First test of Israel’s Tamir short-range missile interceptor Wednesday
Meant to intercept Qassam's.
Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
-
Raju
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
yindoo-yahudi axis ..
http://www.equalsouls.org/index.htmlOne God With Unlimited Names and Qualities
"Equality Based On The Soul"
World Peace and Spiritual Advancement
Based on the Common Understanding of the Soul
"Glick has culled Judaic mystical literature and found striking parallels in Hinduism, Gaudiya Vaishnavism in particular"
Dr. Nathan Katz
http://www.equalsouls.org/20.htmlDEVOTEE: Rabbi, in the Vedas, Lord Balaräma is known as the first expansion of God. In the Jewish teachings do you know of any names corresponding to this?
RABBI: This name can be found in the name of the founder of the Kabbalist movement, the Rabbi Balsham Tov. Balsham means the "master of the Holy Name." On examination of Balsham, we find the name Bal that is a shortened form of Balam, the second expansion of God's personal energy. and Sham, which means all of God's Names are one. The personality or aspect of God represented by the name Va (in YHVH) is the same as God's second expansion, Balam. Balam is also the source of binah or understanding that knowledge by which God reveals Himself and His spiritual creation.
[...]
DEVOTEE: Rabbi, in the First Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, there is a long description of how Lord Brahmä created the planets, stars, and bodies of all living entities within this universe. Until he executed the creative process, there was no order, only chaos.
The material energy existed but was unmanifest. Can you tell me more about the original Abraham and how he may be connected with the creation?
RABBI: Yes. The original Abraham has practically the same function and the same name as Lord Brahmä. For example, in Hebrew, Abraham is pronounced A-brahma-m. Furthermore, there is a description of how the universe was in chaos until Abraham appeared. It is said, "Over the whole, there hovered Tohu (chaos) and as long as Tohu dominated, the whole world was not in being or existence. When did that key open the gates and make the world fruitful? It was when Abraham appeared."
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Israel carries out large-scale rehearsal over Greece of possible air strike against Iran
US Pentagon sources report that more than 100 Air Force F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuver over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June. The maneuver included helicopters used for rescuing downed pilots and refueling tankers. They flew 1,440 km, roughly the distance between Israel and the Iranian uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.
Israel officials declined to comment on the exercise, the IDF saying only that the air force trains regularly for various missions in order to meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel. But the US sources said the scope of the Israeli exercise guaranteed it would be noticed by American and other foreign intelligence agencies, primarily to send a signal to the US, Europe and Iran that Israel was prepared and able to act militarily if diplomatic efforts failed to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons advances.
One Pentagon official said: “They rehearse it, rehearse it and rehearse it, so that if they actually have to do it, they’re ready. They’re not taking any options off the table.”
DEBKAfile’s military sources add that only on Tuesday, June 17, the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazy commented to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee: "Beside the actions and sanctions against Iran, it is important we remain ready for any options."
Those sources interpreted the Ashkenazy’s typically understated remark as a hint that Israel must be ready for a possible war with Iran in the near future. This conflict could erupt on three additional fronts, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas. Those sources suggest that the scenario he hinted at would silence the many domestic critics of the ceasefire with Hamas and the Israeli military’s passivity in the face of Hizballah’s massive rocket buildup and Hamas’ escalating aggression.
Of interest too is the probable motive behind the US defense department’s leak to the world media of the Israel Air Force maneuver and its presentation as an exercise to simulate an attack on Iran. According to DEBKAfile’s informants, US defense secretary Robert Gates is adamantly opposed to American military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities and even more so to Israel going it alone, which this publicity was intended to pre-empt.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
also in NY Times... x posted ...
Israeli exercise - rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Israeli exercise - rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
<snip..Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.
More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.
The exercise also included Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots. The helicopters and refueling tankers flew more than 900 miles, which is about the same distance between Israel and Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, American officials said.
<snip>
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
The Greek Air force confirmed its participation in the Israeli military exercise held three weeks ago, but did not confirm the claim by Washington officials that it was a rehearsal for a potential attack on Iran. The Greek source stated no ground targets were involved as the drill was mainly aimed at personnel training. It was the first large-scale exercise between Israel and the air force of Greece, a member of NATO.
UP to 40 Israeli Air force F-15 and F-16 warplanes were based at the Greek Air Force Station at Souda on the southern Mediterranean island of Crete for the duration of the exercise, said the source.
UP to 40 Israeli Air force F-15 and F-16 warplanes were based at the Greek Air Force Station at Souda on the southern Mediterranean island of Crete for the duration of the exercise, said the source.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Internal Security thread was unavailable so posting here:
‘Nazi war criminal’ arrested in Goa
‘Nazi war criminal’ arrested in Goa
* Bach remained at large for 50 years
* Arrested by Indian and German intelligence agencies after he attempted to sell piano stolen from German museum
By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: An alleged Nazi war criminal involved in the World War II genocide of Jews was arrested in Goa following his attempts to sell an 18th century antique piano stolen from a German museum.
Officials from a German intelligence agency and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) arrested 88-year old Johann Bach from a forest near Goan border where he had sought refuge.
Bach has been shifted to an undisclosed location and will be soon taken to Mumbai to be extradited to Germany.
50 years: He remained at large for more than 50 years since the fall of the Nazi party.
The German intelligence agency alleged he was responsible for the genocide of more than 12,000 Jews.
Piano: The German intelligence agency had him under surveillance for the last six months after it received information that an old foreigner was trying to sell an antique piano in Goa. A similar piano was found missing from a German museum situated near a concentration camp of which Bach was in charge.
Bach was hiding in Goa for the last few months under a fake name. The preliminary interrogation has revealed that he has previously stayed in Argentina, Bulgaria, Yemen and Canada before coming to India, according to sources.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
American crews will control US FBX-band radar granted Israel
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 19, 2008, 12:43 PM (GMT+02:00)
Extra-powerful US FBX-T radar
In granting Israel the powerful FBX-T radar system to enhance its early warning resources against incoming missiles, Washington laid down a strict hands-off proviso. The system will be installed at a US base in the southern Israeli Negev. It will be off-limits to Israelis and managed exclusively by American personnel.
This discovery, revealed here for the first time by DEBKAfile’s military sources, has aroused astonished rancor in senior Israel army circles. They questioned the judgment of prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, Shaul Mofaz, who leads the Israeli side of the twice-annual strategic dialogue with the US, and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi in accepting this proviso.
Even Poland, one officer commented, looked after its sovereignty and only signed its defense pact with the United States for the installation of missile interceptors on its Baltic coast after the Americans agreed to instruct Polish crews in their future operation.
Yet none of the Israeli officials involved in the radar transaction saw fit to carry this point. The FBX-T was requested to allow Israel’s Arrow missile defense system to engage a Shehab-3 missile about halfway through its 11-minute flight from Iran, several times sooner than the Arrow’s Green Pines radar is capable of doing.
The FBX-T can track objects in space such as a missile tipped with a chemical, germ or nuclear warhead.
When they swung the deal in Washington last month, Barak and Ashkenazi said the Israeli Defense Forces would acquire a major resource and Israel a valuable shield against enemy missiles.
But they erred badly in failing to demand its integration in Israel’s national interceptor system for four reasons:
1. Israel will have no denied direct access to the data gathered by the system and can only hope the American operators will pass on the information as and when Israel needs it for self-defense rather than when it suits US interests.
2. The FBX-T will not only be able to track Iranian and Syrian missiles and aircraft but also keep watch on Israeli operations, giving the Washington a handle for stalling them. DEBKAfile’s military sources point out that the Americans are suddenly in a hurry to have the system deployed in the Negev as soon as September. They will then be in position to forestall a possible Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear installations should one be decided in Jerusalem.
3. US experts say the FBX-T radar will lengthen the Israeli Arrow anti-missile system’s range for detecting incoming Iranian missiles several times over. This is technically accurate, but in practice this enhanced capability is entirely contingent on a Pentagon order to the American crews in the Negev to activate a link between them.
4. Barak and Ashkenazi said on their return from Washington that they had procured US consent to links between Israel’s early warning and missile interceptor systems, the X-band radar (which can pick up a missile 2,000 km from target) and also the American JTAGS satellites (which detects a missile launch).
This is not the case.
Any links between the IDF’s radar and interceptors and the JATG satellites must be channeled through the X-band radar base in the Negev and are not direct. The data passed to Israel will be subject to pre-selection by American decision-makers.
Several billion dollars of US and Israeli funds have been sunk into developing the Arrow, which Israeli officials until recently claimed was a match for Iran’s Shehab-3 ballistic missiles. It turns out now that the Arrow and its Green Pine radar pick up incoming missiles only when they are 800 km short of their target. Israel applied for the FBX-T radar to extend that range to 2,000 km from its territory. But as long as the system is operated exclusively by American personnel, its usefulness for shielding Israel against enemy missiles will circumscribed.
-
Karan Dixit
- BRFite
- Posts: 1102
- Joined: 23 Mar 2007 02:43
- Location: Calcutta
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
The Indian Cabinet Committee on Security has given the go-ahead for two mega-deals with Israeli defense industries in India, claim sources in the know.
Local sources say that the committee approved a $1.5 billion Israel Aerospace Industries project to develop and upgrade the Barak surface-to-air missile.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1013395.html
Local sources say that the committee approved a $1.5 billion Israel Aerospace Industries project to develop and upgrade the Barak surface-to-air missile.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1013395.html
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Israelis traveling abroad risk kidnapping by Hizballah terrorists
August 20, 2008, 4:43 PM (GMT+02:00)
In a special advisory issued Wednesday, Aug. 20, the Counter-Terror Center in Jerusalem warned Israelis traveling abroad that they run the risk of kidnapping by agents of the Lebanese Hizballah terrorist organization.
The center recommended certain precautions:
Don’t invite strangers or suspicious characters to your hotel room.
Stay clear of lonely places after dark.
Take trustworthy companions with you to business meetings and places of entertainment.
During a long stay in one place, avoid regular routines, switch hotels and do not frequent the same restaurants or places of entertainment.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Protection Racket: Italy let PLO terrorists set up domestic training bases
Francesco Cossiga, former president of Italy, confirmed that his country for years provided Palestinian terror groups with sanctuary and allowed them to set up domestic bases in a secret deal according which the terrorists promised not to target Italian interests.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Jerusalem dig uncovers ancient city walls
Friday 05 September, 2008
Israeli archaeologists unveiled on Wednesday a 2,100-year-old Jerusalem perimeter wall -- along with beer bottles left behind by 19th century researchers who first discovered the stone defences.
The wall, on Mount Zion at the southern edge of Jerusalem's Old City, dates back to the Second Jewish Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.
Yehiel Zelinger, who headed the excavation for the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the location of the wall indicated that Jerusalem had expanded to the south at the time, reaching its largest size in biblical times.
The 3.2-metre (10.5-foot)-high wall was not supported by any mortar or other bonding material and formed part of a 6 km (3.5-mile)-long fortification around the city, he said.
The present wall around Jerusalem's Old City is 4 km (2.5 miles) in circumference.
The ancient wall on Mount Zion had disappeared from view by the time a similar stone barrier, also uncovered in the dig, was built at the site during the Byzantine period more than 250 years later.
Nonetheless, the second wall followed almost exactly the same path.
''During these two periods, Jerusalem was the centre ... to the Jews during the Second Temple Period and to pilgrims from the Christian world (during the Byzantine Period),'' Zelinger said.
British archaeologists surveyed the site in the 19th century, leaving behind a shoe and and beer and wine bottles, which Zelinger's team found and put on display on Wednesday.
Friday 05 September, 2008
Israeli archaeologists unveiled on Wednesday a 2,100-year-old Jerusalem perimeter wall -- along with beer bottles left behind by 19th century researchers who first discovered the stone defences.
The wall, on Mount Zion at the southern edge of Jerusalem's Old City, dates back to the Second Jewish Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.
Yehiel Zelinger, who headed the excavation for the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the location of the wall indicated that Jerusalem had expanded to the south at the time, reaching its largest size in biblical times.
The 3.2-metre (10.5-foot)-high wall was not supported by any mortar or other bonding material and formed part of a 6 km (3.5-mile)-long fortification around the city, he said.
The present wall around Jerusalem's Old City is 4 km (2.5 miles) in circumference.
The ancient wall on Mount Zion had disappeared from view by the time a similar stone barrier, also uncovered in the dig, was built at the site during the Byzantine period more than 250 years later.
Nonetheless, the second wall followed almost exactly the same path.
''During these two periods, Jerusalem was the centre ... to the Jews during the Second Temple Period and to pilgrims from the Christian world (during the Byzantine Period),'' Zelinger said.
British archaeologists surveyed the site in the 19th century, leaving behind a shoe and and beer and wine bottles, which Zelinger's team found and put on display on Wednesday.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Israeli army chief in Delhi to meet Indian defence officials
Tuesday 09 September, 2008
Israel's army Chief Major General Avi Mizrahi is on a three-day visit to India beginning on Tuesday to enhance the already-growing defence ties between the two countries.
General Mizrahi, the Ground Forces Chief of the Israeli Defence Forces who flew to New Delhi on Tuesday morning is scheduled to meet Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor later in the day, Defence Ministry sources said.
On his arrival, the General first laid a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti at the India Gate and was later given a guard of honour at the Defence Ministry headquarters in South Block in New Delhi.
During General Mizrahi's three-day stay in New Delhi, he is likely to meet Minister of State for Defence Production Rao Inderjit Singh but would miss Defence Minister A K Antony and his deputy M M Pallam Raju who are currently abroad.
He will also meet the Indian Navy chief and the Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Admiral Sureesh Mehta too during the course of his stay here.
The Israeli army chief, during his meetings with the Indian Defence Ministry and Armed Forces top brass, will discuss matters of mutual concern and interests, including joint military training and exercises between the forces of the two countries, sources said.
Of particular interest to the Indians is the Israeli offer to exercise and train in anti-insurgency and anti-terrorist operations, sources added.
India and Israel have been sharing a greater defence cooperation since diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv were established in 1992.
The ties have become stronger in the recent times with India emerging as the largest purchaser of Israeli arms since the beginning of the 21st Century.
India has purchased from Israel the Phalcons Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems that would be fitted onto the Indian Air Force's three IL-76 heavy lift transport aircraft.
That apart, India has already brought the Green Pine radars that warn of incoming enemy ballistic missiles. Indian Armed Forces are also users of Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence, reconnaisance and surveillance purposes.
Indian Navy has recently bought the Barak surface-to-air missile from Israel that ran into rough weather after charges of kickbacks flew thick and fast.
Israel is also offering India the Arrow-II anti-ballistic missile for its missile defence systems in competition with the US' Patriot missile systems.
Indian Army is a major user of Israeli night vision equipment, particularly in Kashmir valley along the Line of Control with Pakistan.
Tuesday 09 September, 2008
Israel's army Chief Major General Avi Mizrahi is on a three-day visit to India beginning on Tuesday to enhance the already-growing defence ties between the two countries.
General Mizrahi, the Ground Forces Chief of the Israeli Defence Forces who flew to New Delhi on Tuesday morning is scheduled to meet Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor later in the day, Defence Ministry sources said.
On his arrival, the General first laid a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti at the India Gate and was later given a guard of honour at the Defence Ministry headquarters in South Block in New Delhi.
During General Mizrahi's three-day stay in New Delhi, he is likely to meet Minister of State for Defence Production Rao Inderjit Singh but would miss Defence Minister A K Antony and his deputy M M Pallam Raju who are currently abroad.
He will also meet the Indian Navy chief and the Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman Admiral Sureesh Mehta too during the course of his stay here.
The Israeli army chief, during his meetings with the Indian Defence Ministry and Armed Forces top brass, will discuss matters of mutual concern and interests, including joint military training and exercises between the forces of the two countries, sources said.
Of particular interest to the Indians is the Israeli offer to exercise and train in anti-insurgency and anti-terrorist operations, sources added.
India and Israel have been sharing a greater defence cooperation since diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Tel Aviv were established in 1992.
The ties have become stronger in the recent times with India emerging as the largest purchaser of Israeli arms since the beginning of the 21st Century.
India has purchased from Israel the Phalcons Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems that would be fitted onto the Indian Air Force's three IL-76 heavy lift transport aircraft.
That apart, India has already brought the Green Pine radars that warn of incoming enemy ballistic missiles. Indian Armed Forces are also users of Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence, reconnaisance and surveillance purposes.
Indian Navy has recently bought the Barak surface-to-air missile from Israel that ran into rough weather after charges of kickbacks flew thick and fast.
Israel is also offering India the Arrow-II anti-ballistic missile for its missile defence systems in competition with the US' Patriot missile systems.
Indian Army is a major user of Israeli night vision equipment, particularly in Kashmir valley along the Line of Control with Pakistan.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Pakistan press reporting Israeli Army Chief in Kashmir
SRINAGAR: Israel's Army chief, Major General Avi Mizrahi has arrived in Kashmir on an unscheduled visit, reports said
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=54882
SRINAGAR: Israel's Army chief, Major General Avi Mizrahi has arrived in Kashmir on an unscheduled visit, reports said
http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=54882
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Ancient figs excavated in Israel may be the world's first cultivated crops
Washington, September 12 (ANI): Archaeologists in Israel say that the figs they discovered while excavating at the sit of an 11,400-year-old house near the ancient city of Jericho may be the first cultivated crops.
The researchers say that the find provides evidence that cultivated crops came centuries before the first farmers planted cereal grains.
They say the fruits found in the excavated house in a village called Gilgal appeared to be mutant figs growing on a rare kind of tree that was not pollinated by insects, and would not reproduce unless someone took a cutting and planted it.
Harvard anthropologist Ofer Bar-Yosef thinks that generations of people must have lived around wild fig trees until someone figured out how to grow those mutants.
"It's generally women who do the gathering in hunting-and-gathering societies. And you know years of experience would tell them exactly how the plants behaved.... ," the National Public Radio quoted Bar-Yosef as saying.
In their research paper, published in the journal Science, the researchers say that the figs discovered might be the first cultivated crops.
They, however, suspects the transition to domesticated crops like barley, oats or figs was a slow process.
"The facts that the figs were already domesticated means that humans were enjoying this practice of cutting branches and sticking them into the ground to be the new trees. You don't get plants like figs domesticated if you don't start planting it systematically again and again," Bar-Yosef said.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... e/ShowFull
An article from the Jerusalem Post on Israeli co-operation in Kashmir.
Not a great deal to note in the article, but the frenzied comments by Pakis are amusing.
For example:
An article from the Jerusalem Post on Israeli co-operation in Kashmir.
Not a great deal to note in the article, but the frenzied comments by Pakis are amusing.
For example:
33. IDF plz help the innocent kashmiris.........not india or pakistan
ordinary kashmiris dont want indian or pakistani rule ..........since british period they just want a seperate state of their own and they were promised.........they all r brotherly to jews tourist who r travelling there every year........plz dont do this for money or defence contract....its not about religion or personal faith...............ordinary peaceful kashmiris don care about hypothetical middle-east conflict........plz help them.
einstain-lover - (09/15/2008 17:30)
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Israel has in all probability a new PM and the first woman after Golda Meir to occupy that post.The ex-Mossad agent and Foreign Minister of Israel,is a dynamic and popular personality,who will now have to deal with the pressing problems of peace with the Palestinians and peace with Syria.We wish her and Israel well!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/18/israel
Israel: Livni prepares to form coalition after narrow victory in leadership vote· Final results give margin of victory as 431 votes
· Former Mossad agent has six weeks to form coalitionRory McCarthy in Jerusalem guardian.co.uk, Thursday September 18 2008 07:35 BST
Tzipi Livni talks to reporters outside her house in Tel Aviv this morning
Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, won a narrow election victory today to become the leader of the ruling Kadima party, putting her on track to become the country's first female prime minister in more than 30 years.
Final results released by Kadima early today put Livni on 43.1%, only just ahead of her closest rival, Shaul Mofaz, the hawkish transport minister and former army chief, who was on 42%. Exit polls had put Livni ahead by 10 points, but they appeared to have been wide of the mark. In the end her margin of victory was just 431 votes.
Livni, a former Mossad agent and lawyer, now has six weeks to put together a coalition government. If she succeeds she will become Israel's first female prime minister since Golda Meir resigned in 1974. If she fails, general elections will be held within three months.
At dawn, Livni spoke to reporters outside her Tel Aviv home. "On the level of government in Israel, we have to deal with difficult threats. The national mission ... is to create stability quickly," she said, adding: "There is economic instability." She said she would work now to form a coalition.
"Tomorrow, I will begin meeting with representatives of the factions in order to form quickly a coalition that can deal with all of these challenges that lie ahead," she said.
The two other candidates, Avi Dichter, the internal security minister, and Meir Sheetrit, the tourism minister, were a long way behind. About 74,000 Kadima members were eligible to vote, but turnout was around 54%.
Minutes after the voting ended, Livni telephoned her party workers at their Tel Aviv headquarters to congratulate them. "We fought like lions, against many opportunists, and you were simply amazing ... The good guys won," she said. "I know you did it as friends, but like me you did it because you want this to be a better place."
Later, her predecessor Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, who is expected to resign in the days ahead, phoned to congratulate her.
In the leadership contest Livni, 50, took a less hard line than Mofaz and won support for that across the party, at a time when Israeli public opinion has shifted to the right. She pitched herself as a candidate who would bring a fresh face to Israeli politics. "You can determine today what the character of Kadima will be. You can determine today if you really have had enough of old-time politics," she said as she cast her vote yesterday in Tel Aviv. "Come and vote, bring your children, and show them how you are changing the country."
Her first hurdle will be forming a coalition. Some in the Labour party, which has been a key element of the Kadima-led coalition, suggested they might reconsider staying in the government, while leaders of the smaller religious Shas party made it clear they would be pressing hard for new child allowances, a key policy that appeals to their voters.
Kadima itself is only three years old - the party was formed by Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, who walked away from the Likud party and took his supporters with him, among them Livni.
Livni has been closely involved in the last year of talks with the Palestinians, acting as Israel's lead negotiator, and she is expected to continue those talks if she becomes prime minister, adopting a more dovish stance than some colleagues.
"I am really happy that Livni won because she is committed to the peace process," said the Israeli peace activist Yossi Beilin.
"I think the right thing for her to do now is to form a coalition that wants to promote peace rather than a broad government with the right."
Palestinian leaders also seemed pleased with the result. "Because Livni was immersed in the peace process, we believe she will pursue peace moves with us," said Ahmed Qureia, the chief Palestinian negotiator.
But some Israeli commentators have been unimpressed with the entire contest, talking of a lack of vision. Sima Kadmon, writing in yesterday's Yedioth Ahronoth, said she thought both Livni and Mofaz lacked charisma and leadership ability. "It is not an easy choice. Choosing between Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz is like choosing between two shades of grey," she wrote.
Olmert has said he would resign after the vote, but will probably remain as a caretaker prime minister until a coalition is formed.
Yesterday's election came after he decided to step down in the face of a series of high-profile corruption investigations. He still risks being indicted for corruption in the months ahead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/18/israel
Israel: Livni prepares to form coalition after narrow victory in leadership vote· Final results give margin of victory as 431 votes
· Former Mossad agent has six weeks to form coalitionRory McCarthy in Jerusalem guardian.co.uk, Thursday September 18 2008 07:35 BST
Tzipi Livni talks to reporters outside her house in Tel Aviv this morning
Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, won a narrow election victory today to become the leader of the ruling Kadima party, putting her on track to become the country's first female prime minister in more than 30 years.
Final results released by Kadima early today put Livni on 43.1%, only just ahead of her closest rival, Shaul Mofaz, the hawkish transport minister and former army chief, who was on 42%. Exit polls had put Livni ahead by 10 points, but they appeared to have been wide of the mark. In the end her margin of victory was just 431 votes.
Livni, a former Mossad agent and lawyer, now has six weeks to put together a coalition government. If she succeeds she will become Israel's first female prime minister since Golda Meir resigned in 1974. If she fails, general elections will be held within three months.
At dawn, Livni spoke to reporters outside her Tel Aviv home. "On the level of government in Israel, we have to deal with difficult threats. The national mission ... is to create stability quickly," she said, adding: "There is economic instability." She said she would work now to form a coalition.
"Tomorrow, I will begin meeting with representatives of the factions in order to form quickly a coalition that can deal with all of these challenges that lie ahead," she said.
The two other candidates, Avi Dichter, the internal security minister, and Meir Sheetrit, the tourism minister, were a long way behind. About 74,000 Kadima members were eligible to vote, but turnout was around 54%.
Minutes after the voting ended, Livni telephoned her party workers at their Tel Aviv headquarters to congratulate them. "We fought like lions, against many opportunists, and you were simply amazing ... The good guys won," she said. "I know you did it as friends, but like me you did it because you want this to be a better place."
Later, her predecessor Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, who is expected to resign in the days ahead, phoned to congratulate her.
In the leadership contest Livni, 50, took a less hard line than Mofaz and won support for that across the party, at a time when Israeli public opinion has shifted to the right. She pitched herself as a candidate who would bring a fresh face to Israeli politics. "You can determine today what the character of Kadima will be. You can determine today if you really have had enough of old-time politics," she said as she cast her vote yesterday in Tel Aviv. "Come and vote, bring your children, and show them how you are changing the country."
Her first hurdle will be forming a coalition. Some in the Labour party, which has been a key element of the Kadima-led coalition, suggested they might reconsider staying in the government, while leaders of the smaller religious Shas party made it clear they would be pressing hard for new child allowances, a key policy that appeals to their voters.
Kadima itself is only three years old - the party was formed by Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, who walked away from the Likud party and took his supporters with him, among them Livni.
Livni has been closely involved in the last year of talks with the Palestinians, acting as Israel's lead negotiator, and she is expected to continue those talks if she becomes prime minister, adopting a more dovish stance than some colleagues.
"I am really happy that Livni won because she is committed to the peace process," said the Israeli peace activist Yossi Beilin.
"I think the right thing for her to do now is to form a coalition that wants to promote peace rather than a broad government with the right."
Palestinian leaders also seemed pleased with the result. "Because Livni was immersed in the peace process, we believe she will pursue peace moves with us," said Ahmed Qureia, the chief Palestinian negotiator.
But some Israeli commentators have been unimpressed with the entire contest, talking of a lack of vision. Sima Kadmon, writing in yesterday's Yedioth Ahronoth, said she thought both Livni and Mofaz lacked charisma and leadership ability. "It is not an easy choice. Choosing between Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz is like choosing between two shades of grey," she wrote.
Olmert has said he would resign after the vote, but will probably remain as a caretaker prime minister until a coalition is formed.
Yesterday's election came after he decided to step down in the face of a series of high-profile corruption investigations. He still risks being indicted for corruption in the months ahead.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Israel's new PM's dangerous and fascinating former career.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 791158.ece
The secret life of Tzipi Livni
How the woman set to be Israel’s new leader earned her spurs as an agent working for a covert cell in an elite spy unit
Tzipi Livni worked in Paris when Mossad was fighting against Palestinian groups and the nuclear ambitions of Saddam Hussein
James Hider in Jerusalem, Charles Bremner in Paris and Fran Yeoman
It is an eye-catching episode on the CV of any would-be prime minister: a dangerous, youthful stint as a spy in one of the world’s most respected and feared secret services.
True to her training, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli leader-in-waiting, has maintained a Sphinx-like silence about her Mossad career in Paris in the early 1980s. Consequently, reports on her service have pegged her as anything from a frontline agent hunting down Arab terrorists across Europe to a mere house-sitter deployed to provide a respectable front for Mossad safe houses in the French capital.
Mossad does not divulge details but The Times can reveal that Ms Livni ran substantial risks as an Israeli agent operating in a covert cell in Europe.
“She was in an elite unit,” said Ephraim Halevy, the former director of Mossad, who for security reasons declined to specify which outfit Ms Livni had served in between 1980 and 1984.
‘New Golda Meir’ Livni in narrow victory
Livni begins Kadima tightrope walk
Livni offers new hope for peace process
“She was a very promising agent who showed all the attributes of a very promising career. She was very well thought of.”
Ms Livni, a fluent French speaker and daughter of renowned Zionist guerrillas, served her time in Paris when the city was a deadly battle-ground in Mossad’s covert war with Palestinian militant groups and Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.
One Israeli former intelligence source told The Times that the 22-year-old Ms Livni had been recruited into Mossad after her National Service by a childhood friend, Mira Gal, who herself served for two decades in the agency and who now works as her ministry bureau chief.
Like many recruits, the source said, she would have started out with so-called “student jobs”, mostly maintaining safe houses that were used by hit squads and more senior agents on assignment across Europe. Mr Halevy said that even such a rookie job was not without its risks.
“I’m not saying she was a caretaker of safe houses but people think that being a caretaker is a simple and mundane job which entails no risk,” the English-born former spymaster told The Times. “People who say that don’t know what safe houses are about. It can be very dangerous at times.”
After her apprenticeship, Ms Livni went through basic training as a field officer, learning how to recruit agents and gather information at a time of huge upheaval among Israel’s foes, as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) relocated from war-torn Beirut to the safer shores of Tunisia.
“It was a period when the Israelis were sending strong political messages with their attacks and they did not hesitate to attract attention,” Éric Denécé, a former French intelligence service agent, said.
“Since the Six-Day War [in 1967], Paris was an important intelligence base for Mossad - first, because it had excellent relations with the French services and also because so many Palestinians were based there.”
Israeli agents operating out of Paris carried out assassinations and were also widely believed to have infiltrated Palestinian factions. Among them was Ilich RamÍrez Sánchez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and the Abu Nidal splinter group. The group perpetrated the massacre of six people at Goldenberg’s restaurant in the rue des Rosiers in August 1982 and the bombing of the Paris-Toulouse express, which killed five, the same year.
There were two Mossad stations in Paris at the time, according to Roger Faligot, author of several books on the intelligence services. One covered France and the other Western Europe.
“I only heard about Tzipi Livni being an agent in Paris quite late in the day,” he told The Times. “At that period, Israel was appointing many female agents who were not just recruited from the armed forces but because of their languages and analytical skills. When you see Livni’s career, you would conclude that she was on the political and analytical side of Mossad.”
Mossad operators in Paris were also striving to thwart Saddam Hussein from developing an atomic arsenal and shipping nuclear fuels to his new processor at Osirak just outside Baghdad. In June 1980 an Egyptian-born scientist working on the Iraqi atomic programme was found murdered in his hotel room, a killing assumed to have been the handiwork of Mossad. A prostitute who heard voices coming from his room on the night of his murder was killed a month later in a mysterious hit-and-run accident. Menachem Begin, the Prime Minister at the time, said he hoped that France had “learnt its lesson” for helping Iraq. A year later Israeli bombers blew the Osirak plant to pieces.
One French report cited experts suggesting that Ms Livni was part of an elite unit that fatally poisoned the Iraqi nuclear scientist Abdul Rasul at a lunch in Paris in 1983. “The risks were tangible,” Ms Gal was to say of those days in Mossad. “If I made a mistake the result would be arrest and catastrophic political implications for Israel.”
The risks to Israelis working in Europe were brutally demonstrated in 1982 when an Abu Nidal gunman shot the Israeli Ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov, in the head, critically wounding him and triggering the full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon by the Jewish state to root out the PLO.
“It takes both courage and judgment to make the right decision at the right time,” Mr Halevy said. “You are jeopardising a whole team and can open up all sorts of other matters than go beyond the issue you are dealing with”.
Whatever the actual role Ms Livni played, Mr Halevy is convinced that her experience and training stand her in good stead for the tasks now at hand as she tries to build a consensus to govern Israel. He recalls seeing her in May 2003, when he was National Security Adviser, deploy her Mossad-honed analytical skills and tenacity in government, when, as a junior Cabinet member, she was the only minister to stand up to the Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and point out key flaws on a complex security brief that had been dispatched hours before.
“This shows she knows what she is doing and is willing to stand up for it,” Mr Halevy said.
Underground war
- June 1980 head of Iraq’s nuclear programme, Yahia El-Meshad, is murdered in his Paris hote, assumed to be a victim of a Mossad hit team. Prime Minister Menachem Begin tells a journalist that he hoped France “had learnt its lesson” for helping Iraq.
- June 1981 Israel bombs a French-built nuclear reactor in Iraq, killing a French specialist. Mossad involvement is suspected.
- April 1979 explosion at CNIM Industries plant in La Seyne-sur-Mer damages nuclear reactor destined for Iraq. Mossad is suspected.
- October 1980 car bomb explodes outside a Paris synagogue killing four people
- August 1982 six people die and 22 are wounded when five men with machine guns and grenades open fire in Paris Jewish deli
Sources: Le Figaro, BBC, Time, Reuters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 791158.ece
The secret life of Tzipi Livni
How the woman set to be Israel’s new leader earned her spurs as an agent working for a covert cell in an elite spy unit
Tzipi Livni worked in Paris when Mossad was fighting against Palestinian groups and the nuclear ambitions of Saddam Hussein
James Hider in Jerusalem, Charles Bremner in Paris and Fran Yeoman
It is an eye-catching episode on the CV of any would-be prime minister: a dangerous, youthful stint as a spy in one of the world’s most respected and feared secret services.
True to her training, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli leader-in-waiting, has maintained a Sphinx-like silence about her Mossad career in Paris in the early 1980s. Consequently, reports on her service have pegged her as anything from a frontline agent hunting down Arab terrorists across Europe to a mere house-sitter deployed to provide a respectable front for Mossad safe houses in the French capital.
Mossad does not divulge details but The Times can reveal that Ms Livni ran substantial risks as an Israeli agent operating in a covert cell in Europe.
“She was in an elite unit,” said Ephraim Halevy, the former director of Mossad, who for security reasons declined to specify which outfit Ms Livni had served in between 1980 and 1984.
‘New Golda Meir’ Livni in narrow victory
Livni begins Kadima tightrope walk
Livni offers new hope for peace process
“She was a very promising agent who showed all the attributes of a very promising career. She was very well thought of.”
Ms Livni, a fluent French speaker and daughter of renowned Zionist guerrillas, served her time in Paris when the city was a deadly battle-ground in Mossad’s covert war with Palestinian militant groups and Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.
One Israeli former intelligence source told The Times that the 22-year-old Ms Livni had been recruited into Mossad after her National Service by a childhood friend, Mira Gal, who herself served for two decades in the agency and who now works as her ministry bureau chief.
Like many recruits, the source said, she would have started out with so-called “student jobs”, mostly maintaining safe houses that were used by hit squads and more senior agents on assignment across Europe. Mr Halevy said that even such a rookie job was not without its risks.
“I’m not saying she was a caretaker of safe houses but people think that being a caretaker is a simple and mundane job which entails no risk,” the English-born former spymaster told The Times. “People who say that don’t know what safe houses are about. It can be very dangerous at times.”
After her apprenticeship, Ms Livni went through basic training as a field officer, learning how to recruit agents and gather information at a time of huge upheaval among Israel’s foes, as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) relocated from war-torn Beirut to the safer shores of Tunisia.
“It was a period when the Israelis were sending strong political messages with their attacks and they did not hesitate to attract attention,” Éric Denécé, a former French intelligence service agent, said.
“Since the Six-Day War [in 1967], Paris was an important intelligence base for Mossad - first, because it had excellent relations with the French services and also because so many Palestinians were based there.”
Israeli agents operating out of Paris carried out assassinations and were also widely believed to have infiltrated Palestinian factions. Among them was Ilich RamÍrez Sánchez, alias Carlos the Jackal, and the Abu Nidal splinter group. The group perpetrated the massacre of six people at Goldenberg’s restaurant in the rue des Rosiers in August 1982 and the bombing of the Paris-Toulouse express, which killed five, the same year.
There were two Mossad stations in Paris at the time, according to Roger Faligot, author of several books on the intelligence services. One covered France and the other Western Europe.
“I only heard about Tzipi Livni being an agent in Paris quite late in the day,” he told The Times. “At that period, Israel was appointing many female agents who were not just recruited from the armed forces but because of their languages and analytical skills. When you see Livni’s career, you would conclude that she was on the political and analytical side of Mossad.”
Mossad operators in Paris were also striving to thwart Saddam Hussein from developing an atomic arsenal and shipping nuclear fuels to his new processor at Osirak just outside Baghdad. In June 1980 an Egyptian-born scientist working on the Iraqi atomic programme was found murdered in his hotel room, a killing assumed to have been the handiwork of Mossad. A prostitute who heard voices coming from his room on the night of his murder was killed a month later in a mysterious hit-and-run accident. Menachem Begin, the Prime Minister at the time, said he hoped that France had “learnt its lesson” for helping Iraq. A year later Israeli bombers blew the Osirak plant to pieces.
One French report cited experts suggesting that Ms Livni was part of an elite unit that fatally poisoned the Iraqi nuclear scientist Abdul Rasul at a lunch in Paris in 1983. “The risks were tangible,” Ms Gal was to say of those days in Mossad. “If I made a mistake the result would be arrest and catastrophic political implications for Israel.”
The risks to Israelis working in Europe were brutally demonstrated in 1982 when an Abu Nidal gunman shot the Israeli Ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov, in the head, critically wounding him and triggering the full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon by the Jewish state to root out the PLO.
“It takes both courage and judgment to make the right decision at the right time,” Mr Halevy said. “You are jeopardising a whole team and can open up all sorts of other matters than go beyond the issue you are dealing with”.
Whatever the actual role Ms Livni played, Mr Halevy is convinced that her experience and training stand her in good stead for the tasks now at hand as she tries to build a consensus to govern Israel. He recalls seeing her in May 2003, when he was National Security Adviser, deploy her Mossad-honed analytical skills and tenacity in government, when, as a junior Cabinet member, she was the only minister to stand up to the Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and point out key flaws on a complex security brief that had been dispatched hours before.
“This shows she knows what she is doing and is willing to stand up for it,” Mr Halevy said.
Underground war
- June 1980 head of Iraq’s nuclear programme, Yahia El-Meshad, is murdered in his Paris hote, assumed to be a victim of a Mossad hit team. Prime Minister Menachem Begin tells a journalist that he hoped France “had learnt its lesson” for helping Iraq.
- June 1981 Israel bombs a French-built nuclear reactor in Iraq, killing a French specialist. Mossad involvement is suspected.
- April 1979 explosion at CNIM Industries plant in La Seyne-sur-Mer damages nuclear reactor destined for Iraq. Mossad is suspected.
- October 1980 car bomb explodes outside a Paris synagogue killing four people
- August 1982 six people die and 22 are wounded when five men with machine guns and grenades open fire in Paris Jewish deli
Sources: Le Figaro, BBC, Time, Reuters
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Decision time for the new Israeli PM.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 37582.html
Johann Hari: A last chance for peace in Israel?
Monday, 22 September 2008
This is the story of two debates that have been unfolding in rival nations, in rival tongues, on a skinny patch of land in the Levant. In Israel, Kadima – the main governing party – has been deciding who should be its new leader. In Palestine, the population has been mooting a dramatic shift in their struggle for liberation. Soon, these debates are destined to collide – in either blood or peace.
The Israeli debate had an air of willed evasion. The military's blockade of Gaza – reducing it to rubble just a short drive from hi-tech Tel Aviv – was barely discussed. The candidates seemed to be carefully avoiding taking a position on anything. One Israeli newspaper noted: "Ask Tzipi Livni what time it is, and she will reply, after carefully examining Israel's position in relation to the global time issue and the international date line, she has a very definite position, but isn't willing to specify it to the media."
It's a sign of how desensitised Israel has become to the violence committed in its name that the potential indictment for war crimes of Livni's main rival, Shaul Mofaz, was barely an issue. It is alleged that when he was the military chief of staff in 2001, he ordered his troops to fulfil a "daily quota" of killing 70 Palestinians a day, and there are calls for him to face prosecution. He came within 431 votes of winning the election.
From the wispy clouds of this contest, what has emerged? In theory, the winner Livni should be in a strong position to understand nationalist "terrorists" who have planted bombs on buses and in cafés – because she was raised by them. Her father was the Military Director of the Irgun, the underground Jewish militia that spent the 1930s and 40s targeting the British occupying forces and Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel. Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels; she proudly defends them to this day.
How would Livni's parents have responded to mass punishment – blockades, checkpoints, bullets? Would they shrug and surrender? The leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, wrote that every British attempt to "break our backs... only made us stronger and more determined". The same is happening with Palestinian nationalists today. Stripped of a state, they are fighting for one – and every Israeli attack makes them more radical and enraged.
But does Livni see the parallel? In the abstract, she advocates a two-state solution – but in Israel she has been dubbed "Ms. Not-Right-Now" because she always says she believes in compromising for peace but "not right now." Her husband said she decided to become a politician because of her "scathing" disapproval of the Oslo accords, signed exactly 15 years ago. She reiterated this during the campaign.
But Oslo was rigged in Israel's favour: while it lasted, the number of Jewish fundamentalist settlers on Palestinian land nearly doubled, and Palestinian movement was harshly curtailed. It is a myth that the Palestinians were offered a real two-state solution and rejected it. Even Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Foreign Minister at the time, says: "If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well." If even this was too much for Livni, what practical peace can she achieve? This is the debate too many Israelis dodged this summer; they chose instead to block their ears, and ascribe the thud of rockets hitting their outskirts to raw evil.
This is where the parallel Palestinian debate needs to be heard above the Separation Wall. For decades, the demands of the Palestinian leadership – and the Israeli peace camp – have focused on the division of the land between Israeli and Palestinian states. There is still in principle a slender majority supporting this on both sides. But after 15 years of stillborn promises, that vision is rotting. Unless there is a swift shift, the two-state vision will be supplanted – by a vision of a "binational" one-state solution.
Several leading Palestinians – including the late Edward Said, the former Prime Minister Ahmed Queri, and Sari Nusseibeh – have begun to outline this idea. In one of those strange whirls on the roundabout of history, they are actually reviving an old idea pioneered by Zionist left-wingers. Back in the 1920s, a small number of Jewish socialists and liberals like Martin Buber tried to negotiate one big shared state with the Palestinians. Although they found some Palestinian interlocutors, these early binationalists were slapped down by both communities. Today their idea is being dug out of its ditch of despair.
The Palestinians would stop asking for a free enclave of their own, and start demanding full legal equality in one state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Equipped with this demand, they would no longer appear to the world as a fragmented minority, but – all added together – as a majority in Israel/Palestine ruled over by a racially-defined minority. It would look even more like South Africa Redux. Israel would then be incapable of marshalling international coalitions against possible threats from Iran or elsewhere: it would be alone, and anathemised.
The Middle East conflict would shift from being a tricky-but-soluble crisis to an insoluble civil war. Michael Neumann – the author of The Case Against Israel – warns: "One-staters apparently believe that Israel will give up the reason for its existence and at the same time expose itself not to the risk but to the certainty of being 'swamped by Arabs'. This in turn would indicate a willingness to accede to anything an 'Arab' majority might enact. Can anyone seriously imagine this? Will millions of Jews just leave if the majority says it should? Will they agree to crushing compensation payments?" No. They will fight – and this time, there will be no space for compromise between the competing visions.
The window of opportunity for a two-state peace is closing. Before it jams shut, the Israelis need to hear the plea coming through the checkpoints. Divide the land. Divide it now. Divide it properly. Or we will all end up battling forever – over nothing but soil soaked in blood and cordite.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 37582.html
Johann Hari: A last chance for peace in Israel?
Monday, 22 September 2008
This is the story of two debates that have been unfolding in rival nations, in rival tongues, on a skinny patch of land in the Levant. In Israel, Kadima – the main governing party – has been deciding who should be its new leader. In Palestine, the population has been mooting a dramatic shift in their struggle for liberation. Soon, these debates are destined to collide – in either blood or peace.
The Israeli debate had an air of willed evasion. The military's blockade of Gaza – reducing it to rubble just a short drive from hi-tech Tel Aviv – was barely discussed. The candidates seemed to be carefully avoiding taking a position on anything. One Israeli newspaper noted: "Ask Tzipi Livni what time it is, and she will reply, after carefully examining Israel's position in relation to the global time issue and the international date line, she has a very definite position, but isn't willing to specify it to the media."
It's a sign of how desensitised Israel has become to the violence committed in its name that the potential indictment for war crimes of Livni's main rival, Shaul Mofaz, was barely an issue. It is alleged that when he was the military chief of staff in 2001, he ordered his troops to fulfil a "daily quota" of killing 70 Palestinians a day, and there are calls for him to face prosecution. He came within 431 votes of winning the election.
From the wispy clouds of this contest, what has emerged? In theory, the winner Livni should be in a strong position to understand nationalist "terrorists" who have planted bombs on buses and in cafés – because she was raised by them. Her father was the Military Director of the Irgun, the underground Jewish militia that spent the 1930s and 40s targeting the British occupying forces and Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel. Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels; she proudly defends them to this day.
How would Livni's parents have responded to mass punishment – blockades, checkpoints, bullets? Would they shrug and surrender? The leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, wrote that every British attempt to "break our backs... only made us stronger and more determined". The same is happening with Palestinian nationalists today. Stripped of a state, they are fighting for one – and every Israeli attack makes them more radical and enraged.
But does Livni see the parallel? In the abstract, she advocates a two-state solution – but in Israel she has been dubbed "Ms. Not-Right-Now" because she always says she believes in compromising for peace but "not right now." Her husband said she decided to become a politician because of her "scathing" disapproval of the Oslo accords, signed exactly 15 years ago. She reiterated this during the campaign.
But Oslo was rigged in Israel's favour: while it lasted, the number of Jewish fundamentalist settlers on Palestinian land nearly doubled, and Palestinian movement was harshly curtailed. It is a myth that the Palestinians were offered a real two-state solution and rejected it. Even Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's Foreign Minister at the time, says: "If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well." If even this was too much for Livni, what practical peace can she achieve? This is the debate too many Israelis dodged this summer; they chose instead to block their ears, and ascribe the thud of rockets hitting their outskirts to raw evil.
This is where the parallel Palestinian debate needs to be heard above the Separation Wall. For decades, the demands of the Palestinian leadership – and the Israeli peace camp – have focused on the division of the land between Israeli and Palestinian states. There is still in principle a slender majority supporting this on both sides. But after 15 years of stillborn promises, that vision is rotting. Unless there is a swift shift, the two-state vision will be supplanted – by a vision of a "binational" one-state solution.
Several leading Palestinians – including the late Edward Said, the former Prime Minister Ahmed Queri, and Sari Nusseibeh – have begun to outline this idea. In one of those strange whirls on the roundabout of history, they are actually reviving an old idea pioneered by Zionist left-wingers. Back in the 1920s, a small number of Jewish socialists and liberals like Martin Buber tried to negotiate one big shared state with the Palestinians. Although they found some Palestinian interlocutors, these early binationalists were slapped down by both communities. Today their idea is being dug out of its ditch of despair.
The Palestinians would stop asking for a free enclave of their own, and start demanding full legal equality in one state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Equipped with this demand, they would no longer appear to the world as a fragmented minority, but – all added together – as a majority in Israel/Palestine ruled over by a racially-defined minority. It would look even more like South Africa Redux. Israel would then be incapable of marshalling international coalitions against possible threats from Iran or elsewhere: it would be alone, and anathemised.
The Middle East conflict would shift from being a tricky-but-soluble crisis to an insoluble civil war. Michael Neumann – the author of The Case Against Israel – warns: "One-staters apparently believe that Israel will give up the reason for its existence and at the same time expose itself not to the risk but to the certainty of being 'swamped by Arabs'. This in turn would indicate a willingness to accede to anything an 'Arab' majority might enact. Can anyone seriously imagine this? Will millions of Jews just leave if the majority says it should? Will they agree to crushing compensation payments?" No. They will fight – and this time, there will be no space for compromise between the competing visions.
The window of opportunity for a two-state peace is closing. Before it jams shut, the Israelis need to hear the plea coming through the checkpoints. Divide the land. Divide it now. Divide it properly. Or we will all end up battling forever – over nothing but soil soaked in blood and cordite.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Another one bites the dust.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 48592.html
Holocaust revisionist held at Heathrow
Australian wanted in Germany for website that disputes historical facts
By Terri Judd
Thursday, 2 October 2008
A holocaust revisionist will appear before a British court on Friday after being arrested at the request of the German authorities.
Gerald Fredrick Töben was detained at Heathrow yesterday by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition unit as he stepped off a plane from America. Last night, he was remanded in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court to reappear on Friday.
The 64-year-old Australian is wanted in Germany, accused of publishing material on the internet "of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature deliberately contrary to historical truth", that denies, approves of or plays down the "mass murder of Jews planned and implemented by the Nationalist Socialist party". He was detained yesterday under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities, which accuses him of committing the offence in their country, his native land and others.
The former teacher, who was born in northern Germany in 1944 but emigrated to Australia as a 10-year-old, set up the Adelaide Institute in 1994, an internet site that questions the "story, legend, myth" behind the Holocaust. It also doubts whether HIV causes Aids.
While he denies being anti-Semitic or calling the Holocaust a lie, Dr Töben, a doctor of philosophy, has previously insisted killings took place on a much smaller scale. In 2006, he met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and dismissed as "mere puffery" evidence of the Nazis' mass killings of Jews.
In 1999, his fellow revisionists declared him a "martyr" after he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for breaching Germany's holocaust law. The Mannheim court cleared him of the more serious charge of incitement to racial hatred because the material was written outside Germany. In 2000, Germany's Supreme Court made foreigners liable for internet crimes.
In 2002, a judge in the Federal Court of Australia found that his website "vilified Jewish people" and ordered him to remove offensive material from it. However, it did not enforce an earlier order made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that the site be closed down and that he issue a written apology to the Executive Council of the Australian Jewry.
On the website, Dr Töben lists the "victims imprisoned for refusing to believe in the Holocaust". He adds: "If you wish to doubt the Holocaust-Shoah narrative, be prepared for sacrifice, marriage and family break-up, loss of career, and to go to prison. This is because Revisionists are... dismantling a massive multibillion dollar industry that the Holocaust-Shoah enforcers are defending, as well as the survival of Zionist-racist Israel.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 48592.html
Holocaust revisionist held at Heathrow
Australian wanted in Germany for website that disputes historical facts
By Terri Judd
Thursday, 2 October 2008
A holocaust revisionist will appear before a British court on Friday after being arrested at the request of the German authorities.
Gerald Fredrick Töben was detained at Heathrow yesterday by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition unit as he stepped off a plane from America. Last night, he was remanded in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court to reappear on Friday.
The 64-year-old Australian is wanted in Germany, accused of publishing material on the internet "of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature deliberately contrary to historical truth", that denies, approves of or plays down the "mass murder of Jews planned and implemented by the Nationalist Socialist party". He was detained yesterday under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities, which accuses him of committing the offence in their country, his native land and others.
The former teacher, who was born in northern Germany in 1944 but emigrated to Australia as a 10-year-old, set up the Adelaide Institute in 1994, an internet site that questions the "story, legend, myth" behind the Holocaust. It also doubts whether HIV causes Aids.
While he denies being anti-Semitic or calling the Holocaust a lie, Dr Töben, a doctor of philosophy, has previously insisted killings took place on a much smaller scale. In 2006, he met Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and dismissed as "mere puffery" evidence of the Nazis' mass killings of Jews.
In 1999, his fellow revisionists declared him a "martyr" after he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for breaching Germany's holocaust law. The Mannheim court cleared him of the more serious charge of incitement to racial hatred because the material was written outside Germany. In 2000, Germany's Supreme Court made foreigners liable for internet crimes.
In 2002, a judge in the Federal Court of Australia found that his website "vilified Jewish people" and ordered him to remove offensive material from it. However, it did not enforce an earlier order made by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that the site be closed down and that he issue a written apology to the Executive Council of the Australian Jewry.
On the website, Dr Töben lists the "victims imprisoned for refusing to believe in the Holocaust". He adds: "If you wish to doubt the Holocaust-Shoah narrative, be prepared for sacrifice, marriage and family break-up, loss of career, and to go to prison. This is because Revisionists are... dismantling a massive multibillion dollar industry that the Holocaust-Shoah enforcers are defending, as well as the survival of Zionist-racist Israel.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Rabbi in Vatican says wartime pope let Jews down
Mon, Oct 6 06:22 PM
ROME (Reuters) - The first Jew to address a Vatican synod said on Monday that wartime Pope Pius XII should have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust.
Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen told Reuters he might have stayed away if he had known the major Church gathering coincided with ceremonies to honour Pius on the 50th anniversary of his death.
"We feel that the late pope (Pius) should have spoken up much more strongly than he did," Cohen, 80, said in an interview hours before he was due to address the gathering of Catholic bishops from around the world.
Cohen said that in his speech he planned to make an indirect reference to Jewish disappointment about Pius as well as an appeal to all religious leaders to denounce Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Last month Pope Benedict forcefully defended Pius, saying he "spared no effort" on behalf of Jews during World War II.
Some Jews maintain Pius did not do enough to save Jews while the Vatican says he worked behind the scenes to help because more direct intervention would have worsened the situation.
"He may have helped in secrecy many of the victims and many of the refugees but the question is 'could he have raised his voice and would it have helped or not?'" Cohen said.
"We, as the victims, feel yes. I am not empowered by the families of the millions of deceased to say 'we forget, we forgive,'" said Cohen, who is chief rabbi of Haifa in Israel.
Pius is one of the most difficult issues in Catholic-Jewish relations. On Thursday the Vatican marks the 50th anniversary of his death, Benedict celebrates a Mass in his memory and there will be a conference and photo show on his papacy next month.
"I did not know (the anniversary commemorations) happened during the same meeting. If I had known ... I might have refrained from coming because we feel that the pain is still here," Cohen said.
"I have to make it very clear that we, the rabbis, the leadership of the Jewish people, cannot as long as the survivors still feel painful agree that this leader of the Church in a time of crisis should be honoured now. It is not our decision. It pains us. We are sorry it is being done," he said.
Cohen said only God knows if Pius spoke out enough against the Holocaust: "God is the judge ... he knows the truth".
WAR ARCHIVES
Urged by historians to open up all its archives from World War II, the Vatican says some are closed for organisational reasons but that most of the significant documentation regarding Pius is already open to scholars.
Last year, the Vatican's saint-making department voted in favour of a decree recognising Pius's "heroic virtues", a major hurdle in a long process toward possible sainthood that began in 1967. But Pope Benedict has so far not approved the decree.
Some Jewish groups say the Vatican should freeze the process of beatification but others say it is an internal Church matter.
Cohen said he would also appeal to the synod to denounce Ahmadinejad, who made another virulent anti-Israel speech last month at the United Nations. He said he would "appeal to the leaders of religion not to keep quiet, not to stand aside".
"He says that he wants to annihilate Israel and destroy it. The problem in the days of the Second World War was that people didn't believe that what Adolf Hitler was saying, he really meant to fulfil.
"Unfortunately we had the Holocaust and I am sure that if we have a painful memory it is because we don't feel that enough was done by the leadership of the religions in the world and other powerful leaders to stop it at that time. We expect them to do it today," he said.
Mon, Oct 6 06:22 PM
ROME (Reuters) - The first Jew to address a Vatican synod said on Monday that wartime Pope Pius XII should have done more to help Jews during the Holocaust.
Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen told Reuters he might have stayed away if he had known the major Church gathering coincided with ceremonies to honour Pius on the 50th anniversary of his death.
"We feel that the late pope (Pius) should have spoken up much more strongly than he did," Cohen, 80, said in an interview hours before he was due to address the gathering of Catholic bishops from around the world.
Cohen said that in his speech he planned to make an indirect reference to Jewish disappointment about Pius as well as an appeal to all religious leaders to denounce Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Last month Pope Benedict forcefully defended Pius, saying he "spared no effort" on behalf of Jews during World War II.
Some Jews maintain Pius did not do enough to save Jews while the Vatican says he worked behind the scenes to help because more direct intervention would have worsened the situation.
"He may have helped in secrecy many of the victims and many of the refugees but the question is 'could he have raised his voice and would it have helped or not?'" Cohen said.
"We, as the victims, feel yes. I am not empowered by the families of the millions of deceased to say 'we forget, we forgive,'" said Cohen, who is chief rabbi of Haifa in Israel.
Pius is one of the most difficult issues in Catholic-Jewish relations. On Thursday the Vatican marks the 50th anniversary of his death, Benedict celebrates a Mass in his memory and there will be a conference and photo show on his papacy next month.
"I did not know (the anniversary commemorations) happened during the same meeting. If I had known ... I might have refrained from coming because we feel that the pain is still here," Cohen said.
"I have to make it very clear that we, the rabbis, the leadership of the Jewish people, cannot as long as the survivors still feel painful agree that this leader of the Church in a time of crisis should be honoured now. It is not our decision. It pains us. We are sorry it is being done," he said.
Cohen said only God knows if Pius spoke out enough against the Holocaust: "God is the judge ... he knows the truth".
WAR ARCHIVES
Urged by historians to open up all its archives from World War II, the Vatican says some are closed for organisational reasons but that most of the significant documentation regarding Pius is already open to scholars.
Last year, the Vatican's saint-making department voted in favour of a decree recognising Pius's "heroic virtues", a major hurdle in a long process toward possible sainthood that began in 1967. But Pope Benedict has so far not approved the decree.
Some Jewish groups say the Vatican should freeze the process of beatification but others say it is an internal Church matter.
Cohen said he would also appeal to the synod to denounce Ahmadinejad, who made another virulent anti-Israel speech last month at the United Nations. He said he would "appeal to the leaders of religion not to keep quiet, not to stand aside".
"He says that he wants to annihilate Israel and destroy it. The problem in the days of the Second World War was that people didn't believe that what Adolf Hitler was saying, he really meant to fulfil.
"Unfortunately we had the Holocaust and I am sure that if we have a painful memory it is because we don't feel that enough was done by the leadership of the religions in the world and other powerful leaders to stop it at that time. We expect them to do it today," he said.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Palestine gets an embassy in Delhi ahead of others
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... +(F)&sid=1
It is India's own "land for peace" formula for the people of Palestine—a gift of prized real estate in the heart of New Delhi's coveted diplomatic enclave for their embassy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas himself will lay the commemorative plaque next week during his visit, and formally dedicate the building to the "people of Palestine" as a gift from the "people of India."
With more than two dozen countries still waiting to buy plots at raging commercial rates, the Palestinian 'coup' is turning many missions green with envy.
The land was given in 2003, shortly after then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon visited India.
Clearly, there was both symbolism and politics in the Indian government's gesture. Let it not be said that India was beginning to forget words like "struggle" and "solidarity" just because it was moving closer to Israel. A cool 4,000 square metres in the elite enclave, in addition to constructing the new embassy—all gratis—went a long way in balancing interests and tempers.
Palestinian ambassador Osama Musa can barely contain his excitement as he pulls out drawings of the impressive building, embellished with turrets and grand archways, which is half ready. "India has stood clear and firm with us since Mahatma Gandhi's time. It has supported all the UN resolutions on Palestine, never abstained or run away," Musa says, sitting in his current office in a modest house. "Even though India has normal relations with Israel now, it supports a separate state for us. We are proud that India is with us."
Meanwhile, the MEA is struggling to accommodate the growing demand from countries for land to build their embassies. A plan to develop a second diplomatic enclave near the airport was abandoned, given the distance and the slow pace of development. This quadrupled the pressure on MEA from various ambassadors. Officials are tight-lipped about who or how many want to build embassies, saying the issue is "extremely sensitive", the rivalry intense and the land scarce. To top it all, whatever vacant plots remain in the swanky area have been occupied by squatters, under the very noses of the Delhi Development Authority. "DDA hasn't protected the land. It will be another struggle when the plots are allotted," said an official.
Musa knows he is blessed. If India's traditional support for the Palestinians got him the prize, what criteria will be used for others? Well, they will be brutal to say the least. Reciprocity will rule. If India struggled to get a building in a certain capital, New Delhi will play deaf to pleas from that country. Aspirants also must pay commercial rates because the days of subsidised sales are over. Ironically, it is the rich countries that benefited from bargain basement sales in those early days of idealism, while the relatively smaller ones are struggling now to establish larger embassies. The former east bloc countries also gained huge compounds in the diplomatic enclave when non-alignment was the credo.
Such is the pressure that some missions are willing to "trade" on the side. A few years ago, the ambassador of a neighbouring country, strapped for hard currency, decided to "sublet" a portion of his compound to an African country without as much as a note to MEA. South Block saw red when the news leaked and served notice. The African country, meanwhile, had spent a goodly amount renovating the place. Needless to say, tempers were frayed and demarches exchanged.
To put the enormity of the problem in perspective—the Cuban ambassador stays on the Delhi-Haryana border because Cuba simply can't afford to pay the lavish South Delhi rents. Some countries are caught in the vicious greed of private landlords. A Middle Eastern country—not loaded with petrodollars—fought a hard court battle because the landlord doubled the rent overnight.
There is simply not enough land to buy peace for all.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... +(F)&sid=1
It is India's own "land for peace" formula for the people of Palestine—a gift of prized real estate in the heart of New Delhi's coveted diplomatic enclave for their embassy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas himself will lay the commemorative plaque next week during his visit, and formally dedicate the building to the "people of Palestine" as a gift from the "people of India."
With more than two dozen countries still waiting to buy plots at raging commercial rates, the Palestinian 'coup' is turning many missions green with envy.
The land was given in 2003, shortly after then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon visited India.
Clearly, there was both symbolism and politics in the Indian government's gesture. Let it not be said that India was beginning to forget words like "struggle" and "solidarity" just because it was moving closer to Israel. A cool 4,000 square metres in the elite enclave, in addition to constructing the new embassy—all gratis—went a long way in balancing interests and tempers.
Palestinian ambassador Osama Musa can barely contain his excitement as he pulls out drawings of the impressive building, embellished with turrets and grand archways, which is half ready. "India has stood clear and firm with us since Mahatma Gandhi's time. It has supported all the UN resolutions on Palestine, never abstained or run away," Musa says, sitting in his current office in a modest house. "Even though India has normal relations with Israel now, it supports a separate state for us. We are proud that India is with us."
Meanwhile, the MEA is struggling to accommodate the growing demand from countries for land to build their embassies. A plan to develop a second diplomatic enclave near the airport was abandoned, given the distance and the slow pace of development. This quadrupled the pressure on MEA from various ambassadors. Officials are tight-lipped about who or how many want to build embassies, saying the issue is "extremely sensitive", the rivalry intense and the land scarce. To top it all, whatever vacant plots remain in the swanky area have been occupied by squatters, under the very noses of the Delhi Development Authority. "DDA hasn't protected the land. It will be another struggle when the plots are allotted," said an official.
Musa knows he is blessed. If India's traditional support for the Palestinians got him the prize, what criteria will be used for others? Well, they will be brutal to say the least. Reciprocity will rule. If India struggled to get a building in a certain capital, New Delhi will play deaf to pleas from that country. Aspirants also must pay commercial rates because the days of subsidised sales are over. Ironically, it is the rich countries that benefited from bargain basement sales in those early days of idealism, while the relatively smaller ones are struggling now to establish larger embassies. The former east bloc countries also gained huge compounds in the diplomatic enclave when non-alignment was the credo.
Such is the pressure that some missions are willing to "trade" on the side. A few years ago, the ambassador of a neighbouring country, strapped for hard currency, decided to "sublet" a portion of his compound to an African country without as much as a note to MEA. South Block saw red when the news leaked and served notice. The African country, meanwhile, had spent a goodly amount renovating the place. Needless to say, tempers were frayed and demarches exchanged.
To put the enormity of the problem in perspective—the Cuban ambassador stays on the Delhi-Haryana border because Cuba simply can't afford to pay the lavish South Delhi rents. Some countries are caught in the vicious greed of private landlords. A Middle Eastern country—not loaded with petrodollars—fought a hard court battle because the landlord doubled the rent overnight.
There is simply not enough land to buy peace for all.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Stephen Colbert just reminded me that today is Yom Kippur.
A shout-out to all my Hebrew homies.
A shout-out to all my Hebrew homies.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
India paid high price for 3 AWACS planes from Israel: Expert
New Delhi, Sept 14: Finding fault with the existing acquisition system for the armed forces, a former senior Army officer has said these drawbacks have led India to pay much more for purchases as in the deal to acquire three AWACS aircraft from Israel in 2004.
"India has failed to negotiate full-proof agreements with clearly defined provisions...In almost all contracts, imprecise and flawed provisions led to multiple interpretations during the implementation stage," Maj Gen (Retd) Mrinal Suman, who was associated with procurement procedures and offsets while in service, said.
He quoted reports in the Israeli press as saying that "India paid more than double the amount for the purchase of three AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft from Israel in March 2004."
These aircraft, he said, were earlier being sold to China for USD 358 million but the deal had to be aborted under US pressure.
"Subsequently, India agreed to buy them for USD 1.1 billion, a whopping USD 742 million more than the price agreed to by the Chinese," Suman said in an article in the latest issue of 'Indian Defence Review'.
Noting that there were "numerous" instances where India paid "exorbitant amounts" for defence equipment, he referred to the coffin scam and said "inability to negotiate contracts astutely has been the biggest weakness of the entire defence procurement regime."
Invariably, it was India that suffered "as the vendors exploit ambiguities in the contract language, especially with respect to delivery schedules, warranties, after sales support and penalties for default," Suman, who retired as Technical Manager (Land Systems) in the Defence Ministry's acquisition wing, said.
http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=469007&sid=NAT
New Delhi, Sept 14: Finding fault with the existing acquisition system for the armed forces, a former senior Army officer has said these drawbacks have led India to pay much more for purchases as in the deal to acquire three AWACS aircraft from Israel in 2004.
"India has failed to negotiate full-proof agreements with clearly defined provisions...In almost all contracts, imprecise and flawed provisions led to multiple interpretations during the implementation stage," Maj Gen (Retd) Mrinal Suman, who was associated with procurement procedures and offsets while in service, said.
He quoted reports in the Israeli press as saying that "India paid more than double the amount for the purchase of three AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft from Israel in March 2004."
These aircraft, he said, were earlier being sold to China for USD 358 million but the deal had to be aborted under US pressure.
"Subsequently, India agreed to buy them for USD 1.1 billion, a whopping USD 742 million more than the price agreed to by the Chinese," Suman said in an article in the latest issue of 'Indian Defence Review'.
Noting that there were "numerous" instances where India paid "exorbitant amounts" for defence equipment, he referred to the coffin scam and said "inability to negotiate contracts astutely has been the biggest weakness of the entire defence procurement regime."
Invariably, it was India that suffered "as the vendors exploit ambiguities in the contract language, especially with respect to delivery schedules, warranties, after sales support and penalties for default," Suman, who retired as Technical Manager (Land Systems) in the Defence Ministry's acquisition wing, said.
http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=469007&sid=NAT
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
AWACS delay throws IAF network-centricity plans awry
New Delhi, Sept 28: The Indian Air Force's (IAF) plans to go network-centric has gone haywire as the Israeli airborne early warning systems delivery gets delayed further.
The PHALCON Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) will arrive only in February next year, about 15 months behind its original schedule of November 2007.
Consequently, the IAF efforts to establish an advanced Integrated Air Command and Control Systems (IACCS) through the Air Force Net (AF Net) communication network would be hit.
"AF Net, may be (delayed by) a month or two. We were expecting it around December. Now it is coming around February," IAF chief Fali Homi Major said on Sunday.
"Two months is no delay as far as we are concerned," Major added, suggesting the IAF would strive to offset the delay from their side.
Meanwhile, IAF Vice Chief Air Marshal P V Naik, referring to the escalation in delivery schedule of AWACS till February 2009, said some technical glitches were the reasons behind the delay.
AWACS, a major force multiplier for the IAF, is a vital link in the Air Force Net, a communication network that is key to IAF's dreams of emerging as a network-centric force.
The USD 1.1-billion deal was signed by India in March 2004 for three AWACS from Israeli Aerospace Industries for mounting the systems on three Russian-made IL-76 heavy lift transport aircraft.
IAF's Agra air base is readying itself to receive the AWACS by improving its infrastructure, including extending the runway, establishing an avionics lab and integrating ground systems for future operations of the radar-mounted IL-76s aircraft.
http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=472500&sid=NAT
New Delhi, Sept 28: The Indian Air Force's (IAF) plans to go network-centric has gone haywire as the Israeli airborne early warning systems delivery gets delayed further.
The PHALCON Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) will arrive only in February next year, about 15 months behind its original schedule of November 2007.
Consequently, the IAF efforts to establish an advanced Integrated Air Command and Control Systems (IACCS) through the Air Force Net (AF Net) communication network would be hit.
"AF Net, may be (delayed by) a month or two. We were expecting it around December. Now it is coming around February," IAF chief Fali Homi Major said on Sunday.
"Two months is no delay as far as we are concerned," Major added, suggesting the IAF would strive to offset the delay from their side.
Meanwhile, IAF Vice Chief Air Marshal P V Naik, referring to the escalation in delivery schedule of AWACS till February 2009, said some technical glitches were the reasons behind the delay.
AWACS, a major force multiplier for the IAF, is a vital link in the Air Force Net, a communication network that is key to IAF's dreams of emerging as a network-centric force.
The USD 1.1-billion deal was signed by India in March 2004 for three AWACS from Israeli Aerospace Industries for mounting the systems on three Russian-made IL-76 heavy lift transport aircraft.
IAF's Agra air base is readying itself to receive the AWACS by improving its infrastructure, including extending the runway, establishing an avionics lab and integrating ground systems for future operations of the radar-mounted IL-76s aircraft.
http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=472500&sid=NAT
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Link
Israel website in 'Nazi pope' row
The row blew up afresh last week after the Vatican official in charge of the process said the current pontiff, Benedict, should not accept Israel's invitation to visit until the wording on an exhibit in the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem is changed.
The display says that despite warnings from clergy throughout Europe about the deportation of Jews to death camps, Pope Pius XII did nothing to condemn it or to intervene.
The Holy See maintains that Pius actively helped some Jews by sheltering them in churches and monasteries.
And Israel has long regarded the Vatican, which did not recognise the Jewish state until 1993, as pro-Palestinian.
For its part, the Vatican wants to resolve a stand-off over the taxation of Church property in Israel, as well as problems with visas.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Want to see the role of the Vatican during the Holocaust? Here are the photos!Manu wrote:LinkIsrael website in 'Nazi pope' row
The row blew up afresh last week after the Vatican official in charge of the process said the current pontiff, Benedict, should not accept Israel's invitation to visit until the wording on an exhibit in the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem is changed.
The display says that despite warnings from clergy throughout Europe about the deportation of Jews to death camps, Pope Pius XII did nothing to condemn it or to intervene.
The Holy See maintains that Pius actively helped some Jews by sheltering them in churches and monasteries.
And Israel has long regarded the Vatican, which did not recognise the Jewish state until 1993, as pro-Palestinian.
For its part, the Vatican wants to resolve a stand-off over the taxation of Church property in Israel, as well as problems with visas.
http://nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
http://nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
What I noticed in the US campus scene is there is a steady stream of pro-Palestine speakers who get invited to the campuses and indoctrinate the students under the free speech rubric. Its all over the US and not just confined to Michigan or other strongholds.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
I have been thinking about this.ramana wrote:What I noticed in the US campus scene is there is a steady stream of pro-Palestine speakers who get invited to the campuses and indoctrinate the students under the free speech rubric. Its all over the US and not just confined to Michigan or other strongholds.
It is a larger plan
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Actually, all India related lectures are out and out anti India. I don't know if anyone has noticed that. The people have Indian sounding names, but it would be like listening to (as in reading) deaf and dumb forum.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Sharansky's mistaken identity
Natan Sharansky defied Soviet tyranny during the Cold War and thereby earned the gratitude of free people everywhere, including the United States, which in 2006 awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After enduring years of persecution in Russia, Sharansky emigrated to Israel and became a political leader. In his new book, Defending Identity [1], he sets out to defend Jewish national identity by asserting that national identity as such is a good thing. We must belong to cultures and nations, Sharansky asserts, rather than to the insipid soup of global citizenship. The trouble is that some identities are hostile to other identities by their nature. Democracy should solve this problem, Sharansky argues, except that some identities are by their nature anti-democratic, and so on.
A worthwhile thought was gestating in Sharansky's mind, but was stillborn in the present volume. Sharansky wants to say that the particularism of Jewish national identity offers universal benefits for humankind. But he does not want to say so in religious terms, and cannot find a clear way to say so in secular terms.
Jews often are loath to make theological claims for their own importance, which sound megalomaniac to secular ears. But the Jews might as well resign themselves to being hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb. Except for its religious implications, the world has little use for Jewish nationhood, and considers the presence of a few million Jews in the Middle East an inconvenience at best, and a danger at worst. That is why the only true friends of the Jewish state are American and some other evangelicals, and a few leaders of the Catholic Church.
Franz Rosenzweig, the great German-Jewish theologian, asserted that the history of Israel was the history of the world. Expansive as this claim may appear, it is well grounded in Rosenzweig's sociology of religion. What Rosenzweig meant is that Israel's existence forever transformed human identity. From Israel, Western Asia and Europe first heard the promise of eternal life, and afterwards looked at themselves differently. The pagans of the ancient world knew their days on Earth were numbered, and that their time would come to die out and be forgotten. But the promise of eternal life that the nations heard from the Jews undermined their ancient fatalism.
Reasonably, or not, we want to live forever. The first people to believe that God promised that it would endure forever became the standard against which all nations must measure their condition. From Ireland to Afghanistan, the identities of all tribes and nations became a response to Israel: Christianity offers a New Israel, Islam a competitor to Israel, neo-paganism a Satanic parody of Israel. The trouble is that Jewish national identity is not one national identity among many national identities. There is only Jewish identity, and a set of responses to Jewish identity. Jewish national identity has a radically different character than all other national identities, for the Jews uniquely believe that their nation was summoned into being to serve the sole creator God of the Universe.
It is somewhat uncomfortable for the Jewish to insist on the point, and it is understandable why Sharansky would wish to take refuge behind the notion of "identity" in general, but that simply doesn't work, and the Jews really have nothing to lose.
It is tricky to discuss human identity in other than religious terms, for our identity often implies continuity. With what do we identify that makes our existence more than a random occurrence? Our ties of culture, language, faith and kinship make us heirs to the past and participants in the future, and it is the future, the vanishing-point at the horizon, that defines the composition of the other images. Societies that reject religion also appear to reject the future, for example, by declining to have children.
Sharansky takes to task utopian secular thinking, which claims that peace requires the extinction of all passionate attachments, national, religious or whatever. His antagonist is "post-identity" theory, for example, the head of the Modern Language Association who said, "Cosmopolites not only or even principally owe an allegiance to their place of birth but also to a broader, more worldly, supra and transnational world view," as opposed to the "negative consequences of resurgent nationalism, ethnic separatism, and religious fundamentalism".
Eliminating all passionate attachments, Sharansky might have said, is a fool's errand. A rabbinic tale of antiquity reports what happened when God decided to eliminate the ''evil impulse", by which the rabbis meant the competitive and sexual instinct among men. The next day not a single egg was laid in the land of Israel, and God was obliged to restore the impulse. Europe may have succeeded in eliminating nationalism, or rather, nationalism burnt itself out in two hideously destructive World Wars. As a result children no longer are born to the Europeans. The problem is self-liquidating.
On the other hand, the two countries considered most suspect for their nationalism by the supposedly enlightened Europeans, the United States and Israel, are the only ones in the entire industrial world to reproduce at above replacement level. Sharansky is beating if not a dead horse, then a sterile one. All that secular enlightenment can say to humanity is what that exemplar of the enlightenment, Frederick the Great of Prussia, barked at his fleeing soldiers during the 1757 Battle of Kolin: Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben? (Dogs, do you want to live forever?).
Countries subject to communist rule, the most atheistic and internationalist, also show by far the lowest birth rates.
Projected population in formerly communist countries
Population
(Thousands) 2005 2050 % Change
Ukraine 46918 25514 -46%
Georgia 4473 2575 -42%
Belarus 9795 5746 -41%
Moldova 3877 2330 -40%
Source: United Nations
Russia itself is not far behind Belarus and Moldova in the race to national extinction.
A great deal of violence has been perpetrated in the name of religion; the most violent of all supposedly religious wars, the Thirty Years War, had very little to do with religion. It is wrong to blame religion for war. Exterminating one's neighbors was the norm for human behavior from the dawn of man until early in the first millennium BCE, when the prophets of ancient Israel first spoke of universal peace under the reign of a single God.
The modern critique of religion emerged out of the 16th and 17th century wars of religion. Secular critics blame religion for the tempted as we may be tempted to dismiss as happenstance the way in which the idea of universal love came to humankind, but the peoples of the Earth did not dismiss it at all. The peoples of the Earth heard the message of God's love in the particular way in which it was told to them.
The Election of Israel as Franz Rosenzweig put it:
It was more or less through Christianity that thoughts of Election have spread among the individual peoples, and with them, necessarily, a pretension to eternity ... On the foundation of love for one's own people, there lurks the presentiment that at some time in the distant future, this people no longer will exist, and this presentiment lends a sweetly poignant gravity. But in any event, the thought of the necessary eternity of the people is there, and, strong or weak, it has an effect. [2]
Rosenzweig makes the striking observation that precisely because the Christian peoples have come to believe in their own eternity, and cannot accept the idea that they will be exterminated, as the ancient peoples did, their concept of war changes radically. War raises the possibility of the destruction of the people, continued Rosenzweig, and for just this reason it becomes a religious event. The ancient peoples fought wars, but the center of their civic life was the official cult, with its rites and sacrifices. For modern Christian peoples convinced of their own Election, war itself becomes the supreme act of collective religion.
This was written during World War I by a serving German soldier, and uncannily describes the quasi-religious attitude that the European nations brought to the war.
Mercifully, Rosenzweig died in 1929, before the triumph of National Socialism. But his sociology of religion would have recognized in Adolf Hitler's "Master Race" a Satanic parody of Election, and in the Aryan claim on eternity, the existential terror before the prospect of extinction.
Sharansky wants to fall back on old-fashioned national identity, yet in Europe, national identities were not a sui generis expression of ancient culture and ethnicity. On the contrary, as Rosenzweig reports, Christianity turned European national identity into a parody of Israel's Election. Europe was only half-Christianized. Christianity - at least in its Western, Catholic or Protestant manifestation - demands that the individual repudiate the sinful flesh of his Gentile origin, and by water and the Spirit be reborn into a new people, that is, the People of Israel. From the (Western) Christian perspective, God's promise to Abraham remains valid: it is simply that Christ's sacrifice on the Cross makes possible the miraculous rebirth of each individual Christian into Israel.
The trouble with European nationalism is that the Europeans did not want to be saved by repudiating their Gentile flesh and joining Israel of the Spirit, namely the Church. On the contrary, they wanted to be Elected, that is, accorded eternal life, but in their own French, German, Italian or Ukrainian skins. That is the not-so-secret source of anti-Semitism. All European nationalism is hostile to Israel, for the existence of Israel stands as a reproach to the pathetic pretensions of each European nation to immortality. In its most extreme form, namely Hitler's, the obsession takes hold of the existentially challenged nation that in order for it to be the Chosen People, the original Chosen People must be exterminated.
European national identity is dead and gone for tragic reasons, which is to say very good ones, and the thin broth of European cosmopolitanism that bubbles in its place is not a substitute so much as tasteless residue. When the dogs no longer want to live forever, they don't trouble to have puppies, and in a few generations the problem resolves itself through depopulation and ruin.
It was the genius of John Paul II, the last great hero of Christian Europe, the pope who brought down communism, to understand that the true Europe needed Israel. Not the Europe of the peoples, but the Europe of the universal Church, required the living presence of Israel as the exemplar of a People of God, and John Paul II declared God's Covenant with the Jewish people to be eternally valid, and instituted diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Sharansky's sympathy towards an old-fashioned European patriotism that never existed in the way he portrays it, and died a hideous but well-deserved death during the 20th century, stems from another motive. The legitimacy of the Jewish state is under attack by enemies who claim that the world has moved beyond the national state altogether.
At the conclusion of his book, Sharansky at last quotes the critic whose attacks on Israel well may have motivated the book, Professor Tony Judt of New York University. In an often-cited 1993 New York Review of Books essay, Judt denounced the fact that Israel "is an ethnic majority defined by language, or religion, or antiquity, or all three at the expense of inconvenient local minorities", in which "Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges", which do not belong in "a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law".
Judt wants the dissolution of the Jewish state into a bi-national state with the Palestinians. Long a utopian fancy among such leftists as the late Martin Buber, the bi-national state has become the core strategy of the Palestinians. [/b]Rather than conclude a two-state agreement with Israel, the Palestinians hope to drag things on until demographics and the world's impatience with the running sore in the Middle East give them the majority in a reconstituted Palestine. That is a serious danger, not merely a utopian project, and Sharansky is right to be alarmed about it.
His practical conclusions, though, seem quite odd. He argues that democracy will solve the problem, although it is hard to understand why. Hamas came to power in Gaza through democratic elections, and Hezbollah's power in Lebanon was enhanced by democracy. Israel's nemesis, Iran's missile-rattling President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, won democratic elections.
On the other hand, Sharansky denounces the "authoritarian Chinese regime that seems the smallest expression of identity as a threat to its rule" and "brutally represses Tibetans, Uyghurs and others". The fact that China has deep concerns regarding the intentions of Muslim radicals among the Uyghurs in its far west is of enormous strategic benefit to Israel, however. China has no particular sympathy for Israel, but Israel and China have a common enemy.
On the other hand, Israel's involvement with the Georgian cause against Russia (including the prominent role of Israeli advisors in the ill-fated Georgian army) may be one of the stupidest things the Jewish state has done since its founding. Russia appears to view Israeli missile defense as part of the overall American effort to encircle Russia with anti-missile systems in Poland, the Czech Republic, and so forth, and may retaliate by selling sophisticated anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems to Syria and Iran.
Sharansky has every right to detest Vladimir Putin, given his suffering at the hands of Soviet state security, but he is apocalyptically wrong to complain that the United States has not done enough to strengthen Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine against Russia. Russia is in a position to do enormous harm to Israel if it chooses to ally itself with Israel's enemies, and well may do so if it perceives that Israel has joined the United States in placing pressure on its borders. That, pardon the expression, could lead to a disaster of Biblical proportions.
Sharansky's mistaken view of identity does nothing to temper this writer's pessimism concerning Israel's strategic position. Perhaps God wants to call attention to Israel's Election by making the Jewish state depend on His miraculous intervention, rather than on its own good sense.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
I thought Palestini embassy was located in Vasant Vihar, New Delhi...even ol' Yasser came visiting there once to wave to desi aam janta from balcony in pukka vatican pope style. The embassy used to have behind it a beirut-style old white mercedes on blocks...I watched that car slowly decay/get cannibalised in-situ over the years when I would walk to/from the school bus bus-stand. What was funny was that there used to be a Syrian embassy office, IAI (Israeli Aircraft Industries) office and the Palestini embassy all within walking distance of each other!Ameet wrote:Palestine gets an embassy in Delhi ahead of others
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fo ... +(F)&sid=1
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
That's my neck of the woods.
You are right, it is in D Block. Just opposite the Giant Dustbin with the stray cow or two.
A .303 toting guard is sleeping outside it, all the time.
In the same line (D block), we also have the embassy of Syria, Namibia, Tajikistan, and Yemen. And no, there are never any persons waiting for a visa
But one thing I will say, the Syrians, supposedly Islamic and all, celebrate Diwali with their Neighbours. Did not expect it from Arabs.
You are right, it is in D Block. Just opposite the Giant Dustbin with the stray cow or two.
A .303 toting guard is sleeping outside it, all the time.
In the same line (D block), we also have the embassy of Syria, Namibia, Tajikistan, and Yemen. And no, there are never any persons waiting for a visa
But one thing I will say, the Syrians, supposedly Islamic and all, celebrate Diwali with their Neighbours. Did not expect it from Arabs.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
I am not even going to start on these mofos in the vatican. To me, they represent the greatest evil ever known in human history. Suffice to say that i am not fooled by the recent bonhomie.Manu wrote:LinkIsrael website in 'Nazi pope' row
The row blew up afresh last week after the Vatican official in charge of the process said the current pontiff, Benedict, should not accept Israel's invitation to visit until the wording on an exhibit in the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Jerusalem is changed.
The display says that despite warnings from clergy throughout Europe about the deportation of Jews to death camps, Pope Pius XII did nothing to condemn it or to intervene.
The Holy See maintains that Pius actively helped some Jews by sheltering them in churches and monasteries.
And Israel has long regarded the Vatican, which did not recognise the Jewish state until 1993, as pro-Palestinian.
For its part, the Vatican wants to resolve a stand-off over the taxation of Church property in Israel, as well as problems with visas.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
As you may well know, US campuses are exceedingly liberal. And the moslems are far more vocal than jews. Check this website. Its really depressing at times to read this. I used to organize protests against islamic speakers at my campus but was more often unsuccessful than not.ramana wrote:What I noticed in the US campus scene is there is a steady stream of pro-Palestine speakers who get invited to the campuses and indoctrinate the students under the free speech rubric. Its all over the US and not just confined to Michigan or other strongholds.
http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... -protests/
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
When I was in college in the USA, Hillel had a strong presence. They would organize a lot of pro_Israel gatheringss. I remembered during the 80s they would have pictures of the war in Lebanon. Lots of pictures of Palestinians artilery positioned inside churches and mosques. The Arab students then were quite timid except for the Iraqis demonstrating against the Iranians.
I remember an incident when a Palestinian woman approached my roomate (Tamil from Singapore) who was then a President of the International Students' Association and asked him if he would help sponsor a Palestinian event. My friend outright rejected it saying "It will cause a lot of controversies".
I don't think a President of ISA can survive these days with such attitude. Also these days since the Oslo, Hillel had joined the "Peace Camp" organizing many joint Israeli-Arab events. Add to that many many Jews (especially American jews) in their misguided mind had given their "Jewish Stamp of Approval" to even the most perversely rabid anti-Semitic Arab. All in the name of Free Speech. Thus when an Arab speaker who is on record preaching for the destruction of Israel and anhilation of the Jewish people get to give his/her speech at a campus to a willing audience but when an Israeli comes to give his speech, the pro-Arabist, Islamists and which ever monkey allied with them shout him down in an organized anarchy. Without giving him a chance to speak his mind.
The future is only going to get darker. Incidently last night on LGF there was an ancient Chinese quote which I think is apt for times like this.: When small men cast large shadows, it means the sun is setting.
Avram
I remember an incident when a Palestinian woman approached my roomate (Tamil from Singapore) who was then a President of the International Students' Association and asked him if he would help sponsor a Palestinian event. My friend outright rejected it saying "It will cause a lot of controversies".
I don't think a President of ISA can survive these days with such attitude. Also these days since the Oslo, Hillel had joined the "Peace Camp" organizing many joint Israeli-Arab events. Add to that many many Jews (especially American jews) in their misguided mind had given their "Jewish Stamp of Approval" to even the most perversely rabid anti-Semitic Arab. All in the name of Free Speech. Thus when an Arab speaker who is on record preaching for the destruction of Israel and anhilation of the Jewish people get to give his/her speech at a campus to a willing audience but when an Israeli comes to give his speech, the pro-Arabist, Islamists and which ever monkey allied with them shout him down in an organized anarchy. Without giving him a chance to speak his mind.
The future is only going to get darker. Incidently last night on LGF there was an ancient Chinese quote which I think is apt for times like this.: When small men cast large shadows, it means the sun is setting.
Avram
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
So what do you think of Finklestein?
BTW the quote was from Lin YuTang a modern Chinese sage in the West.
BTW the quote was from Lin YuTang a modern Chinese sage in the West.
Re: Indo-Israel: News and Discussion
Ramana,
Many Jews are these days being deluded into thinking that they can sit down and reason with Islamists provided the Islamists are given space to express their grievences. Norman Finkelstein is one of them.
Sadly, these are the same Jews who would like to see a new cold war happen against Russia.
Among these idiots, many lost millions of dollars when they decided to buy the very productive farms from Israeli farmers in Gaza and handed them to Arabs for free in the hope that these Arabs would continue the farming and lead productive lives instead of turning to terrorism. Within a few days of gaining the ownership of the farms, over zealous PA officers tried to corner the ownership of the farms to themselves. This led to infighitng. In between, other Arabs came in and stripped away all the machines and other equipments and sold off what they can lay their hands on to scrap metal dealers. Within two weeks the farms that produced flowers, vegetables, fruits and winery worth in the millions of dollars were destroyed and burned to the ground. Yet, Finkelstein and his ilks have not changed their mind nor will ever. Idiots who cannot read the writing on the wall.
Avram
Many Jews are these days being deluded into thinking that they can sit down and reason with Islamists provided the Islamists are given space to express their grievences. Norman Finkelstein is one of them.
Sadly, these are the same Jews who would like to see a new cold war happen against Russia.
Among these idiots, many lost millions of dollars when they decided to buy the very productive farms from Israeli farmers in Gaza and handed them to Arabs for free in the hope that these Arabs would continue the farming and lead productive lives instead of turning to terrorism. Within a few days of gaining the ownership of the farms, over zealous PA officers tried to corner the ownership of the farms to themselves. This led to infighitng. In between, other Arabs came in and stripped away all the machines and other equipments and sold off what they can lay their hands on to scrap metal dealers. Within two weeks the farms that produced flowers, vegetables, fruits and winery worth in the millions of dollars were destroyed and burned to the ground. Yet, Finkelstein and his ilks have not changed their mind nor will ever. Idiots who cannot read the writing on the wall.
Avram