the term “conspiracy theory” around charges in the Turkish indictment that Ergenekon played a major role in the formation of several Turkish terrorist groups to disrupt Turkish politics, including the illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkish Hizbollah (Party of God), the Marxist-Leninist People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C), and the little-known Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C). The neocon Jamestown Foundation in Washington called the indictment’s links between Turkish military elements and radical terrorists a “conspiracy theory.” Organizations like Jamestown have no other choice. If it were also proven, as it was in Turkey, that various terrorist groups like “Al Qaeda,” “Deccan Mujaheddin,” and others exist courtesy of the nurturing and support by American, Israeli, and other Western military-intelligence structures, groups like Jamestown would lose their reasons for existence — to make propaganda and receive funding in order to keep the terrorist bogeymen, the actual “Emmanuel Godsteins,” alive.

Guney is reported to be the 86th suspect in the indictment of Ergenekon. Guney is believed to have revealed the initial detailed information on the existence of Ergenekon in order to avoid being charged in the case.

The involvement of extreme right-wing Turkish military and intelligence officials and Turkish organized crime networks, with Mossad and, possibly, CIA agents acting in concert with a suspected CIA-funded Turkish Islamic charismatic madrassa and Islamic centers’ chief named Fethullah Gulen — whose activities parallel pan-Turkic/Eurasianist (re: George Soros) goals of Ergenekon — is similar to the scenario now playing out in India where a little known group called “Deccan Mujaheddin” may have been created as a ruse by Indian right-wing military and intelligence officers, allied with Mossad and CIA agents, to sow discord in India and bring about a right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena Hindu government.

Gulen owns a number of media and business interests in Turkey and runs Islamic centers throughout central Asia and even in Russia.

In polls, some one-third of the Turkish public believe Islamist Nurcu sect charismatic leader Grand Hodja Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, is part of a movement that aims to seize control of the Turkish state and a little over a third believe that Gulen is funded by “international powers.” After he was acquitted in Turkey of attempting to overthrow the secular state with his religious organization, Gulen was first denied a Permanent Resident Card or “Green Card” to remain in the United States by the U.S. Distrrict Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania but then an appeals court granted Gulen a Green Card. In October of this year, a federal appellate court found that U.S. immigration authorities improperly rejected Gulen’s request for a Green Card. The appeals court ruled that Gulen was “an alien of extraordinary ability,” a decision that saw approval of Gulen’s residency status. Observers of the case suspect the CIA intervened with the court on Gulen’s behalf. Gulen’s support for the AKP government may be an insurance policy by the CIA to maintain a close relationship with the “Islamist tendency” AKP government in Ankara. The Bush administration, after seven years of trying to deport Gulen to Turkey, suddenly dropped its opposition to his permanent residency status.

The public prosecutor in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) case against Gulen’s permanent residency status argued in filed documents that Gulen’s movement was financially supported by Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Turkish government, and the “Central Intelligence Agency.” The deposition stated that some Ankara businessmen donated up to 70 percent of their income to Gulen’s movement.

If Gulen’s operations are funded by the CIA that means the “Agency” may be linked to Ergenekon. With the U.S. having a mutual defense treaty with Turkey’s recognized government that puts the CIA potentially in violation of U.S. law. And Israel’s connections with Ergenekon means that the United States is bound by treaty to protect its ally Turkey from Israeli covert or overt aggression.

There is an element of “McCarthyism” in the Ergenekon case. Some well-meaning officials have been subjected to being tainted by the broad brush of being associated with Ergenekon. One is Asil Serdar Sacan, the former head of the Istanbul organized crime department, who was the first to confiscate documents on Ergenekon in 2001 and broadened his investigation to include both Ergenekon and the Gulen organization. Sacan, who investigated the murder of Turkey’s “King of Casinos” Omer Lutfu Topol, successfully beat attempts to smear him, being acquitted of 36 criminal charges brought against him and being reinstated six times to his police position. Sacan is currently in jail as an Ergenekon suspect but his only “crime” appears to have exposed Guney as a possible triple agent for the MIT, Mossad, and CIA. In 2001, Guney was spirited out of Turkey thanks to an agreement between MIT’s undersecretary Senkal Atasagun and the CIA. Guney was given a 10-year U.S. visa thanks to the CIA’s intervention.

In fact, Ergenekon and its “deep state” players in Turkey and Shiv Sena and its extremist Hindu “deep state” allies in India, backed by elements of Mossad and the CIA, appears to be a replay of the CIA’s secret “Gladio” network in Europe that placed weapons caches in the hands of fascists and neo-Nazis groups to take up arms in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.

The use of “false flag” terrorist attacks in Western Europe by Gladio units were blamed on Communists in an effort to forestall Communist-Socialist coalition governments in Western Europe, particularly in Italy and France.

Similarly, Ergenekon stands accused of inciting conflicts between Turks and Kurds to create anarchy in the country with the aim of having Ergenekon seizing control of the Turkish government and re-cementing close ties with the United States and Israel.

In 2004, Ergenekon attempted three military coups against the AKP government. They were code-named Eldiven (The Glove”), Sarikiz (“The Blond Girl”), and Ayisigi (“Moonlight’).

Ergenekon has been cagily kept off the newspaper pages and TV news screens in the United States. To investigate Ergenekon and Gulen in Turkey is to peel away at an onion that could expose some other “unpleasantness” for certain quarters.

On January 10, 2007, WMR reported: “According to Federal law enforcement sources, two influential businessmen — Turkish Sunni Muslim Fetullahci charismatic leader Fetullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania after being acquitted in Turkey in 2006 of plotting against the secular republic, and Saudi BMI Islamic investment chief investor Yasin Qadi, a major investor in Turkey who was named in October 2001 by President Bush as a Special Designated Global Terrorist — were both involved with the CIA in the late 1990s in funneling weapons and other support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an Albanian terrorist group operating in the former Yugoslavia. The KLA was allied with the Clinton administration and supported by leading neocons such as Richard Perle, whose lobbying firm, International Advisers, Inc., counts Turkey as its major client. Gulen’s books have been translated into Albanian. BMI’s founder, Soliman Biheiri, also helped to start PTech, a Braintree, Massachusetts-based firm that had active software contracts with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Pentagon on 9/11. PTech’s offices were raided by federal authorities in December 2002 after it came under suspicion for terrorist financing. Qadi is suspected of using a series of northern Virginia-based businesses and charities to fund ‘Al Qaeda’ activities in Bosnia. Osama Bin Laden was granted a special passport by the Bosnian government in 1993. Qadi was reportedly a business partner of Turkish businessman Cuneyd Zapsu, an adviser to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Reconciliation Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP).”

The dramatic revelations about Ergenekon coming out of Turkey also points to the reasons why the neocons in Washington were keen to stymie the work of FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds and the CIA’s non-official cover agent Valerie Plame Wilson, both of whom had smuggling and other activities in Turkey high on their priority lists. On January 18, 2008, WMR reported: “WMR has learned that former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, whose covert status was leaked by the Bush White House, and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who was focused on a major covert network involving Turkish, Israeli, and key members of the Bush administration and Republican Party and weapons and drug smuggling, were essentially looking at the same network. The nexus of Turkey with both the covert CIA Brewster Jennings and Associates operations and the Turkish-Israeli network of influence active within the Defense and State Departments, is the key factor in understanding the complicated counter-espionage operation conducted by both the FBI and CIA.” It now appears that the Washington-connected criminal network being looked at by Edmonds and Plame was, in fact, closely linked to the Ergenekon network in Turkey.

WMR’s January 18, 2008 report continued: “Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was also, according to our sources, well aware of the massive conspiracy to cover-up the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction components from former Soviet Central Asian states, as well as Ukraine, Moldova, and Ukraine, to the international weapons bazaar. The Abdul Qadeer Khan (A Q Khan) network based in Pakistan was a major beneficiary of the weapons smuggling operation that used Turkey as a pass-through. Rather than expand his investigation, Fitzgerald demurred on looking at the activities of the American Turkish Council, Turkey’s influential lobbying group in Washington, and its parallel symbiotic organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Turkey and Israel are close military and intelligence partners.”

Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin has called on President-elect Barack Obama to reappoint Fitzgerald as U.S. Attorney for Northern Ilinois. If Obama does so, it means that the network being investigated by Edmonds and Plame, one that stretches to Ergenekon and the Gulen network in Turkey, has its hooks deep into the future Obama administration.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

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Source: onlinejournal.com, Dec 4, 2008

December 14, 2008
Israel ‘prepared to attack’ Iran nuclear plants

Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem and Times Online

Israel is drawing up plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and is prepared to launch a strike without backing from the US, it has been reported.

Officials in the Israeli Defence Ministry told the Jerusalem Post that while they prefer to act in consultation with the US, they were preparing plans that would allow them to act in isolation.

“It is always better to coordinate,” a senior Defence Ministry official told the newspaper. “But we are also preparing options that do not include coordination.”

However defence officials played down the reports today, telling The Times that an attack by Israeli forces alone would probably fail to take out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which experts say are scattered across several sites, some deep underground.

“We could not risk an operation which would only partially succeed,” one defence official told The Times.

“That would leave us open to a nuclear attack from Iran’s remaining weapons stock. Israel would likely need the support, the backing, of forces from a Western ally to successfully carry out the operation,” he said.

A senior Israeli official quotes in the Jerusalem Post said that while it would be difficult, it would not be impossible to launch a strike against Iran without permission from the US.

“There are a wide range of risks one takes when embarking on such an operation,” a senior Israeli official was quoted as saying.

The US Airforce controls the Iraqi airspace Israel’s jets would have to cross on a bombing mission and access to codes from the Americans, would “significantly improve” Israel’s chances of a successful strike on Iran, an official told The Times.

He added that because the Iranians have been moving the bunkers deep underground, sophisticated weaponry would be needed to successfully destroy the facilities.

Responding to reports that Israel would use low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, the official said the method was largely speculative and unreliable.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has reportedly asked the US for a green light to attack Iranian facilities as recently as May.

According to Israeli officials, the US denied the request, although it outfitted Israel with the X-band radar system which would shave several crucial minutes off Israel’s reaction time to an Iranian missile launch, and allow the United States to oversee Israel’s airspace.

“There is always the option of Israel going it alone. It just does not seem like a good option at present time,” an Israeli MP told the Times.

There are three central locations where experts believe Iranian facilities are producing goods for nuclear weapons.

Israeli officials named these sites as: Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges produce enriched uranium; Isfahan, where 250 tons of gas are stores in tunnels; and Arak, where a heavy water reactor produces plutonium.

Israeli officials said they were heartened that international sanctions on Iran were having an effect, but did not feel they were enough to stop Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The most recent Israeli intelligence reports estimate that Iran will have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in late 2009, barring any interruptions in its programme.

“There is still time and there is no need to rush into an operation right now,” another Israeli official said. “The regime there is already falling apart and will likely no longer be in power 10 years from now.”

On Monday, Teheran dismissed the possibility of an Israeli strike, saying it didn’t take Israel seriously.

“We think that regional and international developments and the complicated situation faced by Israel itself will not allow it to launch military strikes against other countries,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told reporters in Teheran, adding that “Israel makes threats to promote its psychological and media warfare.

Some Israeli security officials fear that the Iranian retaliation for a strike on its facilities could include a large-scale missile attack on Israel from several Iranian allies, disruption of oil supplies to the West, and terror attacks against Jewish targets around the world.

They-(Israel)- live so close to the enemy-(Iran), and are so mad at them.
While we-the USA-support Israel to a point. However if Israel
wants to make this move,without proper diplomatic channels
there will be a price to pay.The price may be considerable.
Human life on both sides will be lost.

randy, florida, usa

Are all Iran’s current leaders religious maniacs ? There must be some Iranian pragmatists lurking in the background who are capable of taking over the leadership and establishing some sort of detente with Israel and its allies ? Good Iranian men will take action and remove Ahmadinejad eventually.

Dr. Jimmy, Nottingham, England

but its ok for israel to have nuclear waepons.

its ok for vanunu to spend years in prison.

such hypocrisy

aj, london, UK

If Irael do this I would hope the Americans cut them off from the $3bn a year they give to the Iraeli state. If the americans don’t approve it, Israel will risk more by doing it than not doing it. It’s time for the madness to end, even if they had nukes Iran won’t strike Israel, it’d be suicide.

Abharrisson, London,

Honestly i doubt the will attack. While Israel is capable of attacking iran. They also need to take into a account that they have to fly into currently US controlled air space to get into iran so unless they fly around it chances are this wont happen till the US gives approval.

Mike, Roseville, USA

Good for them….at least some people are willing to take action on this. Israel learned long ago that they can’t count on the United States much less Europe to back them up.

Ian , Fort Collins , United States

This is inevitable. And after the Israelis attack, Iran will retaliate wildly against any US facility and all Arabian Gulf traffic, because they are too weak to strike Israel directly. That will bring the US and possibly other gulf countries into it, giving cover for a second strike from the US.

Kevin Finnerty, Atlanta, USA

Israel is looking out for itself. Israel realizes that Iran is a threat, and with the party swing the U.S. elections brought about, especially seeing how Barack Obama promises to leave Iraq entirely in a few years, Israel needs to be militarily independent. I hope they can do it, for liberty’s sake.

William Mayer, Mahwah, New Jersey, U.S.A

These reports seem to surface every 3 months or so, yet nothing happens. My guess, Israel is waiting for the outcome of the Iranian elections and the American transition to take decisive action.

Jeremy, Atlanta, USA

Iraq or Iran – Seems confusing

Edward Manley, London, UK

December 7, 2008

Category: Israel

The Invasion of Gaza: “Operation Cast Lead”, Part of a Broader Israeli Military-Intelligence Agenda

THE DEBKA REVIEW – A WEEK AT GLANCE

Israel’s Wanton Aggression On Gaza

Cyprus Dimension of Turkish Foreign Policy

Ergenekon agent spent time in northern New Jersey prior to 9/11

Mossad implicated in a coup plot in Turkey, a NATO country; CIA fingerprints also found on attempt

Israel ‘prepared to attack’ Iran nuclear plants