By Jonathan Cook - October 18, 2009
NAZARETH, ISRAEL - Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs.
It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers were regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians.
According to David Cohen, the national police commissioner, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community”. Mr Cohen said that, in addition, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists.
Israel’s Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as “an enemy” – a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second intifada in 2000.
In a letter of protest to Israeli officials last week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit’s creation violated the constitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing “racial profiling” into Israeli policing.
Although the police claim that only Arab criminals are being targeted, Arab leaders believe the unit is an expansion of police efforts to collect information on political activists, escalating what they call a “climate of fear” being fostered by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister.
Awad Abdel Fattah, the general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly, whose members are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years.
“The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear that they are being secretly watched so that they don’t participate in demonstrations or get involved in politics. It harms the democratic process.”
Secret agents disguised as Arabs – known in Hebrew as “mista’aravim” – were used before Israel’s founding. Jews, usually recruited from Arab countries, went undercover in neighbouring states to collect intelligence.
The Haaretz newspaper revealed in 1998 that the secret police, the Shin Bet, also operated a number of mista’aravim inside Israel shortly after the state’s creation, locating them in major Arab communities.
The unit was disbanded in 1959, amid great secrecy, after several agents married local Arab women, and in some cases had children with them to maintain their cover.
But the mista’aravim are better known for their use by the Israeli army on short-term missions inside Arab countries or in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they have often been sent to capture or kill local leaders.
Famously, Ehud Barak, the current defence minister, was sent to Beirut in 1973 disguised as an Arab woman to assassinate three Palestinian leaders.
More recently, however, the army’s mista’aravim have come to notice because of allegations that they are being used as agents provocateurs, especially in breaking up peaceful protests by Palestinians in the West Bank against the separation wall.
In April 2005, during a demonstration at the village of Bilin, north of Jerusalem, Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers were revealed to be mista’aravim. They were filmed blowing their cover shortly afterwards by pulling out pistols to make arrests. The army later admitted it had used mista’aravim at the demonstration.
Palestinians claim that stone-throwing by mista’aravim is often used to disrupt or discredit peaceful demonstrations and justify the army’s use of rubber bullets and live ammunition against the protesters in retaliation.
Last week, Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of parliament, warned other legislators that mista’aravim police officers would adopt similar tactics: “Such a unit will carry out provocations, in which the Arab public will be blamed for disorderly conduct.”
Mr Abdel Fattah said there were widespread suspicions that mista’aravim officers had been operating for years at legal demonstrations held by Israel’s Arab citizens, including at the protests against Israel’s winter attack on Gaza.
He said they were often disguised as journalists so that they could photograph demonstrators.
A female activist from his party had been called in by the police for interrogation after a demonstration last year in the Arab town of Arrabeh, he said. “The officer told her, ‘I know what you were saying because I was standing right next to you’. And he then told her exactly what she had said.”
In his testimony to a government watchdog, the police commissioner, Insp Gen Cohen, said he had plans for the unit “to grow” and that it would solve a problem the police had in infiltrating Israel’s large Arab communities: “It’s very hard for us to work in Umm al-Fahm, it’s very hard for us to deal with crime in Juarish and Ramle.”
Several unnamed senior officers, however, defended their role in monitoring the Arab community, claiming the commissioner was wrong in stating that the use of mista’aravim inside Israel was new. One told Haaretz: “Existing units of mista’aravim have operated undercover among this population for about a decade.”
Orna Cohen, a lawyer with the Adalah legal group, said the accepted practice for police forces was to create specialised units according to the nature of the crime committed, not according to the ethnicity or nationality of the suspect.
She warned that the unit’s secretive nature, its working methods and the apparent lack of safeguards led to a strong suspicion that the Arab minority was being characterised as a “suspect group”. “Such a trend towards racial profiling and further discrimination against the minority is extremely dangerous,” she said.
Comments two years ago from Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, have raised fears about how the police unit may be used. He said the security services had the right to use any means to “thwart” action, even democratic activity, by the Arab minority to reform Israel’s political system. All the Arab parties are committed to changing Israel’s status from a Jewish state to “a state of all its citizens”.
Mr Abdel Fattah said: “This is about transferring the methods used in the West Bank and Gaza into Israel to erode our rights as citizens. It raises questions about what future the state sees for us here.”
Source
October 19, 2009
U.S. Attacks Iran Via CIA-Funded Jundullah Terror Group
Bankrolling and arming Al-Qaeda offshoot part of 2007 White House directive to destabilize Iranian government
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
October 19, 2009
The U.S. government effectively attacked Iran yesterday after its proxy terror group Jundullah launched a suicide bomb attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at their headquarters in Pishin, near the border with Pakistan.
Leaders of the Al-Qaeda affiliated Sunni terrorist group Jundullah have claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Iran that killed over 40 people yesterday. The group is funded and trained by the CIA and is being used to destabilize the government of Iran, according to reports out of the London Telegraph and ABC News.
In the aftermath of the attack, which killed at least five commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard along with scores of others, media reports have swung between Iranian accusations of US and British involvement and blanket denials on behalf of the U.S. State Department.
However, the fact that Jundullah, who have since claimed responsibility for the attack and named the bomber as Abdol Vahed Mohammadi Saravani, are openly financed and run by the CIA and Mossad is not up for debate, it has been widely reported for years.
“President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert “black” operations to achieve regime change in Iran, intelligence sources have revealed. Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs,” reported the London Telegraph in May 2007.
Part of that destabilization campaign involved the the CIA “Giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan,” stated the report.
Jundullah is a Sunni Al-Qaeda offshoot organization that was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The fact that it is being directly supported by the U.S. government under both Bush and now Obama destroys the whole legitimacy of the “war on terror” in an instant.
The group has been blamed for a number of bombings inside Iran aimed at destabilizing Ahmadinejad’s government and is also active in Pakistan, having been fingered for its involvement in attacks on police stations and car bombings at the Pakistan-US Cultural Center in 2004.
The group also produces propaganda tapes and literature for al-Qaeda’s media wing, As-Sahab, which is in turn closely affiliated with the military-industrial complex front IntelCenter, the group that makes available Al-Qaeda videos to the western media.
In May 2008, ABC News reported on how Pakistan was threatening to turn over six members of Jundullah to Iran after they were taken into custody by Pakistani authorities.
“U.S. officials tell ABC News U.S. intelligence officers frequently meet and advise Jundullah leaders, and current and former intelligence officers are working to prevent the men from being sent to Iran,” reported ABC news, highlighting again the close relationship between the terror group and the CIA.
In July 2009, a Jundullah member admitted before a court in Zahedan Iran that the group was a proxy for the U.S. and Israel.
Abdolhamid Rigi, a senior member of the group and the brother of the group’s leader Abdolmalek Rigi, who was one of the six members of the organization extradited by Pakistan, told the court that Jundullah was being trained and financed by “the US and Zionists”. He also said that the group had been ordered by America and Israel to step up their attacks in Iran.
Jundullah is not the only anti-Iranian terror group that US government has been accused of funding in an attempt to pressure the Iranian government.
Multiple credible individuals including US intelligence whistleblowers and former military personnel have asserted that the U.S. is conducting covert military operations inside Iran using guerilla groups to carry out attacks on Iranian Revolution Guard units.
It is widely suspected that the well known right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), once run by Saddam Hussein’s dreaded intelligence services, is now working exclusively for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and carrying out remote bombings in Iran.
After a bombing inside Iran in March 2007, the London Telegraph also reported on how a high ranking CIA official has blown the whistle on the fact that America is secretly funding terrorist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program.
A story entitled, US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran, reveals how funding for the attacks carried out by the terrorist groups “comes directly from the CIA’s classified budget,” a fact that is now “no great secret”, according to a former high-ranking CIA official in Washington who spoke anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.
Former US state department counter-terrorism agent Fred Burton backed the claim, telling the newspaper, “The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime.”
John Pike, the head of the influential Global Security think tank in Washington, said: “The activities of the ethnic groups have hotted up over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity.”
The timing of the bombing that targeted Iranian Revolutionary Guard members yesterday was clearly orchestrated to coincide with talks between representatives from Iran, Russia, France, the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna today concerning Iran’s nuclear intentions.
Berlusconi's TV company filmed bribery case judge
The Telegraph
October 18, 2009
Days after Judge Raimondo Mesiano ordered the Italian prime minister's holding company to pay 750 million euros (£680 million) in damages to a rival, the media mogul's Canale 5 channel aired footage of the judge taking a walk, smoking and having a shave at the barber.
Dubbing the judge's behaviour "eccentric", a narrator pointed to him smoking his "umpteenth" cigarette, called his turquoise socks "strange" and said: "He's impatient ... he can only relax at the barber's."
The incident has further raised tensions between the Italian government and the judiciary, after Mr Berlusconi accused the constitutional court of being packed with Leftists when it stripped him of immunity from prosecution.
The court's action means that cases for alleged fraud and corruption linked to Mr Berlusconi's Mediaset business empire can proceed.
Furious that the judge was shadowed during his leisure time without his knowledge, the National Association of Magistrates asked the privacy authorities to intervene. The authorities said they were evaluating the matter.
"We don't think there are similar precedents in Italy, of denigrating a person and delegitimising an essential and delicate function," the association said in a statement.
Coupled with anger over Mr Berlusconi's remark on Friday that he wanted to modify the constitution on judicial issues, the magistrates' union on Saturday declared a "state of protest".
It also denounced a "climate of constant tension" that it said risked altering the balance among the powers of the state.
Mediaset, which owns Canale 5, responded angrily, saying it would not accept reprimands and that the clip showed a magistrate who "objectively has acquired national and international notoriety".
Some magistrates are debating a "turquoise socks" protest, while others have been collecting signatures for a letter of support for their colleague, Italian media reported.
Some Italian commentators and the centre-Left opposition were also outraged, with one Democratic Party senator likening the incident to a "horrible television movie".
October 18, 2009
Days after Judge Raimondo Mesiano ordered the Italian prime minister's holding company to pay 750 million euros (£680 million) in damages to a rival, the media mogul's Canale 5 channel aired footage of the judge taking a walk, smoking and having a shave at the barber.
Dubbing the judge's behaviour "eccentric", a narrator pointed to him smoking his "umpteenth" cigarette, called his turquoise socks "strange" and said: "He's impatient ... he can only relax at the barber's."
The incident has further raised tensions between the Italian government and the judiciary, after Mr Berlusconi accused the constitutional court of being packed with Leftists when it stripped him of immunity from prosecution.
The court's action means that cases for alleged fraud and corruption linked to Mr Berlusconi's Mediaset business empire can proceed.
Furious that the judge was shadowed during his leisure time without his knowledge, the National Association of Magistrates asked the privacy authorities to intervene. The authorities said they were evaluating the matter.
"We don't think there are similar precedents in Italy, of denigrating a person and delegitimising an essential and delicate function," the association said in a statement.
Coupled with anger over Mr Berlusconi's remark on Friday that he wanted to modify the constitution on judicial issues, the magistrates' union on Saturday declared a "state of protest".
It also denounced a "climate of constant tension" that it said risked altering the balance among the powers of the state.
Mediaset, which owns Canale 5, responded angrily, saying it would not accept reprimands and that the clip showed a magistrate who "objectively has acquired national and international notoriety".
Some magistrates are debating a "turquoise socks" protest, while others have been collecting signatures for a letter of support for their colleague, Italian media reported.
Some Italian commentators and the centre-Left opposition were also outraged, with one Democratic Party senator likening the incident to a "horrible television movie".
Olive Harvest: notes from the field
17 October 2009
Farming in the villages around Nablus has become a perilous task of late. Each year vandals from nearby Israeli settlements plague the olive farmers, destroying their trees and attacking workers. In the village of Burin, we saw evidence of a more sinister trend
- Issam Shedahah with the remains of his car
- Photo by Lazar Simeonov
Issam Shedahah, 39, is a long time resident of Burin and it has cost him dear. We are looking at the burnt out husk of his car, torched the previous night by the settlers of Itzhar. “This is the fourth time they have burnt my car”, he tells us, “now it is very common that they come into the village at night”. Neither does Issam’s suffering end with material damage. Another recent settler invasion resulted in the murder of his brother. “He was sitting on the roof one evening, not doing anything. They shot him in the head.”
He indicates the roof of the shop/apartment the family own. It is directly across the street from the remains of his car. “Last night I woke up at 3am and I heard voices. I looked out the window and I saw them breaking the windows and throwing Benzene all over the seats, then they set fire to it and walked away.” Issam explains that the people of Burin are used to having their farms attacked, he points up to ‘black mountain’, where all the once-green trees have been reduced to charcoal. But the recent tendency of settlers to enter the village, with full knowledge of Israeli Army soldiers, is making life unbearable. “All the time we are attacked by settlers. They have taken my grandfather’s land; they want to steal all of our land. All the time we are suffering”.
Neighbours inform us that several more cars have been burnt recently. We can see that nearby houses also bear the scars of settler attacks. Huwara Mayor Samer Odeh has condemned what he called “continuous settler attacks”, while Union leaders tell us that 5,000 PA security troops have been assigned to protect the farmers. For Issam Shedaheh and the people of Burin, no protection exists. Just the daily horrors of a life under siege.
Israel kidnaps Palestinian journalist in Al-Khalil
Palestinian Information Center
October 19, 2009
AL-KHALIL, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) kidnapped Palestinian journalist Iyad Sorour from Al-Khalil city, in the south of the West Bank on Sunday, only one month after his release from the Palestinian Authority’s jails.
The forum of Palestinian journalists said in a press release that a large number of IOF troops stormed the house of Sorour in the city and took him to an unknown destination.
The forum affirmed that Sorour spent 10 months in the PA intelligence’s jail and was released a month ago, adding that he was detained for 14 months in Israeli jails in 2002.
The forum appealed to the international federation of journalists, the organization of reporters without borders and the union of Arab journalists to intervene and pressure Israel to immediately release all journalists in its jails.
It also called on Mahmoud Abbas to instruct his militias in the West Bank to release journalists detained in his jails and end restrictions imposed on their freedom.
Nine other Palestinian citizens have also been kidnapped at dawn Monday during raids carried out by IOF troops on homes in different West Bank areas.
The lawyer of the Palestinian prisoners' society also reported Sunday that the Ofer prison administration imposed a number of punitive measures on Palestinian prisoners in section nine under the pretext of tampering with the section’s door lock, the allegation was denied by prisoners.
The lawyer added that the prison administration deprived prisoners of visits and the canteen for one month and a half as of 18 October.
He also said that the prisoners complained about the Red Cross’s neglect of their needs, saying that they did not receive yet what they asked the Red Cross representatives to bring with them, including books and clothes, because they had not visited the prison for four months.
Source
October 19, 2009
AL-KHALIL, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) kidnapped Palestinian journalist Iyad Sorour from Al-Khalil city, in the south of the West Bank on Sunday, only one month after his release from the Palestinian Authority’s jails.
The forum of Palestinian journalists said in a press release that a large number of IOF troops stormed the house of Sorour in the city and took him to an unknown destination.
The forum affirmed that Sorour spent 10 months in the PA intelligence’s jail and was released a month ago, adding that he was detained for 14 months in Israeli jails in 2002.
The forum appealed to the international federation of journalists, the organization of reporters without borders and the union of Arab journalists to intervene and pressure Israel to immediately release all journalists in its jails.
It also called on Mahmoud Abbas to instruct his militias in the West Bank to release journalists detained in his jails and end restrictions imposed on their freedom.
Nine other Palestinian citizens have also been kidnapped at dawn Monday during raids carried out by IOF troops on homes in different West Bank areas.
The lawyer of the Palestinian prisoners' society also reported Sunday that the Ofer prison administration imposed a number of punitive measures on Palestinian prisoners in section nine under the pretext of tampering with the section’s door lock, the allegation was denied by prisoners.
The lawyer added that the prison administration deprived prisoners of visits and the canteen for one month and a half as of 18 October.
He also said that the prisoners complained about the Red Cross’s neglect of their needs, saying that they did not receive yet what they asked the Red Cross representatives to bring with them, including books and clothes, because they had not visited the prison for four months.
Source
U.K. Professors Warn Government Not to Subsidize Nuclear Power
By Catherine Airlie
Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. professors from Imperial College, Sussex University and University of Greenwich will advise the government against subsidizing or fixing prices for new sources of nuclear power.
“If the government caves in to nuclear industry demands for subsidies and guarantees, it will be electricity consumers and taxpayers that will pay huge additional costs,” Steve Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, said today in an e-mailed statement.
The academics are scheduled to present their views before U.K. lawmakers, policy advisers and nuclear industry executives today. Any subsidies for new nuclear power stations could lead to legal challenges under European Union competition law, the professors said.
UN: Israeli Spy Devices Responsible for Lebanon Blasts
Israel Says Explosions Prove Hezbollah Violating Ceasefire
by Jason Ditz, October 18, 2009
A string of explosions in Lebanese territory near the Israeli border this weekend have been investigated by the United Nations, and found to have been caused by the detonation of spying devices planted by the Israeli military following the 2006 war.
Planting such devices would be a flagrant violation of the resolution 1701 ceasefire agreement which ended the conflict, but while Israel declined to comment on the nature of the devices they said their discovery proved that Hezbollah was actually violating the deal. They also claimed that the UN report was part of a Hezbollah plot to distract attention from their violation.
The devices were reportedly discovered by the Lebanese military, and were detonated, apparently remotely. No one appears to have been injured in the blasts.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Saniora slammed the devices as a violation of the ceasefire, but they weren’t even the only Israeli violation that day. The UN peacekeepers reported Israeli drones entered Lebanese airspace, and there were reports that the Lebanese military fired on the drones as they overflew a garrison.
Israel negotiates to import water from Turkey
Press TV - October 19, 2009 11:26:36 GMT
 |
Israel has recently launched a new round of talks with Ankara
to import water from Turkey, amid worries over its dwindling local reserves.
Israel's Foreign Ministry, which is tasked with conducting the negotiations, had held talks with Ankara on the subject in 2000-2006 but finally abandoned the idea because of high costs as well as technical problems, Jerusalem Post reported Monday.
The current round of talks comes at a time when Israel's national carrier ElAl has declared that his employee association and those of several other major Israeli businesses plan to stop subsidizing vacations for their workers to Turkey.
A large Israeli cafe chain has also decided to stop selling Turkish coffee.
Ties between Israel and Turkey began to sour in January when Ankara strongly condemned Israel's 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 1400 people mostly woman and children.
Relations took another sharp downturn when Turkey excluded Israel from a recent joint air force drill due to the Gaza incident.
to import water from Turkey, amid worries over its dwindling local reserves.
Israel's Foreign Ministry, which is tasked with conducting the negotiations, had held talks with Ankara on the subject in 2000-2006 but finally abandoned the idea because of high costs as well as technical problems, Jerusalem Post reported Monday.
The current round of talks comes at a time when Israel's national carrier ElAl has declared that his employee association and those of several other major Israeli businesses plan to stop subsidizing vacations for their workers to Turkey.
A large Israeli cafe chain has also decided to stop selling Turkish coffee.
Ties between Israel and Turkey began to sour in January when Ankara strongly condemned Israel's 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 1400 people mostly woman and children.
Relations took another sharp downturn when Turkey excluded Israel from a recent joint air force drill due to the Gaza incident.
ElBaradei: Iran’s Nuclear ‘Threat’ Exaggerated
Greatest Danger Comes From Possible Israeli Attack on Iran
By JASON DITZ - October 18, 2009In an interview with the German-language Die Presse, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei cautioned that the threat of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon was dramatically over-stated.
Mohamed ElBaradei
The greater threat to the region, ElBaradei insisted, was the possibility that Israel might some day make good on its long-standing threats and launch an attack on Iran. This, he said “would turn the entire region into a fireball.”
ElBaradei finished the interview with another appeal to turn the Middle East into a nuclear free zone, and insisted that Israel’s status as a non-signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was the source of the regional imbalance.
Israel and the United States have insisted that Iran is attempting to create nuclear weapons, despite ample evidence to the contrary. The IAEA has continued to certify that none of its nuclear material has been diverted to any non-civilian purpose.
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