Archive for the ‘Israel’ Category
 Wednesday, August 13th
QuestionGirl August 13th, 2008 - 7:47 pm
I’m surprised Cheney’s pacemaker made it through this one. It must of really put the hurt on him to say no…….
The American administration has rejected an Israeli request for military equipment and support that would improve Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
A report published last week by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) states that military strikes are unlikely to destroy Iran’s centrifuge program for enriching uranium.
The Americans viewed the request, which was transmitted (and rejected) at the highest level, as a sign that Israel is in the advanced stages of preparations to attack Iran. They therefore warned Israel against attacking, saying such a strike would undermine American interests. They also demanded that Israel give them prior notice if it nevertheless decided to strike Iran.
As compensation for the requests it rejected, Washington offered to improve Israel’s defenses against surface-to-surface missiles.
More at Haaretz
Leave a Reply Email Post
Toggle Meta
Friday, July 18th
Buck July 18th, 2008 - 8:21 am
|
It’s really good that the Shin Bet caught on to this plan. I mean, imagine where we might be if they hadn’t. Just imagine…
|
|
Israel makes arrests in alleged plot against Bush
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel accused six Arabs on Friday of trying to set up an al Qaeda cell in Israel and said one of them had proposed attacking helicopters used during a visit by President George W. Bush.
Israel’s Shin Bet counter-intelligence agency said one of the suspects had used his mobile phone to film helicopters at a sports stadium in Jerusalem that was used as a landing site for Bush’s delegation.
The suspect then posted queries on Web sites frequented by al Qaeda operatives, asking for guidance on how to shoot down the helicopters, the agency said in a statement.
10 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Sunday, June 8th
QuestionGirl June 8th, 2008 - 10:39 am
From Antiwar.com:
It’s time for another pop quiz on America’s favorite region of the world - the Middle East. Let’s get started with the subject of nuclear weapons.
Which country in the Middle East actually possesses nuclear weapons?
Israel.
Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Israel.
Which country in the Middle East refuses to allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities?
Israel.
Which countries in the Middle East have called for the region to be a nuclear-free zone?
The Arab countries and Iran.
Which country in the Middle East occupies land belonging to other people?
Israel, which occupies a piece of Lebanon, a larger piece of Syria, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
Read more »
3 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Saturday, June 7th
QuestionGirl June 7th, 2008 - 10:46 am
From Breitbart:
An Israeli deputy prime minister on Friday warned that Iran would face attack if it pursues what he said was its nuclear weapons programme.
“If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it,” said Shaul Mofaz, who is also transportation minister.
“Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme,” Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot daily.
He stressed such an operation could only be conducted with US support.
A former defence minister and armed forces chief of staff, Mofaz hopes to replace embattled Ehud Olmert as prime minister and at the helm of the Kadima party.
3 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Wednesday, June 4th
QuestionGirl June 4th, 2008 - 5:09 pm
From Froomkin:
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to use his White House visit today to push President Bush to take a more aggressive approach toward Iran — and there are some signs that he’ll have a receptive audience.
Both Olmert and Bush are badly wounded and looking for salvation. Olmert is facing corruption allegations that could drive him from office. Bush is wildly unpopular, desperate to salvage his legacy and fighting irrelevance as the general election begins in earnest — with even the Republican candidate trying to keep him at a distance.
It’s in this environment that the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports: “Ehud Olmert will urge President Bush to prepare an attack on Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported.
Full article at the Washington Post
8 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Monday, June 2nd
QuestionGirl June 2nd, 2008 - 10:20 am
Yes, we’ll stand by you and attack Iran…….not to worry. From MSNBC:
In his remarks to AIPAC this morning, McCain will also say this: “The people of Israel reserve a special respect for courage, because so much courage has been required of them. In the record of history, sheer survival in the face of Israel’s many trials would have been impressive enough. But Israel has achieved much more than that these past sixty years. Israel has endured, and thrived, and her people have built a nation that is an inspiration to free nations everywhere.”
“Yet no matter how successful the nation of Israel, or how far removed from the Holocaust, there are experiences that will never pass from memory. Not long ago I was in Jerusalem with Senator Lieberman and our colleague Lindsey Graham, and we went to the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. And for all the boundless examples of cruelty and inhumanity to be found there, for all the pain and grief remembered there, somehow I was especially moved by the story of the camp survivors who died from the very nourishment given to them by their liberators. They had starved and suffered so much that their bodies were too weak even for food. They endured it all, only to die at the moment of their deliverance.”
“These are the kind of experiences that the Jewish people carry in memory — and they are far from the worst experiences of the Holocaust. These are the kind of griefs and afflictions from which the State of Israel offered escape. And today, when we join in saying “never again,” that is not a wish, a request, or a plea to the enemies of Israel. It is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us.”
1 CommentEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Monday, May 19th
QuestionGirl May 19th, 2008 - 11:27 am
Nancy Pelosi is in Israel today……..
“I don’t know what is to be gained by a military strike except to strengthen the president of Iran and to send up the cost of oil, but I do think that we must not take anything off the table,” Israel Radio quoted Pelosi as saying.(emphasis mine)
Seems to me Nancy’s table is fucked up. Impeachment is off it and bombing Iran is on it.
3 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Wednesday, May 14th
QuestionGirl May 14th, 2008 - 12:52 pm
Call me stupid, but our foreign policy towards Israel is fucking up the world. Here’s the BBC report on Bush’s visit to Israel on the 60 year anniversary of the “serious impediment to peace.”
Leave a ReplyEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Sunday, April 6th
QuestionGirl April 6th, 2008 - 3:52 pm
Avi Lewis examines the powerful Israeli lobby and its affects on Capitol Hill.
1 CommentEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Tuesday, January 15th
Buck January 15th, 2008 - 10:11 am
Tragically confused? Or is it “buttered bread” syndrome?
(Caution: the following may produce severe nausea if read)
In an interview last week with the Jerusalem Post, Olmert said that in all his years in public life, he did not recall “that America was led by someone as friendly since the days of President Ford.”
“He’s also a great guy,” Olmert added of Bush. “I know that people say all kinds of things about him. Gentlemen, he’s a graduate of Yale and Harvard. People don’t graduate from Harvard and Yale without wisdom and understanding of processes and domestic and international relationships. He’s a very wise man.”
4 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Sunday, January 6th
QuestionGirl January 6th, 2008 - 2:41 pm
Yahoo! Alerts Yahoo! News - My Alerts - Edit Alert
Sunday, January 6, 2008, 9:29 AM PST
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) Al-Qaida’s American spokesman calls on fighters to greet President Bush with “bombs and booby traps” when he visits the Middle East this week, according to a new Internet video.
No comment.
From World Net Daily:
Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to participate in security forces being deployed to protect President Bush during his visit to the Palestinian territories next month, WND has learned.
Bush is due in the region Jan. 9 as part of a follow-up to last month’s U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian Annapolis summit.
During his trip, the American president is scheduled to hold talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, and meet quickly with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
According to Israeli security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Bush’s Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Bush’s convoy and in securing the perimeter during the meeting with Abbas.
The Brigades is listed as a terror organization by the U.S. State Department. The group took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror organization for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006, and is responsible for thousands of shootings and rocket firings. Statistically, the Al Aqsa Brigades perpetuated more terrorism from the West Bank than Hamas, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Many Brigades members, including the group’s chiefs, serve openly in Fatah’s Force 17 presidential guard units and the Palestinian Preventative Security Services; thousands of Force 17 and Preventative officers are slated to secure Ramallah during Bush’s visit there.
A chief of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Ramallah who also serves as a senior officer in Force 17 confirmed to WND he has been tapped to participate in Bush’s security. The chief, who spoke on condition his name be withheld, said he is slated to patrol the road outside Abbas’ compound during the Palestinian leader’s meeting with Bush. Also from World Net Daily, seems Bush has pissed Olmert off and he’s not even there yet…….
Israeli officials said they were surprised when President Bush turned down a request to address Israel’s Knesset during a visit here next month, his first trip to the Jewish state as U.S. president.
Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, a ranking member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima party, put in a request to Bush’s aides earlier this month for the president to address the Knesset, a longstanding tradition among visiting heads of state. Bush is due in Jerusalem as part of a follow-up to last month’s U.S.-led Annapolis summit.
But the White House turned down Itzik, explaining Bush might be seen as biased toward Israel, since he could not similarly address the Palestinian parliament due to the inclusion of the Hamas terror organization, reported Israel’s Channel 10 Television.
Political sources in Jerusalem, speaking to WND on condition of anonymity for fear of starting a diplomatic crisis, said Olmert’s office was “surprised” by the decline.
“It’s a slap in the face,” said an official. “Even (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat, who once said he’d destroy Israel, addressed the Knesset when he visited Jerusalem.”
3 CommentsEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Tuesday, October 16th
QuestionGirl October 16th, 2007 - 8:49 am
Still not sure what happened here. Was there a nuclear facility? Things are not what they seem….or what they’d like us to believe.
The UN nuclear watchdog stated Monday it had no information about any “undeclared nuclear facility in Syria” and it was investigating media reports that such a site had been the target of an Israeli air strike last month. The International Atomic Energy Agency “has no information about any undeclared nuclear facility in Syria and no information about recent reports,” spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, according to AFP.
“We would obviously investigate any relevant information coming our way. The IAEA Secretariat expects any country having information about nuclear-related activities in another country to provide that information to the IAEA.”
The IAEA was “in contact with the Syrian authorities to verify the authenticity of these reports,” Fleming added.
According to The New York Times, Israel bombed a site in Syria last month that Israeli and US intelligence believe was a partly built nuclear reactor possibly modeled after one in North Korea. Source
Juan Coles take on it:
The NYT has been pushing the story that the Israeli air strike on Syria on September 6 came in response to intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear reactor at the site with clandestine North Korean help. There are reasons to question the accuracy of the Israeli story, which at some points has included allegations that there was evidence of enriched nuclear material at the site; such material could only be produced at the end of a long research and construction project, not at the beginning. The Israelis are trigger-happy and their intelligence on the Arab world is most often sloppy (the then head of Mossad is still insisting that Iraq had WMD), so one cannot assume there was anything to their apprehensions. In the absence of any inspection of the bombed site, one cannot assume there wasn’t, either. Some analysts think the site was just run of the mill anti-aircraft batteries newly bought from the Russians. The strike probably killed the November peace process summit that Condi Rice had been working toward; Syria says it won’t attend.
Retired CIA analyst of Arab affairs Ray Close tells us what he thinks about it all:
Saturday, October 6th
QuestionGirl October 6th, 2007 - 3:53 pm
I read a very interesting theory about this airstrike a few weeks back. Here it is in a nutshell. Syria, according to this article, possesses the most crowded anti aircraft system in the world following its continued purchase of Russian weapon systems. Dayr az-Zawr, where the F15/16 attack took place, is not just a tip toe across the Syrian border. The Israelis would have had to fly deep into Syria to get there. And what happened with Syria’s super dooper anti aircraft system? Nothing. No evidence of enemy aircraft in Syrian airspace. The Israelis, with a little technical assistance from their good ole friends in the USA, were able to totally blind the Russian anti-aircraft system. Hence, the silence on the part of Syria when this happened. They thought they were totally protected and ended up naked. Also, this served as a warning to Iran as to what we’re capable of doing. Just a theory….. an interesting one.
Today this is the story:
The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.
In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.
Read more at ABCNews
Leave a ReplyEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Friday, September 28th
QuestionGirl September 28th, 2007 - 2:18 pm
I’ve been wondering how on earth the Kyl-Lieberman amendment could have passed. Wonder no more……….
From the Asian Times, regarding the passage of the Kyl-Liberman amendment:
But its huge margin of approval, which some observers said was boosted by this week’s controversial visit to New York by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, helped demonstrate once again how responsive members of both major parties are to the so-called “Israel lobby“, which has made the sanctions bill its top legislative priority this year.
Rabbi Michael Lerner has a long article regarding Israel Lobbyists and their influence on the U.S. congress. From the article:
To take an example from these past few months of the Israel Lobby exercising its power, liberals in the House of Representatives in the spring of 2007 sought to include in the defense-funding budget an amendment that would require specific authorization from Congress before the Administration could use the defense budget monies for a military strike at Iran. The amendment failed. Most liberals in the U.S. today oppose preventive wars in general and a military strike against Iran in particular. So who supports such a move? The answer is: the right wing government of Israel and its champion in the U.S., the Israel Lobby.
At the meeting I was at, every Member of Congress tried to explain why Nancy Pelosi would never let me address the Democratic Caucus of the House (at that time, the minority caucus): House Democrats are too fearful of what AIPAC might do in response. I told these Members of Congress that I didn-t believe them; that I thought that House of Representative liberals were just pretending to be fearful of AIPAC in order to avoid a battle and stand up publicly for Tikkun’s middle path position. But then they began to tell me specific stories from their own experience of the threats they had received from the Israel Lobby people about being labeled as “anti-Israel.” They told me stories of it being impossible to convene a private meeting of Democrats who would want to challenge the Israel Lobby because when they had tried that they had found that every name of the attendees was in the hands of AIPAC lobbyists within an hour of the conclusion of that meeting and many of the attendees had been subject to immediate and intense pressure as though they had decided to abandon Israel (which they had not, nor is that what Tikkun calls for). Read the whole article here. It’s an excellent article that’s worth the read!
Leave a ReplyEmail Post
Toggle Meta
Friday, September 21st
QuestionGirl September 21st, 2007 - 5:31 pm
Kudos to the Iranian dude for pointing out the Israeli violations of UN resolutions. And somebody tell me again why it’s ok for Israel and the U.S. to have nuclear weapons to defend itself, but it’s not ok for select other countries to have them to defend themselves. Here’s an idea…..how about NOBODY have them?
- Israel accused Iran of lying Friday while Tehran challenged the international community to send U.N. inspectors to probe its arch-rival’s nuclear capabilities, in a rare and unusually bitter direct confrontation.
U.N. officials at a 148-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency said they had no memory of the two hostile nations ever engaging each other directly at previous meetings and said that development - and the unusually harsh tone of their statements - in part reflected Middle East tensions.
The exchange came after Iran’s chief delegate Ail Asghar Soltanieh - like Arab delegates before him - said that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had acknowledged last year that his country possessed nuclear weapons - something Olmert says he never did.
Soltanieh also criticized “the continuous silence of the U.S. … vis-a-vis the atrocities, aggression, bloodshed and violations of over 30 resolutions of the United Nations.”
That, he said, is “shameful and (a) dark point in the history of the United Nations, and the IAEA and the modern century at large.”
More at the Guardian
Leave a ReplyEmail Post
Toggle Meta
|
|
|
