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| With make-believe sling-shot |
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| Lebanon staging point. Sign says "Iran's Garden" (AP) |
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| 1. note the flags and the treeline. |
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| 2. Cutting the fence |
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| 3. Charging the line |
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| 3b. Charging the fence - continued |
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| 4. Attempt at a "beachhead" |
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| 5. Brownshirt wounded |
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| 6. How it was done on the Syrian front |
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| 7. Attacking an IDF jeep |
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| 8. Army company grouped above the black fold of the top flag. |
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| 9. How did they get past the army? |
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| 10. Naughty, naughty! |
Israel's enemies will use any weapon they can to attack and delegitimize Israel. There's a cottage industry led by the "Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy" that reviews declassified U.S. Government documents from the 1950s and 1960s to prove that Israel deployed various groups as "foreign agents" in order to influence U.S. policy. The Jewish Agency, the American Zionist Council (AZC), and AIPAC are primary targets of the research group.
Some documents recently declassified come from the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and date back to the 1960s when the committee was headed by the anti-Israel crusader, Sen. J. William Fulbright (pictured).
The committee subpoenaed records from the American Zionist Council, a pro-Israel American umbrella group formed in 1949. One document from 1961 detailed the AZC's public relations efforts and the opposition it faced from the anti-Israel lobby. A key component of that lobby was the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, headed by Elmer Berger who constantly railed against pro-Israel Jewish groups.
The American Council for Judaism held as it tenets that "Nationality and religion are separate and distinct. Our nationality is American, our religion is Judaism. Our homeland is the United States of America. We reject any concept that all Jews outside of Israel are in exile..."
Here is one fascinating excerpt from the 1961 American Zionist Council report:
"The ACJ [American Council for Judaism] is today the most effective anti-Zionist and anti-Israel force on the American scene. It continues its aggressive campaign and is concentrating on the mass media and in church circles. Its success is due primarily to the fact that being a Jewish organization (they operate under the term 'Judaism') it becomes acceptable to those in the communications field who thrive on controversy and who can now present 'another Jewish point of view'. Its position also finds an echo among those Christians—who, either because of some degree of latent anti-Semitism or because of obligations to the Arabs—can now join the fray without fear of being called anti-Semitic; ('I am in good Jewish company')."
Sound familiar? This report, written 50 years ago, sounds remarkably contemporary; just substitute the letters "JSt" for "ACJ." It's not surprising that the American Council for Judaism (yes, it still exists) approves of J Street's mission and activities.
First appeared in Pajamas Media
Last month the White House pulled out the red carpet to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, but the charm campaign is a new phenomenon. Less than six months ago, the U.S.-Israel relationship was in deep trouble.
On March 9, Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Israel and was told of an administrative announcement by the Ministry of Interior approving one of the first stages toward the construction of 1,600 apartments in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. The announcement represented no dramatic change of policy or diplomatic message. But the Americans responded as if it was a deliberate high-level slap in the face, and the Israeli government apologized profusely.
After two days of condemnations from the White House followed by Israel’s profuse apologies, it appeared that the crisis was over. On March 11, the Associated Press reported that Biden “attempted to soothe tensions in a speech extolling the countries’ close relationship, signaling the U.S. wants to move beyond an embarrassing diplomatic spat over settlements that tarnished his three-day visit.”
Biden noted that the prime minister had “clarified that the beginning of actual construction on this particular project would likely take several years. … That’s significant because it gives negotiators the time to resolve this as well as other outstanding issues.” Press accounts reported that Netanyahu had called Biden on Thursday morning, “and both agreed the crisis is behind them.”
It wasn’t.
On March 12, in a move coordinated with the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unleashed a 43-minute telephone harangue of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Clinton called the settlement approval a “deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship … which had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process.” The State Department spokesman said Clinton stressed that “the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words, but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.”
On March 13, Netanyahu convened a meeting of his inner cabinet to discuss the Clinton call and to announce that he was setting up a government committee to oversee building announcements. On March 14, Netanyahu discussed the issue with the full cabinet and declared that the incident was “regrettable and should not have taken place.” Ostensibly, the issue was over, at least as far as Israel was concerned.
Yet the White House — still! — had other plans.
Hours later, presidential adviser David Axelrod went on Sunday’s TV news shows to attack the settlement decision. He said it was “very destructive … an affront … an insult. … What it did was it made more difficult a very difficult process.”
Over the next few days, anti-Israel and critical columnists and bloggers unleashed their venom against Israel. On March 15, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen wrote:
"President Barack Obama was furious. In a top-down administration like this one, you don’t get Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lambasting Netanyahu for 43 minutes and David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser, speaking of 'an affront' and 'an insult' and a 'very, very destructive' step if America’s measured leader is not immeasurably incensed. … Netanyahu’s apology is not enough. The United States is asking for 'specific actions.'”
So what happened?
A fire that was supposedly extinguished flared up again and again.
Clearly, while Biden and Netanyahu were making up, in the White House a decision was made to apply Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s famous strategy for crisis management: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could do before."
The 1,600 Jerusalem apartments would become the anvil on which the administration would forge a pliant Israel. The message would have to be amplified, and for the White House, the pro-Obama, purportedly pro-Israel J Street was a perfect vehicle.
According to newly released White House visitor logs, J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, and vice president of policy and strategy, Hadar Susskind, came to the White House to meet with officials in the White House Office of Public
Engagement, headed by Obama’s close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett. (Pictured with the President.)
On March 11, and then again on March 12, the logs show Ben-Ami set a meeting for March 15 in the Old Executive Office Building with Danielle Borrin, who served on the vice president’s staff and in Jarrett’s office. On March 17, another meeting was set in the West Wing, the White House’s inner sanctum, for the next day with Tina Tchen, Jarrett’s principle deputy and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
(See below: Tchen plays a key role in the liaison between the White House and J Street and the Arab lobby.)
On March 15, the day it met with Borrin, J Street issued a statement on the “escalation of U.S.-Israel tensions” warning that Israel’s “provocative actions undermine the pe
ace process” and weaken the American attempts “to build a broad international coalition to address the Iranian nuclear program.” Parroting Emanuel’s strategy for crisis management, the J Street memo declared: "Bold American leadership is needed now to turn this crisis into a real opportunity to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
The memo, in effect, called for an imposed American solution: "We urge the United States to take this opportunity to suggest parameters to the parties for resuming negotiations — basing borders on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, with the Palestinian state demilitarized and on territory equivalent to 100% of the area encompassed by the pre-1967 Armistice lines."
On March 16, J Street sent out an action alert to its members, warning: "Some hawkish pro-Israel activists are seizing the opportunity to attack the Obama Administration over Israel, urging the Administration to slow down and back off. The pro-Israel, pro-peace movement is stepping up strong … urging the Administration to turn this crisis into an opportunity for progress on two states."
Four days after meeting with Tchen, J Street published an advertisement in The New York Times to push for White House activism:
"It’s time for the Obama administration to seize the opportunity for bold leadership — putting concrete plans for a two-state solution on the table with the sustained commitment of the United States behind them. It’s time for the Palestinians to end incitement to violence. It’s time for Israel to stop allowing extremist settlers and their sympathizers to endanger not only the friendship of the United States, but also the very future of Israel."
I believe the March 15 Roger Cohen column in the Times likely also came as a result of White House encouragement. A long-time Axelrod acquaintance confessed to me last year: "I think I made a mistake about a year ago in introducing Roger Cohen to Axelrod electronically. Axe never writes me back, and Cohen will never tell, but, I think Cohen is floating the Administration policies ever since then."
On March 12, J Street founder Daniel Levy published in the Guardian a self-serving article about:
"[The Jewish diaspora’s determination] to reclaim a more moderate and progressive vision of what it means to be pro-Israel and to apply Jewish ethics and Jewish values, that helped guide civil rights struggles in the past, to contemporary Israeli reality. Such efforts are gaining ground — notably the emergence of J Street in America."
Levy — a member of the JournoList — wrote the first of a slew of critical pieces that week by J Street advocates and JournoList members, including Time’s Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan, Spencer Ackerman, and Eric Alterman.
Using a football term, J Street promotes itself as “Obama’s blocking back.” The attempt by the White House and J Street in March 2010 to run over Israel after the Ramat Shlomo housing fumble was stopped well before the goal line. On March 27, three-quarters of the House of Representatives — some 337 members — sent a bipartisan letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing solid support for Israel and voicing the expectation that differences between Jerusalem and Washington will be smoothed over quickly and in private.
A week later, the Senate followed with its letter of support signed by 76 members:
"We recognize that our government and the Government of Israel will not always agree on particular issues in the peace process. But such differences are best resolved amicably and in a manner that befits longstanding strategic allies. We must never forget the depth and breadth of our alliance and always do our utmost to reinforce a relationship that has benefited both nations for more than six decades."
And after the Gaza flotilla incident, both houses of Congress issued another letter of support in June — support that the White House could not ignore. Eighty-seven senators and more than 300 members of the House urged the president to support Israel, explaining that Israel’s “blockade of Gaza was both legal and necessary, and that Israeli commandos were acting in self-defense when they landed on the ship.”
J Street opposed the letter, urging members of Congress to support a more “nuanced” communication: "We would ask lawmakers to demonstrate real courage and leadership at this critical moment to call on the President to turn crisis into opportunity and to make ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a central priority of his foreign policy."
J Street complained that the congressional letter failed, among other things, to "… address the impact of the present closure of Gaza on the civilian population."
Then and today, less than three months before the congressional elections, congressmen and senators — and the American people they represent — express their strong support for Israel.
For now, the White House does too.
J Street and the Arab Lobby
Tina Tchen — White House adviser, long-time Obama associate from Chicago, and head of the Office of Public Engagement — coordinates and encourages joint J Street/Arab American Institute programs and strategies.
Last October she addressed a joint meeting of the Arab American Institute and J Street, opening her remarks with: "You are quite representative of what we want to accomplish."
She appealed to the groups to promote Obama’s vision for the Middle East, and to work the Jewish and Arab American grassroots: "We need to not only change hearts and minds in the Middle East, but there are hearts and minds to be changed here in the United States as well." 
J Street’s Ben-Ami (pictured at the podium) and the AAI president Jim Zogby (pictured on the right) echoed and endorsed her message.
Tchen’s Office of Public Engagement is the destination for many of the White House visits by Zogby, as recorded in the White House visitor logs.
The writer served as a senior Israeli diplomat in Washington. Today he is a consultant on public affairs and blogs at www.lennybendavid.com.
The Jerusalem Post reported this morning, "Concerns are mounting in the defense establishment that Hizbullah may be digging tunnels from Lebanon to Israel to attack a border community or IDF outpost."
The concerns are not new. They were reported here and in the Jerusalem Post in October 2007. Here is the detailed story:
Mining for trouble in Lebanon. Is Hizbullah building tunnels into Israel? Jerusalem Post, Oct 30, 2007, by LENNY BEN-DAVID
Last summer Yitzhak Goren went out to his orchards to check the damage after a barrage of more than 100 Hizbullah Katyusha rockets slammed across Israel's Galilee. No one was working the orchards those days. The plums rotting under the trees gave off a sweet fermented smell. Branches were strewn everywhere. Yitzhak noted the craters left by the rockets, but one seemed different. He didn't see the bottom of the crater or the shrapnel left by the rocket. In fact, he couldn't see the bottom of the crater at all. Just darkness.
Goren had stumbled on one of the surprises promised by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. It was the exit of a mile-long tunnel dug from Lebanon. The tunnel's mouth was in a stone quarry purchased by Hizbullah five years ago. The dust and trucks around the quarry raised no suspicion. Nor did the North Korean advisors and equipment brought in by the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (a.k.a. Changgwang Sinyong Corporation) to assist the Iranians and Lebanese Shi'ites digging the 100-foot deep tunnel shaft.
The North Korean-Iranian cooperation in Lebanon is an extension of North Korea and Iran's conflict with the United States and its allies, a cooperation t
hat also includes the provision of long- range missiles and nuclear research to Syria.
Indeed, despite its "mining" appellation, the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation was sanctioned by the United States for missile development and proliferation activities. As for the tunnels, North Korea had 50 years of experience digging tunnels under the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, some 500 feet deep and two miles long [pictured right.] Equipped with electric lines and ventilation, some of the DMZ tunnels were large enough for the passage of a thousand soldiers an hour. Hizbullah's plans were more modest: to send 200 guerrillas behind Israel's lines to shoot up civilian targets and military vehicles waiting to move into Lebanon. Hundreds of advanced shoulder-fired RPG-29s and laser- guided Kornet-E anti-tank missiles were already in place in their subterranean storerooms 100 yards from the end of the tunnel when the errant Katyusha punched a hole in the tunnel exit.
The above description of Yitzhak Goren's tunnel is fiction. The description of North Korean tunnels and cooperation with Iran are based on fact. The picture above is of weapons stored in a Hizbullah bunker in southern Lebanon.
Hamas, Hizbullah’s Sunni allies in Gaza, had already perfected the tunnel tactic in a small scale attack on an IDF tank and its crew in Israel when it abducted Gilad Shalit, on June 25, 2006. Tunnels dug to Egypt's Sinai desert represent Hamas' materiel and financial lifelines.
Earlier this summer, Hizbullah's Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned of a "big surprise" if there's another round of fighting with Israel. Some analysts believe he was hinting at the acquisition of new missiles, possibly even anti-aircraft missiles. But tunnels from Lebanon may just be the "surprise" Nasrallah keeps promising.
SINCE ISRAEL'S withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Iranian money, troops and experts have been assisting Hizbullah to build their bunkers and underground bases throughout the country, including a warren of offices and headquarters deep beneath Hizbullah's autonomous Al Dahiyeh quarter in southern Beirut. "Hizbullah is rebuilding underground positions from which they can store weapons and defend an
d attack whomever they choose," said Toni Nissi, head of the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, The Washington Times' W. Thomas Smith, Jr., recently reported.
Just in the first half of 2006, 60,888 Iranian "tourists" visited Lebanon, according to published reports.
Hizbullah's military bases, armories, bunkers and communications networks were much more extensive than Israel's intelligence services estimated on the eve of the 2006 war. Israeli news reports have subsequently confirmed the existence of deep and well-fortified bunkers in Hizbullah's "nature reserves" all along Israel's northern borders.
Missing from the accounts, however, is the obvious question: If Hizbullah was building bunkers along Israel's (east-west) border, what is to stop them from building (north-south) tunnels - with Iranian and North Korean assistance - under Israel's border? Indeed, during the war one of Israel's TV news crews picked up on their microphone a conversation between a senior IDF officer and a wounded soldier. The officer revealed that such a tunnel was discovered from one position north of the border to an IDF position south of the border. But no further mention was ever made of the revelation.
AT THE END of the 2006 war Israel Defense Forces did discover the entrance to a very elaborate subterranean mini-city several dozen yards from a UNIFIL position, some 350 yards inside Lebanon. The fortification contained dozens of rooms connected by phones and equipped with showers, toilets, air conditioning and escape hatches.
Last year, a garrulous officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard revealed to the Arabic publication Sharq al Awsat that Iranian diplomats smuggled North Korean experts into Lebanon under the guise of "domestic workers." They joined "hundreds of Iranian engineers and technicians to build a 25 kilometer (!) tunnel." The officer did not reveal the location but bragged "each opening in this [tunnel] measures 12 to 18 square meters, and has a mobile floor and a semi-mobile ceiling. Each four openings are connected by a passage that allows fighters to pass easily [from one opening] to the other."
THE IRANIAN supply of funds, weapons, and training is seemingly unlimited. The Iranian-sponsored civilian infrastructure, schools and welfare systems have transformed parts of Lebanon to nothing short of a full- fledged, Shi'ite, jihadist colony on the eastern Mediterranean. Even while Iran is facing its own financial turmoil (unemployment, inflation and gasoline shortages), hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in Hizbullah institutions in Lebanon. Visitors to Hizbullah areas under construction report seeing many "Thank you Iran" signs.
Iranian influence and Islamist fundamentalism may have already undermined the foundations of Lebanon's fledgling democracy beyond repair. And what Iran hasn't corrupted, Syria has.
After being run out of Lebanon almost two years ago, neighboring Syria is determined to return and reassert its kleptocratic rule in Lebanon, as well. After all, President Bashar Assad and his thugs seem to have literally gotten away with the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. Earlier this month, Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora provided the UN Secretary General with details on the Syrian links to the Fatah al- Islam terrorist group that held off Lebanese forces in the Nahr al- Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon for three months. Many of the jihadists had crossed into Lebanon from Syria, and many were trained by the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.
The bottom line: There is no way that Iran, Syria and Hizbullah will honor UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for the Lebanese army to deploy to the border with Israel and for the disarming of the militias (ie. the Shi'ite Hizbullah or the Sunni Fatah al-Islam). These axis- of-evil regimes and terrorist groups will do all they can to endanger the stability of the precarious Lebanese government and to disrupt Lebanese elections. Assassinations of anti-Syrian parliamentarians are shaving down the anti-Syrian majority's numbers. And it is questionable if they will permit the establishment of the special international tribunal to try the suspects in the Hariri murder.
In 2007, I got this response from an Israeli defense correspondent: Anonymous said...
Rumors of infiltration routes under Avivim have been circulating for some time. So far, only official denials. Good luck at holding MoD's feet to the fire on this one. They shouldn't be allowed to "excuse" away the prob as they have in Gaza (sandy surface, ground water, etc.) Detection technology suited to the North's mountainous terrain is commercially available and has been used for decades south of the DMZ and in mining/industrial sites around the world. Good luck on this important new initiative!
“Any of you boys seen an aircraft-carrier around here?” – Maverick (aka Top Gun)
Actually, a couple of them. The USS Truman sailed through the Suez Canal last week with a dozen escort ships all armed to the teeth. The Truman is supposed to relieve the USS Eisenhower on station in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ike stays around a little longer. Ostensibly, the Truman is supposed to provide support for the Afghanistan war, and several support ships are supposed to peel off for anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia.
French President Sarkozy [pictured right] revealed this week that t
he French carrier the Charles De Gaulle is heading out to the region “before the end of the year.” How soon will it be before the British HMS Ark Royal will also join the other carriers in the region? Probably not too long considering that French, British and American jets have been participating in joint exercises in recent months with pilots landing on each other’s carriers.
An Iranian Nightmare
Earlier this month Navy Times detailed the joint air operations and interoperability exercises of the French and U.S. carriers.
A brace of French Navy Rafales flying from the Charles de Gaulle carrier roIn similar exercises last month, American jets were landing and taking off from the British Ark Royal off the eastern coast of the United States.ared down [pictured left] to perform touch-and-go landings on the vast deck of this Nimitz class carrier, in a show of interoperability between the two navies. The cross-deck operations included a Rafale landing on the U.S. carrier June 4, being taken down in one of the maintenance hangars and having one of its engines removed and refitted. …The U.S. carrier Truman docked at Marseille on June 8 …. [on its way to the Suez Canal.] Meanwhile, [U.S.] F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, practiced touch-and-go landings on the Charles de Gaulle, which was sailing nearby. American pilots also took part in close-air support training exercises with British and French forward air observers at Canjuers, the French Army training base in the dry, scrubby countryside behind Toulon.
There's no question that the war jitters in the Middle East are a little stronger these days. Add to the swirling rumors the new claim made by the Islam Times that Israeli aircraft were seen last week at the Saudi airfield in Tabuk unloading equipment.
There's little doubt that Iran is behind the Islam Times' charge that "Saudi Arabia’s measures to allow Israel to use their country in order to harm the resistance movements in the region is something that has enflamed Muslims throughout the world in recent years."
Middle East intrigue sometimes creates strange political bedfellows, but Israel's use of the Tabuk base makes little sense, simply because it doesn't benefit Israel. Tabuk is located in northwest Saudi Arabia and 800 miles from Iran. It doesn't cut any flying time from Israel to Iran. If -- and that's a big if -- Israel wanted to attack from Saudi Arabia, there are other Saudi bases closer to Iran, such as the Prince Sultan base near Riyadh or the Dhahran base close to the Gulf. And, if Israel plans to attack Iran, and if Israel couldn't accomplish the task with mid-air refueling, there may be other bases in the region that would be better.
Tabuk is so close to Israel -- about 150 kilometers -- that when the U.S. sold F-15 fighter jets to Saud
i Arabia in 1982 there was a ban on basing the jets in T
abuk. Legend has it that Israeli planes overflew Tabuk dropping spent fuel tanks on the base as a reminder of the base's vulnerability. (Empty fuel tanks falling from under an aircraft's wing could look like something much more lethal, and the Royal Laundry at the base probably had to put on a second shift to clean the soiled trousers that day.)
In 2003, the Saudi Royal Air Force moved the bulk of its F-15s to Tabuk with U.S. permission and tacit Israeli accession.
The winds of war may be blowing stronger in the Middle East, but the Tabuk story appears to be hot air.
This commentary was written over a week ago, but sat on an editor's desk. Here is the liberated column:
Commentators and analysts are still writing about Peter Beinart’s New York Review of Books essay on the Failure of the American Jewish Establishment and the subsequent essays Love Israel? Criticize It and Why Israel Has to Do Better. The J Street-walkers tout his pieces as proof of the justice and righteousness of their ways. The Zionist, traditional supporters of Israel see Beinart as ignoring the Arab/Iranian threats and the Palestinian incitement, and they decry as unfair his one-sided blaming of Israel for the Middle East’s woes.
I share many of those criticisms, for it is clear to me that Beinart’s view of Israel is not necessarily myopic; it is microscopic. From afar, he focuses intensely on an event or a person in Israel’s history and projects that speck as representative of all of Israel or its government or its leadership here and now. By definition, such a view is distorted. Thus Prime Minister Netanyahu’s old opposition to Palestinian statehood is presented as contemporary, and Shas’ Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and Yisrael Beitenu party leader Avigdor Lieberman’s pre-election party platforms are portrayed as the same positions held in the coalition government today. It would be as if someone calls President Barack Obama today a lackey to the Jewish lobby because he stated as candidate just two years ago that Jerusalem must “remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
The biased Israeli authorities quoted by Beinart such as Ha’aretz’ Akiva Eldar or academic Ze’ev Sternhell are held with the same esteem in Israel as Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh in the offices of the Democratic National Committee. What Beinart sees from there – or what he chooses to see – is not the same that we see and experience here in Israel.
I once met Beinart at the Chabad Center in Washington. I was truly impressed by his brilliance, confidence, and breadth of knowledge. And I was proud that he was unserer – one of us, and a self-proclaimed Orthodox Jew, no less.
But I forgot that not all Orthodox Jews are unserer. I certainly have little in common with the Haredi, ultra-Orthodox members of the fringe Neturei Karta who meet and express solidarity with Iran’s Ahmadinejad and pray for Israel’s demise. Their creed, dogma and rebbes are not mine.
And frankly, I am sorry to say, Peter Beinart’s dogma and rebbes are not mine, either. I thank Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg for sharing Beinart’s ani ma’amin – his set of basic beliefs:"My hero growing up was Joe Slovo, who spoke only Yiddish until he was nine and upon moving to South Africa
Most of us here in Israel don’t have the confidence in our neighbors to allow ourselves the luxury of moral universalism. We didn’t approve of the restraint showed by our national leaders during the 2006 war with Hizbullah, and we did approve of the so-called “disproportionate response” to Hamas terror two years later. We feel sorry for the innocent civilians killed in Gaza and are dismayed that they were used as human shields, but there is no remorse that our casualty figures didn’t match those of Hamas fighters.
as a boy from Lithuania (we South Africans are almost all Litvaks, except my mom's side, who are Sephardi) became the head of the military wing of the African National Congress. There are Slovos in every place Jews have gone, people who have devoted themselves as Jews (though I'll admit Slovo was not as good a Jew as say, Abraham Joshua Heschel) to the fate of non-Jews. There's a tension, but for me the value is in the tension, in loving Zionism and Judaism and also feeling that one's love of who one is impels one towards moral universalism. I see that spirit powerfully in the Israeli left. It's the use of Jewish suffering as a moral imperative not only to act on behalf of imperiled Jews, but of imperiled non-Jews that really touches me. "
That Joe Slovo is Peter Beinart’s hero explains a whole lot. I first heard Slovo’s name when I travelled through South Africa in two eye-opening trips during the apartheid era and visited Johannesburg, Soweto, Capetown, and Grahamstown. [Today, I still listen to the music of the Jewish-Zulu singer Johnny Clegg.] As I visited various schools, I met dozens of Jewish students who were drawn to the right-wing politics of Meir Kahana or to the left-wing liberation politics of the banned African National Congress, led by Mandela and his former classmate, Joe Slovo. I tried to pull the students away from the extremes of both their camps.
Many of the leftist students seemed ridden with guilt. Most seemed to live like the Nationalists (“Nats”) -- with blacks coming from the townships to work in their homes – while they screamed their rage against the Nationalist government.
Peter Beinart’s parents moved from South Africa to Cambridge before he was born, but it is obvious that the South African experience still weighs on the younger Beinart. He refers to himself in the Goldberg dialogue as “we South Africans.” He told C-Span in 2005, “the anti-Apartheid movement was a very powerful force in both [of his parents’] lives, and that was really in many ways one of the great movements of the 20th century.…”
Beinart’s hero, Joe Slovo, was a committed Marxist dedicated to overthrowing the apartheid regime. But he also bore a deep hatred for Israel. This is what Slovo wrote, as published in his unfinished autobiography published after his death in 1995:
"Within a few years the wars of consolidation and expansion began. Ironically enough, the horrors of the Holocaust became the rationalization for the preparation by Zionists of acts of genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine. Those of us who, in the years that were to follow, raised our voices publicly against the violent apartheid of the Israeli state were vilified by the Zionist press. It is ironic, too, that the Jew-haters in South Africa – those who worked and prayed for a Hitler victory – have been linked in close embrace with the rulers of Israel in a new axis based on racism."
Beinart, like the ultra-Orthodox fringe group Neturei Karta, views today’s Israel as godless and increasingly illegitimate in the scheme of his moral universalism. For him, Israel is embroiled in a battle between the light and darkness – a “domestic struggle between democrats and authoritarians.” He envisions a Yerushalayim shel Ma’aleh – a heavenly, utopian Jerusalem led by Israel’s left.
That’s not my view, nor the view of the majority of Israelis as we express our opinions in our democratic elections.
Have we come to a point that the standard penitence for South African Jewish ex-pats and ex-Nats, whether Beinart or the hanging judge Richard Goldstone, is to say 20 Hail Marys and to kick Israel?
PS: In preparing this article I discovered that Joe Slovo is admired by another well known Jewish figure who was often critical of Israel: David Miliband, the former British Foreign Secretary.
Originally published in Pajamas Media
On Thursday, May 27, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Paris to formally accept the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s invitation to Israel to join the ranks of the world’s leading economies.
But Israel’s accession to the OECD would not have happened if the Palestinian Authority had its way, and the PA’s attempt to block Israel’s economic achievement could theoretically backfire and endanger American military assistance to the would-be state of Palestine. What’s at stake? Approximately $100 million that was appropriated for 2010 to train and equip the PA’s elite presidential guard and security forces.
During the deliberations of the 31 OECD members earlier this year, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki lobbied all the foreign ministers of the OECD countries, calling for the vote to be delayed because, he charged, Israel infringed on Palestinians’ human rights and violated OECD values, Ha'aretz reported.
Israel complained that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad also called many of the leaders of OECD countries to argue against Israel’s acceptance, the Ha’aretz report continued. “Fayyad’s efforts to thwart Israel’s participation in the organization,” said Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor Party), “are extremely grave, and even more so during a time when Israel wants to begin proximity talks in order to reach an agreement and a reconciliation between the nations.”
The formal Palestinian leadership, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was also mobilized to block Israel’s joining the OECD, according to the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC). “In the run-up to the OECD decision,” a press release stated, “the BNC coordinated with the PLO, unions and other civil society actors in all thirty OECD member states as part of an intensive campaign to oppose Israel’s membership for its persistent and systematic violations of the rights of the Palestinians.”
On a basic level, the Palestinian attack on the Israel-OECD deal just doesn’t jive with the peace negotiations U.S. mediator George Mitchell is attempting to kickstart.
On another level, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas launched a campaign this month to 
boycott products made in Israeli settlements. Fines and even jail time await Palestinians who use the enemy products or work in neighboring Jewish communities. While Abbas claims that the boycott is not directed against Israel “with whom we have relations,” it is difficult to prevent a boycott of settlement goods from sliding into a boycott of all Israeli goods which may use components or ingredients made in Judea/Samaria a few miles away.
The boycott was also declared at a time when Israel is opening checkpoints and encouraging economic development in the West Bank. This week, Tony Blair’s Office of the Quartet Representative in Jerusalem welcomed Israel’s decision to implement a package of measures to ease movement and access restrictions in the West Bank. OQR Head of Mission Robert Danin welcomed the development, saying, “Some of these steps are significant and should improve the economic and living conditions of the West Bank Palestinian population.”
Some 25,000 Palestinians work in the Jewish communities in the territories, most in the settlement blocs, which will be kept under Israeli control if a peace agreement is reached. The boycott will not only cost them their jobs, but may also deep-six the prospect of joint economic projects in the future.
When President Mahmoud Abbas visits Washington next month, he will certainly be quizzed by congressmen and senators about the OECD attack and the boycott, particularly since they challenge American law on the boycott. The 2009-2010 Omnibus Appropriations Act, State Department Appropriations section, states:
The Arab League boycott of Israel, and the secondary boycott of American firms that have commercial ties with Israel, is an impediment to peace in the region and to United States investment and trade in the Middle East and North Africa; all Arab League states should normalize relations with their neighbor Israel. … The President and the Secretary of State should continue to vigorously oppose the Arab League boycott of Israel and find concrete steps to demonstrate that opposition by, for example, taking into consideration the participation of any recipient country in the boycott when determining to sell weapons to said country.
Ultimately, the boycott of Israel is also damaging to the Palestinians, foreclosing the possibilities of cooperation with one of the world’s most dynamic economies.
Perhaps the tragic example of thousands of Israeli hothouses in Gaza should be rememb
ered. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the bountiful hothouses were purchased by well-meaning, peace-making tycoons, including Bill Gates, Mort Zuckerman, James Wolfenson, and Leonard Stern. They planned to turn the $200 million enterprise over to the Palestinian Authority. Within days of Israel’s withdrawal, the hothouses were pillaged and destroyed. The tools for a better Palestinian future became targets for wanton destruction. Today, the Palestinians economic attack on Israel will have little impact on Israel’s burgeoning economy, but it will destroy the trust and cooperation needed for better future.
Israel cannot minimize the threat. The threats of Iraqi Scuds and Egyptian anti-aircraft missiles were once minimized, too.
A version of this article appeared in Pajamas Media
Sitting on my desk is a mangled chunk of steel, a large piece of shrapnel from a Scud missile that hit a Tel Aviv community center in 1991. It serves to remind me of the terror of the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein fired 39 long-range Scuds at the Tel Aviv and Haifa regions over a six-week period.
Earlier this month, Arab, American, and Israeli sources all confirmed that Syria transferred Scud missiles to Hizbullah forces in Lebanon. Immediately, several commentators and analysts minimized the Scuds’ dangers.
From Time : Scuds can be easily tracked and destroyed by the Israeli air force before launching.
The Los Angeles Times editorialized: [The] large 1950s-era missiles are inaccurate, and Israel has the capacity to intercept them.
The Kuwaiti paper Al-Rai reported: Hizbullah sources confirmed Thursday that the terror group received a shipment of Scud missiles from Syria. … The missiles were claimed to be old and unusable.
American officials hemmed and hawed: maybe the Syrians just “intended” to provide them. The officials "had doubts about whether the missiles were delivered fully assembled or had actually been transferred to Lebanon."
Déjà vu
The media apparently has long-term memory loss and is incapable of remembering the 1991 Gulf War Scuds crashing down on Israel. But what excuse is there to forget the barrages of Hamas’ Kassam and Katyusha rockets that set off the 2009 Gaza conflagration?
Over a period of
eight years, analysts and reporters described the thousands of Kassam rockets fired at Israeli civilians as primitive, inaccurate, homemade, and relatively harmless. They minimized the threats to Israeli citizens, as Jewish children in their playgrounds scurried to bomb shelters or families cowered in “safe rooms” while Kassams — and later, the bigger Katyushas — crashed into their towns.
The “primitive” missiles killed and wounded Israelis.
When Israel’s army finally responded, Israel was condemned with unprecedented opprobrium by governments, the media, the UN, J Street Jews, the self-righteous left, and the bigoted on the right.
A recommendation to Israel: Assume the Scuds are in place and in the hands of a terrorist organization. Take the threat seriously.
Déjà vu, again
Every adult Israeli remembers lugging gas masks everywhere during the 1991 Gulf War. Many sat in long lines of cars leaving Israel’s coastal towns in the late afternoon to ferry families to the relatively safer Jerusalem or Eilat areas. Hearing an ambulance siren today still triggers for many Israelis the memory of the dreaded air raid sirens, scurrying to shelters, and squeezing their smallest children into sealed plastic coops with purified air.
The Scud missiles were supposed to be inaccurate, but at least six hit residential areas in Israel, and their one ton explosive warheads left swaths of devastation. Thousands of homes and businesses were damaged. The lethality of the missile was seen in one case in Saudi Arabia, where a Scud killed 28 U.S. soldiers in Dhahran and wounded more than 100. Moreover, if the Hizbullah Scuds are the “D model” in Syria’s arsenal, then their accuracy is supposed to be pretty good — within 50 meters of the target.
But Scuds do not have to be accurate to be effective. They just need to explode.
They are terror weapons (may one use the word “terror” today?), intended to panic Israel’s civilian population and shut down Israel’s economy. And for several years now, American intelligence has been warning that “a portion” of the hundreds of Syria’s Scuds “may have chemical warheads.”
As Iran’s proxy on the Mediterranean, Hizbullah works closely with Syria and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hizbullah caught the Israeli navy off-guard during the 2006 war, shooting a sophisticated Iranian-produced missile at an Israeli missile boat and killing four IDF sailors. Israeli defenders were also caught by surprise when Hizbullah unmanned aerial vehicles flew over northern Galilee. In any future combat, the Israeli air force may find itself flying through a thicket of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles provided to Hizbullah by Iran, or covering Lebanon’s airspace while based within Syria’s adjacent territory.
Since the Gulf War, Israel developed the Arrow anti-missile system to intercept weapons such as the Scud or Iran’s more advanced Shehab missile, but a massive barrage of missiles could possibly overwhelm Israel’s defenses. The new Israeli “Iron Dome” system is supposed to block Katyusha missiles such as the ones Hamas and Hizbullah rained down on Israel, but it’s not battle-tested. The United States has provided a high-powered X-band radar station to provide early warning of long-range missile launches.
But who wants to rely on such defensive systems to shoot down missiles falling on your head? Israel must have the ability to preempt.
Lebanon’s army commander, Jean Kahwaji, argued this week that it was impossible that Scuds could have been introduced into the country:
"Scud rockets are not like Katyushas that are carried on the shoulder and transferred from one area to another. The rockets are 30 meters long, are carried on large vehicles, and need 40 minutes to prepare for launch."
Considering that Hizbullah has been incorporated into the Lebanese army (some claim the army was integrated into Hizbullah), no one should be surprised by his declaration of innocence. But the Scud missile is 11-12 meters long, not 30 as Kahwaji states. 
Moreover, Hizbullah smuggled 16-meter-long Zelzal missiles and their launchers into Lebanon in 2006.
In the first days of the 2006 war in Lebanon, the Israeli air force succeeded in destroying 54 of Hizbullah’s mid-range Zelzal missile launchers (approximately half the range and half the warhead of the Scuds). Many of the Zelzals were deployed in civilian neighborhoods.
But the Israeli army and air force could not stop the constant bombardment of other missiles and rockets. Almost 3,800 rockets were launched against Israel, with some 900 hitting Israeli towns, killing 42 civilians and wounding more than 4,200. Today, Hizbullah is reported to possess 40,000 rockets, four times the number it held in 2006. “We are at a point now,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned this week, “where Hizbullah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world.”
Presumably, Hizbullah will hide the Scud launchers better than it concealed the Zelzal launchers.
A recommendation to Israel: Be prepared. Consider preemption. Take the threat seriously.
Déjà vu, once more
Prior to the 1991 war, the Americans promised Israel that in the event of a Scud attack, U.S. aircraft would concentrate on knocking out the Scuds within the first 48 hours. However, as explained by Moshe Arens, who served as Israel’s defense minister at the time:
"The problem of hitting mobile launchers was far more difficult than the U.S. had envisioned. Although there was intensive aerial activity directed at hitting the Scud launchers, not a single Scud launcher was hit or immobilized during the five weeks of the Gulf War. Then the Americans sent over the Patriots. The Patriot was probably the most advanced anti-aircraft missile around at the time, and was advertised as also having anti-missile capability. As it turned out, the Patriot missiles in Israel did not succeed in intercepting a single Scud missile."
Today, senior American officials are not promising to destroy Hizbullah Scuds; they are denying that they’re in Lebanon.
After all, such a deployment would be a serious violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which prohibits the “supply of weapons to any entity in Lebanon without the consent of the Government of Lebanon.” (This raises the question of whether Lebanon’s government, cowering before a resurgent Syria, agreed to the Scud deployment. If so, that makes Lebanon, its military, and infrastructure complicit and fair game in the event of another war.)
But as far as Syria is concerned, the U.S. appears to be rewarding the Assad regime despite the transfer of the Scuds. Washington still intends to send a U.S. ambassador to Damascus as part of the commitment to “engage” Syria.
Denial of th
e deployment of missiles is an old American tactic in the Middle East. After negotiating a cease-fire along the Suez Canal between Israel and Egypt in 1970, American officials rejected Israeli claims that Egypt was moving anti-aircraft missile batteries to the Canal. This was in violation of the agreement that forbade either side from “changing the military status quo within zones extending 50 kilometers to the east and west of the cease-fire line.” Within weeks, however, Egypt had deployed more than 100 batteries along the Canal, anti-aircraft weaponry that would provide cover for the Egyptian attack on Israeli lines during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Israel was furious about the Egyptian violation. Henry Kissinger reported (The White House Years, Volume 1, page 587) that Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir sent a demarche via Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin with evidence of Egypt’s violations and deployment of missile batteries. Rabin was brought into President Nixon to show him the evidence and to “complain bitterly about the reluctance of our intelligence community to accept Israeli evidence.”
Kissinger continued with words that echo true 40 years later whether applied t
o the Iranian, Syrian, or Palestinian front:
“There was some merit,” Kissinger wrote, “in Rabin’s complaint of the reluctance of the U.S. intelligence community to find violations. As I explained to the president:
‘Israel, with her survival at stake, cannot afford to take chances. … The nature of the Israelis’ situation is bound to influence their interpretation of ambiguous events. We, on the other hand, have an incentive to minimize such evidence, since the consequences of finding violations are so unpleasant. Violations force us to choose between doing something about them and thus risk the blowup of our initiative; or doing nothing and thus renege on our promises to Israel, posing the threat of her taking military action. Accordingly, we tend to lean over backwards to avoid the conclusion that the Arabs are violating the ceasefire unless the evidence is unambiguous.’”A recommendation to Israel: Don’t trust U.S. assurances. Take the threat seriously.
Do you think Petraeus' comments at the Woodrow Wilson Institute this week will finally shut up the Waltsheimers, Brzezinskis, Rosenbergs and J Street-walkers and their whining that Israel is a burden to the U.S.?
Probably not.
Read the General's comments that appeared in the Kuwaiti News Service (KUNA):
Petraeus affirms strategic relation with Israel
WASHINGTON, April 14 (KUNA) -- General David Petraeus has affirmed the special and strategic relation between the United States and Israel.
In an address to Washington based think tank the "Woodrow Wilson Center" on Tuesday, the U.S. Army Commander of the Central Command said: "Israel is -- has been, is and will be a -- an important strategic ally of the United States".
Petraeus denied recent press reports claiming he expressed interests to relocate both Israel and Palestinian Territories from the European Command to his Central Command, saying "that's just not correct".
He down played these press reports saying "it said in one of these blog reports that got it all started that I had requested the addition of Israel and the Palestinian Territories to the Central Command area of responsibility".
Petraeus did not reiterate his early opinion expressed in Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 16th that the deadlocked Arab- Israeli peace process affect negatively the U.S.'s ability to advance its interests in the region.
Instead he hoped for progress toward a comprehensive Mideast peace process saying "I think rightly, seized on was the inclusion of the comment about insignificant progress or insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Mideast peace process".
"It did not say anything about settlements, didn't say anything about putting our soldiers at risk or something like that" Petraeus added referring to his early statement in the Senate.
Petraeus named several factors that influence regional instability within his command region that stretch from Egypt to Pakistan and from Kazakhstan to Yemen.
They are "militant Islamist movements; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; ungoverned, poorly governed and alternatively governed spaces; insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Mideast peace process; significant sources of terrorist financing and facilitation; piracy; ethnic, tribal and sectarian rivalries; criminal activities, such as weapons, narcotics and human trafficking; uneven economic development and lack of employment opportunities; and lack of regional and global economic integration, " he said. (end)
Reprinted from Pajamas Media
At least two of her colleagues had placed themselves under the tractor's maw on that day in 2003. Russian roulette was apparently the group's strategy.
God, sometimes we Israelis are idiots. Leave aside the colossal fashla (you call it a snafu) of the ill-timed announcement of the expansion of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that sent the Obama administration into a hissy fit. What we’re doing with the latest “lawfare” case against Israel, the trial brought by Rachel Corrie’s parents, is another beaut.
In March 2003, a young American woman named Rachel Corrie was crushed and killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza. And now her parents are in Israel, suing Israel. Last week, the Israeli newspaper Yediot portrayed her as a saintly martyr and featured a false photo of the incident, taken at a different time and with a different bulldozer. The anchor of Israel Radio’s morning commute show rebuked Israel’s actions, and the Israeli YES cable network presented Rachel, a two-hour paean to Corrie and an indictment of Israel.
We’re nuts.
We overlook the fact that Corrie’s death took place in the midst of the “intifada” terrorist onslaught against Israel and that she was working for a Palestinian-led organization as the first line of defense against Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield to stop terrorist suicide bombers. Just ten days before Corrie’s death, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Haifa, a few miles from the courthouse where the Corrie parents are suing Israel. Seventeen Israelis died in the attack, many of them teenagers.
Today, the parents of the dead are outraged by the attention Rachel Corrie is getting and by the chutzpah of the Corries embracing Israeli courts to rail against the country Rachel Corrie loathed.
The Palestinian-led group — International Solidarity Movement (ISM) — enlisted dozens of “internationals,” including Corrie, to serve as support troops. ISM admits that it “recognizes the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle.” ISM’s creed translated into action: In May 2002, ten ISM members rushed into the Church of the Nativity to serve as human shields for Palestinian terrorists holed up there and desecrating the holy site. In Jenin in March 2003, an ISM woman hid a wanted Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, from the Israeli army. In Gaza in April 2003, two terrorists “had tea” with ISM members before they embarked on their mission to blow up Mike’s Place, a bar in Tel Aviv, five days later.
Danny Seaman, a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office, stated at the time: "Members of the ISM have been knowingly aiding and abetting terrorists and disrupting the activity of the IDF meant to prevent the murder of Israeli civilians."
Corrie and her band of ISM internationals had been disrupting IDF activity in Rafah just yards from the infamous “Philadelphi route” along the Gaza-Egypt border. This was an area of intense terrorist activity and was — and still is — the location of Hamas tunnels.
But the ISM group was frustrated, Newsweek’s Joshua Hammer wrote in a 2003 exhaustive report on Corrie in the leftist Mother Jones magazine:
"An anonymous letter was circulating which referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as 'nasty foreign bitches' whom 'our Palestinian young men are following around.'"
"That morning [of Corrie’s death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter’s effects. 'We all had a feeling that our role was too passive,' said one ISM member. 'We talked about how to engage the Israeli military.' That morning, team members made a number of proposals that seemed designed only to aggravate the problem.… "
“The idea was to more directly challenge the Israeli military dominance using our international status,” said the ISMer.
On the day of Corrie’s death, the new ISM aggressive actions involved placing themselves in severe danger. Eyewitness reports recorded immediately after Corrie’s death prove that the ISMers had knowingly decided to put themselves in harm’s way.
Reported here — for the first time — is the fact that prior to Corrie’s death at least two “internationals” had been pulled out from under the bulldozers at the last second.
According to one of Corrie’s colleagues, whose recollections were published three days after her death (emphasis mine):
For two hours we attempted at great risk to ourselves to obstruct and frustrate the bulldozers in their work.
Another ISM colleague stated:Our group began to stand in front of these bulldozers in an attempt to stop them. Generally they did not stop when we stood in front of them, but continued to push the earth up from underneath our feet to push us away. Several times we had to dive away at the last moment in order to avoid being crushed. This continued for about two and a half hours. … At one point, Will from the United States was nearly crushed between the bulldozer and a pile of razor wire. The bulldozer stopped at the last minute in Will’s case. If it had moved any closer he would have been impaled by the razor wire.
Besides “Will,” Newsweek’s Hammer reported on “Jenny’s” close call:
"An Irish peace activist named Jenny was nearly run down by a D9. 'The bulldozer’s coming, the earth is burying my feet, my legs, I’ve got nowhere to run, and I thought, ‘This is out of control,’ she told me. 'Another activist pulled me up and out of the way at the last minute.'”
On that day in March 2003, the ISM internationals had decided to play a game of Russian roulette with the Israeli army, and Corrie lost.
At the trial in Haifa last week, Corrie’s colleagues testified that Rachel stood in front of the bulldozer and the driver intentionally drove over her. Israel has been saying for seven years that the driver couldn’t see her. Again, careful review of news accounts and statements made by ISMers immediately after her death prove that Corrie was squatting down amidst the rubble, thus minimizing her profile:
“When the bulldozer approached a house today,” wrote the New York Times, “Ms. Corrie, who was wearing a bright orange jacket, dropped to her knees.”
“The bulldozer drove toward Rachel slowly, gathering earth in its scoop as it went,” an ISM friend stated in 2003. “She knelt there, she did not move.”
Another colleague related: “She did not ‘trip and fall’ in front of the bulldozer. She sat down in front of it, well in advance.“
He added: “Corrie dropped her bullhorn and sat down in front of one of the bulldozers. She fully expected that the driver would stop just in front of her.”
The conclusion: Corrie’s ISM colleagues may have committed perjury by insisting that she was standing.
The result of ISM’s aggressive actions and Corrie’s carelessness was tragically predictable. Wrote Hammer: The IDF “makes a credible case that the operators, peering out through narrow, double-glazed, bulletproof windows, their view obscured behind pistons and the giant scooper, might not have seen Corrie kneeling in front of them.”
There’s no doubt this is well-organized “lawfare” against Israel. Craig Corrie 
(pictured receiving an honor from Arafat) told the Israeli Yediot newspaper last week that they cannot take their case to the International Court until after exhausting all legal measures in Israel. Father Corrie’s intention is clear.
After reviewing the case, another suit should be brought: the International Solidarity Movement should be on trial, not Israel. ISM founder George Rishmaw told the San Francisco Chronicle that Corrie was cannon fodder for the organization:
"When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore. But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice."
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