Sean Stone and Christopher Bollyn on 9 11, Israel & the Mossad

Turkey Labels Israel a 'Terrorist State'

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad lashed out at Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seen here in
April 2012, has accused the United Nations of failing to
act over the deadly Israeli air bombardments of Gaza,
calling Israeli a "terrorist state" that "massacres
innocent children".

19 Nov 2012 Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of being a "terrorist state" on Monday and criticized world powers for supporting the weeklong bombardment of Gaza that has killed more some 115 people, signaling that the three-year-old rift between the countries is deepening. Speaking in Istanbul shortly after returning from Cairo... Mr. Erdogan railed against what he called Western powers' failure to take concerted action to stop bloodshed in Syria. But harsher words were aimed at one-time ally Israel. "Those who speak of Muslims and terror side by side are turning a blind eye when Muslims are massacred en masse," he told a gathering of the Eurasian Islamic Council. "Those who turn a blind eye to discrimination toward Muslims in their own countries, are also closing their eyes to the savage massacre of innocent children in Gaza... Therefore, I say Israel is a terrorist state."  READ MORE

How Israel's Fear of Arab Democracy Leaves the Jewish State More Isolated

Egyptians demonstrate outside the Israeli embassy .

Photo Credit: Gigi Ibrahim/Flickr

Middle East expert Reem Abou-El-Fadl explains how Arab solidarity with the Palestinians is being reflected at the official level in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

June 5, 2012

As the struggle for democracy and dignity in the Arab world rages on in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, the Israeli establishment’s response has been to disparage the revolts and hunker down.

Israel’s right-wing leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, laid out this response in a speech to the Israeli Knesset last year. The Arab revolts have turned into an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave,” Netanyahu said. “Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region.”  READ MORE

‘Israel Loves Iran’ Campaign Gains Force March 23, 2012, ABC News

As diplomats and journalists dissect every word spoken by top Israeli, Iranian and American officials for signs of a potential Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, an online campaign to prevent just that has gained steam in Israel.

 On a sunny Friday in Tel Aviv, a few dozen Israelis gathered on tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard to shoot a video to be posted on YouTube. It was the latest effort in the “Israel Loves Iran” campaign that Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry and his wife, Michal Tamirm, launched last week

“For there to be a war between us, we must first be afraid of one another, we must hate,” Edry says in a fundraising video already on the site.  “I’m not afraid of you. I don’t hate you. I don’t even know you. No Iranian ever did me … harm. I never even met an Iranian, just one in a museum in Paris – nice dude.”
Sitting one by one in front of the camera, the mostly young Israelis took turns holding “Iranians, We Love You” placards and saying a few  words to the camera in the same vein.  READ MORE

Note: To see the inspiring website of this campaign, click here. For the facebook page, click here. For a highly inspiring two-minute video of the campaign, click here. For the beautiful response from Iranians, click here. This is how we transform our world! To understand how the politicians and military leaders manage to manipulate us into war after war, read what a highly decorated general had to say at this link.

Many Top Israeli Soldiers Wary of Bombing Iran

Israeli soldiers do not want to bomb Iran.
(photo: Landov/EPA)

By Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast

08 February 12

here’s nothing American Jews love more than Israeli soldiers, except perhaps, Israeli spies. Go to American synagogues - especially Orthodox synagogues - and you’ll find boys wearing green-and-yellow skullcaps bearing the Israel Defense Force’s Hebrew acronym. A central element of the Birthright Israel program, which aims to instill a love of Israel and Judaism in young American Jews, is their mifgash, or encounter - often R-rated - with Israeli soldiers. For my Bar Mitzvah, I was given a tome celebrating the exploits of Israel’s external and internal spy agencies, the Mossad and Shin Bet. My 6-year-old son recently came back from the library of his Jewish school carrying a volume entitled Keeping Israel Safe: Serving the Israel Defense Forces.

Since then, a throng of current and former security officials have issued similar warnings. In December, Dagan’s successor at Mossad, Tamir Pardo, suggested that an Iranian nuclear weapon was not an existential threat. This month, another former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, declared that “it is not in the power of Iran to destroy the state of Israel.” Former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz added that “Iran poses a serious threat but not an existential threat” and that bombing would mean “taking upon ourselves a task that is bigger than us.” It’s remarkable, when you think about it. Almost every week, Israeli security officials say things about Iran’s nuclear program that, if Barack Obama said them, would get him labeled anti-Israel by American Jewish activists and the GOP.

The struggle between Israel’s civilian and military leaders eerily evokes the struggle inside the Bush administration over war with Iraq. Like Dick Cheney, Benjamin Netanyahu has only one mode: apocalyptic. His idols are Winston Churchill and Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, both men famed for having foreseen the Nazi menace when others looked away. And throughout his career, Netanyahu has plugged virtually every adversary Israel faces into the Hitler role. In 1993, when then–Foreign Minister Shimon Peres brokered the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu compared him with Neville Chamberlain.  READ MORE

False Flag: Mossad Agents Posed As CIA to Recruit Terrorists

The Mossad may have flown a 'false flag' in Israel's
covert war with Iran, 08/18/10.
(photo: David Silverman/Getty Images)

By Mark Perry, Foreign Policy

14 January 12

This report came on the eve of assertions by the Iranian government that they now have evidence proving the CIA was responsible for the assassination of an Iranian scientist earlier this week. -JPS/RSN

uried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives - what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah - a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.  READ MORE

US Warns Israel on Strike

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Jay Solomon, The Wall Street Journal
Intro: "US defense leaders are increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, over US objections, and have stepped up contingency planning to safeguard US facilities in the region in case of a conflict."
READ MORE

How Newt's Big Mouth Could Get People Killed

Let's just assume for a moment that Newt Gingrich is going to be the Republicans' nominee for president. Is it a good thing that, when it comes to the Palestinians, he is "at odds with the opinion of all but the most extreme elements of Israeli society." He's so extreme in his hatred of the Palestinians that he makes even right-wing Israelis uncomfortable. READ MORE