Palestinians Angry About Leaks Attack Al-Jazeera HQ
Is this the kind of thing Americans would like to do to WikiLeaks? Linda Gradstein reports from Jerusalem for AOL News
Palestinians supporting President Mahmoud Abbas smashed windows and sprayed graffiti outside the West Bank headquarters of Al-Jazeera today, angry that it published documents that apparently showed Palestinian officials had agreed to Israeli sovereignty over nearly all Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.
About 250 protesters gathered outside the Pan-Arab TV channel office in Ramallah, and a few sprayed graffiti saying “Al-Jazeera are spies” and “Al-Jazeera equals Israel.” A few of the protesters then broke security cameras and windows.
The documents were published Sunday on Al-Jazeera’s website and by British newspaper The Guardian. They contradict the previously stated public positions of the Palestinians that all of East Jerusalem must be the future capital of the Palestinian Authority.
The cache of documents, which detail Israeli-Palestinian contacts over more than a decade, also show Abbas was warned in…
Al Jazeera Publishes Confidential ‘Palestine Papers’
From Al Jazeera’s own introduction:
Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These documents – memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations – date from 1999 to 2010.
The material is voluminous and detailed; it provides an unprecedented look inside the continuing negotiations involving high-level American, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials.
Al Jazeera will release the documents between January 23-26th, 2011. They will reveal new details about:
- the Palestinian Authority’s willingness to concede illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, and to be “creative” about the status of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount;
- the compromises the Palestinian Authority was prepared to make on refugees and the right of…
Saudi Arabia Captures Israeli ‘Spy Vulture’
Via the Telegraph:
The large bird, which was carrying a GPS transmitter and a tag bearing the identification code R65 from Tel Aviv University, strayed into rural Saudi Arabian territory at some point last week, according to a report in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv.
Residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia’s Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be linked to a “Zionist plot” and swiftly alerted security services.
The bird has since been placed under arrest. The accusations went viral, according to the Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper, with hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums claiming that the “Zionists” had trained the birds for espionage.
The incident comes amid growing paranoia among Israel’s neighbours over the nation’s growing military might.
Media Hit Job Of The Year: Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas. Photo: rachaelvoorhees (CC)
Our Media Experienced A Few Highs and Many Lows in 2010;
None As Disgraceful As The Vitriol Against Helen Thomas
In 1960, I co-founded a student magazine at Cornell University called Dialogue. I was a wannabe journalist, fixated on emulating the courageous media personalities of the times, from Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I came to admire at presidential press conferences, a wire service reporter named Helen Thomas.
In recent years, my faith in the power of dialogue in politics has been severely tested—as, no doubt has hers—in an age where diatribes and calculated demonization chills debate and exchanges of opposing views.
Once you are labeled and stereotyped, especially if you are denounced as an anti-Semite, you are relegated to the fringes, pronounced a hater beyond redemption, even beyond explanation.
You have been assigned a scarlet letter as visible as the Star of David the Nazis made Jews wear.
My…
Teeth From Homo Sapiens Older Than Accepted History Of Homo Sapiens
Qesem Cave, Israel. Source: Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University
In keeping with Disinfo’s tradition of challenging accepted boundaries in all things, as well as in the spirit of the disinformation book Underground!, here’s a little jewel of a discovery written by Daniel Estrin for AP via Yahoo News. Homo Sapiens teeth … potentially 400,000 years old. So much for the old timeline of human history!
Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.
A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.
“It’s very exciting to come to this…
YouTube Removes Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Motorola Video
Via River Front Times (YES, on YouTube while this post lasts…)
Two weeks ago, we told you about the local activists who busted out an anti-Motorola song-and-dance routine at the Best Buy and AT&T stores in suburban Brentwood — and we posted a video of the performance. That video quickly drew more than 35,000 hits:
WikiLeaks Revelation: Israel Bombed Syrian Nuclear Facility in 2007
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria, apparently built with North Korea’s help, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said to State Department officials in April 2008, according to Yediot Aharonot quoting a cable recently released by Wikileaks.
The cable is the first official confirmation of the incident, and details the intelligence gathered before the attack, the collaboration between the US and Israel, the government’s move to bomb the Syrian reactor and concern that Syrian President Bashar Assad would retaliate with war, Yediot Aharonot reported, quoting the cable.
“We have avoided sharing this information with you until now for fear of and in an attempt to avoid a conflict,” Rice says in the cable.
“I would like to inform you that the Israeli attack was aimed at destroying the secret reactor built by Syria in a desert area in the east of the country called al-Kibar,” the cable quotes her…
“They Are Our Government, Our Leaders—They Cannot Be Crazy”
Regions of the brain associated with stress and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Are the Israelis repeating Holocaust traumas upon the Palestinians? From the July 1992 issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:
Dr. Jan Bastiaans, a Dutch psychiatrist, is an authority on the Holocaust syndrome, and has treated many survivors. In 1973 he wrote, “In recent years the Ka-tzet (concentration camp) syndrome has suddenly received general recognition…This concept is concerned with…pathological processes that occurred after the war in former concentration camp prisoners…The Ka-tzet syndrome is the expression of a permanent, chronic obstruction of sound human relationships. The victims are not free from the concentration camp…Behind their adaptation facade continues to live the child or adult of [that time] in all fear, in all misery, in all powerlessness.”
Dr. Haim Dasberg, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Hebrew University and medical director of the Ezrat Nashim Jerusalem Mental Health Center, has written extensively…
Disclosures Confirm Israeli Plan To Depose Government Of Iran
R. Nicholas Burns
The now infamous Wikileaks disclosure of American diplomatic communications confirms reporting by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh that the Americans and the Israelis are conspiring to overthrow the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with Israel forcing the U.S. into taking action. Quoted in this fascinating Raw Story article by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane is ex-CIA agent Robert Baer, whose new film Car Bomb has just been released. Baer told Raw Story that Israel is essentially telling the Americans to “give them money so they can set off bombs – the Mad Max approach”:
According to a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, in August 2007 the head of Israel’s intelligence agency urged US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, R. Nicholas Burns, to join with Israel in carrying out a five-part strategy to implement regime change in Iran.
Mossad Director Meir Dagan acknowledged at the meeting that the American analysis of Iran’s alleged nuclear…
How To Israel-ify America’s Airport Security
Security screening at North American airports is inconvenient and invasive, yet at times seems as if it’s all for show. How could it be done better? In Israel, they examine behavior rather than shoes or crotches. The Toronto Star enlightens us:
While North America’s airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.
That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience. Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel’s largest hub, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002. How do they manage that?
The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming…
Israeli “Nationals” Detained Approaching National Guard Blackhawk – & No Coverage from ABCNNBBCBS?
Israeli "Nationals" Detained Approaching National Guard Blackhawk
On October 19, three Israelis start acting suspicious near a Blackhawk Helicopter in Groton, Connecticut, which is also home to a U.S. Navy Submarine facility. And nobody at ABCNNBBCBS reports the story?
Imagine if three Arab men were arrested in a restricted zone near a National Guard Blackhawk Helicopter! The corporate media would blast their pictures across the world and claim that they were terrorists linked to Al Qaeda.
[Media's name "Nationals" = Mossad/IDF/Shin Bet...]
From WTNH.com:
“Groton, Conn. – Three Israeli nationals who got a little too close to a military helicopter at Groton-New London Airport are being questioned by police.
The incident happened Tuesday morning around 8:20.
The men told police that they wanted to get a closer look at the Black Hawk helicopter, which was in an area of their Cessna and not cordoned off. Officers from the National Guard stopped the men when they approached the…
Why Won’t Israel and the U.S. Define Borders With Palestine?
Seems like a reasonable demand by the Palestinians – why the reluctance from Israel and big brother U.S.? From AFP:
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinians on Wednesday called on the US administration and Israel to define borders in response to Israel’s demand for recognition as the Jewish state.
“We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise,” senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo told AFP.
His remarks came after the US State Department asked the Palestinians to extend a counter-proposal to Israel’s call for recognition as a “Jewish state” in exchange for a possible extension of restrictions on settlement building.
The Palestinians rejected the offer, saying recognition of Israel’s Jewish identity had no relation to the peace process. They instead demanded that the US administration set the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations about…
Meet Pamela Geller, New York’s Number 1 Islamophobe
Pamela Geller with former IDF chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon. Photo: P. Geller (CC)
Quite why the New York Times thinks it should give hate merchant Pamela Geller such a high profile, massive write up is mystifying … unless the Times itself is conforming to an unfortunate stereotype:
Pamela Geller’s apartment, in the fashion of the blogosphere, doubles as her office. It is a modern full-floor unit in a high-rise on the East Side of Manhattan that could belong to a socialite or the editor of a lifestyle magazine. There is ample light and a tasteful lack of clutter. The kitchen appliances are made of brushed steel; the countertops are slate. In the earth-toned living room hangs a painting, in vibrant colors, of a woman in a swimsuit.
It is in this genteel setting that Ms. Geller, 52 and a single mother of four, wakes each morning shortly after 7, switches on her laptop…
During War There Are No Civilians
Rachel Corrie in front of Israeli bulldozers
Was every human being on the face of the Earth just drafted?
According to Al Jazeera there’s been an unseemly instance of honesty:
“During war there are no civilians,” that’s what “Yossi,” an Israeli military (IDF) training unit leader simply stated during a round of questioning on day two of the Rachel Corrie trials, held in Haifa’s District Court earlier this week. “When you write a [protocol] manual, that manual is for war,” he added.
For the human rights activists and friends and family of Rachel Corrie sitting in the courtroom, this open admission of an Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians — Palestinian or foreign — created an audible gasp.
Yet, put into context, this policy comes as no surprise. The Israeli military’s track record of insouciance towards the killings of Palestinians, from the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem to the 2008-2009 attacks on Gaza that…
Wikipedia Editing Courses Launched By Pro-Israeli Cause Groups
Rachel Shabi writes in the Guardian:
Since the earliest days of the worldwide web, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has seen its rhetorical counterpart fought out on the talkboards and chatrooms of the internet.
Now two Israeli groups seeking to gain the upper hand in the online debate have launched a course in “Zionist editing” for Wikipedia, the online reference site.
Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site.
“We don’t want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm,” says Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. “We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day.”
Wikipedia is one of the…
The Power of Community
In September 2006, the world experienced a paradigm shift when a strong lobbying effort by grassroots organizations effectively derailed an initiative: A move that was tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran.
U.S.: Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for Israel Lobby
In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit non-binding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.
But an unexpectedly strong lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups effectively derailed the initiative.
The decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush…
“Who Framed Yigal Amir?” With Barry Chamish
Co-hosts Ashnfara Judy and Tyler Bass return to discuss with journalist Barry Chamish the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Barry Chamish has concluded that the official story of the assassination, in which the prime minister was gunned down by Yigal Amir, is utterly impossible, and that in fact Rabin’s own bodyguards caused the undoing of the Israeli leader’s life. In “Who Framed Yigal Amir?”, They Radio will delve into the forensics, the motives and the covert murderers, Chamish says, had everything to gain at Rabin’s ultimate loss.
From the latest episode of They on Blog Talk Radio.
Video Of Israeli Soldiers Killing 19-Year-Old On Gaza Flotilla
Thanks to Douglas Valentine for sending this our way, with an email header entitled “video you won’t see on Meet The Press.”
Henning Mankell ’s Flotilla Raid Diary: ‘A Man Is Shot. I Am Seeing It Happen’
Henning Mankell , the prize-winning writer and creator of Wallander was among those on board the Gaza flotilla. He shares his private diary of the events leading to his capture, for the Guardian:
Tuesday 25 May, Nice
It is five o’clock in the morning and I’m standing in the street waiting for the taxi that will take me to the airport in Nice. It’s the first time in ages E and I have had some time off together. Initially we thought we’d be able to stretch it to two weeks. It turned out to be five days. Ship to Gaza finally seems to be ready to set off and I’m to travel to Cyprus to join it, as arranged.
As instructed, I’ve limited my luggage to a rucksack weighing no more than 10 kilos. Ship to Gaza has a clearly defined goal: to break Israel’s illegal blockade. After the war a year ago,…
Elliot Spitzer’s Pro-Israel Views On Gaza Blockade Deconstructed and Destroyed
Glenn Greenwald, lawyer and Salon.com contributor, eviscerates disgraced former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s pro-Israel views on the Gaza blockade situation, on MSNBC:
Here’s what Glenn had to say about his appearance:
I was just on MSNBC talking about Israel, the Gaza blockade and the flotilla attack with Eliot Spitzer, who was guest-hosting for Dylan Ratigan. It was a rather contentious discussion…
