EDITOR: Another victory of Israeli war crimes
As suggested some time ago on this site, the Germans were not up to justice, when Israel is concerned, and managed to release the Mossad operative who has taken part in the Dubai murder, almost before he had a chance to have breakfast… How surprising… and how disgusting. Neither Europe, nor the US, are prepared to confront Israeli crimes, and therefor are also implicated in them.
UAE concerned over German release of suspected Mossad agent: Haaretz
Uri Brodsky extradited from Poland in relation with Hamas leader Mabhouh’s assassination in Dubai in January; released due to lack of evidence.
The United Arab Emirates voiced concern on Saturday over Germany’s release of a suspected Israeli spy on bail in a case over a falsified passport linked to the killing of a Hamas leader in Dubai.
On Friday, German authorities released Uri Brodsky, pending a decision on whether he was involved in the falsification of the German passport linked to the killing.
Abdurahim al-Awadhi, a top UAE Foreign Ministry official, “expressed concern that Brodsky has been released on bail and granted the freedom to return to Israel while the case against him continues”, the state news agency WAM said.
“The UAE seeks assurances that Brodsky is in no way connected with the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai,” Awadhi said in a statement cited by the agency.
A spokesman for state prosecutors in Cologne said on Friday that Brodsky would not have to stand trial in Germany. The court had a range of options it could pursue against Brodsky and that the most likely option was a fine, he said.
Brodsky was extradited from Poland on Thursday on suspicion of fraudulently obtaining a German passport believed to have been used by a member of the hit squad that Dubai says killed Mabhouh in a hotel room in January.
The hit squad used fraudulent British, French, Irish and Australian as well as German passports, according to Dubai.
Mabhouh, born in the Gaza Strip, had lived in Syria since 1989 and Israeli and Palestinian sources have said he played a role in smuggling Iranian-funded arms to militants in Gaza.
Germany frees Israeli ‘agent’ suspected in Hamas murder: BBC
Uri Brodsky is suspected of espionage but can only be charged with illegally procuring a passport
A German court has released on bail a suspected Israeli agent arrested in connection with the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai.
German prosecutors said Uri Brodsky was free to travel while judicial proceedings in Germany continued.
He is accused of helping procure the German passport allegedly used in the January murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouth.
The UAE believes Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, was involved, though Israel insists there is no proof.
Dubai killing shines unwelcome spotlight on Mossad
Uri Brodsky, an Israeli citizen, was arrested in Poland in June on a warrant issued by Germany and extradited on Thursday.
After a closed hearing on Friday, a German judge decided he would not be detained while the case against him continues.
“He can return to Israel today if he wants to,” said Rainer Wolf, a spokesman for Cologne’s prosecutors’ office.
The warrant that he was arrested under accused him of espionage, though the court that granted the extradition said he could only be prosecuted for illegally procuring a German passport believed to have been used by one of the assassins.
Formal charges have not yet been filed against him.
Dubai police have said they are 99% sure that members of Mossad were involved in the killing of Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, who was found dead in a Dubai hotel on 20 January.
Forged passports from several Western countries were used by the 30 suspects identified, leading to a series of diplomatic rows with Israel.
The UK, Irish Republic and Australia have all expelled Israeli diplomats.
Did Ben Gurion sell his soul to Satan?: Shraga Elam
Original Hebrew from 5 August 2010
What else is there to hide about the kidnapping of Eichmann?
Isser Harel’s revolt against the nuclear “Old Man”
According to Tom Segev (Haaretz 28 Jul. 2010), one of the subjects for which the classified status of the relevant documents has been extended to seventy years is the kidnapping of Eichmann.
This appears strange on the face of it, for what secrets could still remain about an event that took place half a century ago and which has been the subject of an ocean of books, articles, films and so much more?
But if we take into account the fact that the German intelligence agency BND is also struggling with clenched teeth to conserve the classified status of over 3,500 Eichmann documents, then Segev’s claim takes on an additional dimension and it is reasonable to assume that the issues are related. According to the BND the aforementioned documents, which are in its possession and not in the Federal Archives, will be declassified in 2017 at the earliest, or 2025 at the latest.
A ruling by the German Federal Administrative Court (the full decision in German) stated that some of the classified documents contain the secrets of “a foreign public authority,” most likely Israeli, but apparently not received from it officially. At least some of the documents are supposed to be disclosed at the end of August by order of the court, but we can already draw some conclusions about the nature of the secrets.
The German journalist Gaby Weber, who submitted the appeal for the declassification of the documents, believes that there was nuclear cooperation between West Germany, Israel and Argentina in the 1960s, and allegedly because Adolf Eichmann was hampering the German project in Argentina, he was handed over to Israel by the Germans and not in fact kidnapped by an Israeli secret service as the official Israeli story would have it.
While Weber’s theory about the kidnapping seems completely fantastical, illogical and lacking serious grounding in facts, she has nevertheless succeeded in raising a very interesting matter: the fact that there are indeed in the public domain German and Argentine documents that indicate the existence of such a German-Israeli-Argentinian nuclear triangle. Uranium was sent to Israel from Argentina and from Germany Israel apparently received important technology, and especially financing for the Israeli project in the amount of at least 500 million deutschemarks.
And whereas much of the history of the Israeli nuclear project is indeed known, the question of the financing of such an expensive undertaking has not been solved and to all intents and purposes has not been investigated.
There is a link between Germany’s support for the project and the kidnapping of Eichmann, but it appears to be completely different from what Weber fantasizes.
On 14 March 1960 West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli prime minister David Ben Gurion met in New York. German documents show that at that meeting Adenauer promised to pay Israel the sum of 200 million deutschemarks a year over 10 years, including at least 500 million for the nuclear project.
Two months later, on 11 May 1960, Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina and on 23 May Ben Gurion announced that the Nazi criminal was already in Israel.
Is it possible that the two incidents were linked?
There is no doubt that the kidnapping of Eichmann put a strain on the agreement between Adenauer and Ben Gurion: the German Chancellor was furious and suspended the first payment until the end of Eichmann’s trial. He also sent a representative to Israel who received a personal promise from Ben Gurion that there would be no “campaign of incitement” against West Germany, and an Israeli representative in Germany further promised the chancellor that Israel would not pursue the 2,000 criminals who were mentioned in the Ludwigsburg Archives.
And indeed Ben Gurion is known to have intervened in at least two matters under deliberation in court. In the words of the historian Prof. Yechiam Weitz:
“On two occasions Ben Gurion intervened in trials relating to the same subject: our relations with West Germany. The first time he requested that the prosecution not raise in court the matter of Hans Globke, a close advisor to Chancellor Adenauer who had been involved in the passing of the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ during the Nazi period. The second time it was at the initiative of Hausner. In a measure that was characterized as ‘an irregular procedure’ he sent him the draft of the opening speech and Ben Gurion raised a single point: the question of Germany. He requested that the word ‘Nazi’ be added after the word ‘Germany’ [in Hebrew the adjective follows the substantive it modifies – trans.] in order to distinguish between Nazi Germany and the new Germany, which in his eyes was ‘different.’ ” (Haaretz, 23 Jan. 2009)
Ben Gurion knew very well that Globke was a Nazi criminal who obviously was connected to Eichmann and also that the German establishment at that time was swarming with Nazi criminals like him. In other words, at that time it was certainly too early to speak of a “different” Germany.
In her book on the Eichmann trial, Prof. Hanna Yablonka entitles the chapter that deals with the then prime minister “Ben Gurion, an enigma.” The historian points to some of Ben Gurion’s contradictory behaviour but she does not resolve the contradiction.
The most logical explanation, which is supported by additional facts, is that the kidnapping of Eichmann should be seen as a mutiny by the head of the intelligence services, Isser Harel, against Ben Gurion. That is, the “head” attempted to sabotage Israel’s rapprochement with West Germany. According to this analysis the kidnapping of Eichmann was a maneuver against Ben Gurion, who was then forced to walk between raindrops in order to control the damage that had been done to his policy towards Germany.
Without going into all the facts that support this theory, we would do well to point out that not only is it clear that there was no formal discussion within the government to authorize the kidnapping and even Ben Gurion looked surprised. Indeed in 1966 Uri Paz, a journalist who was close to Isser Harel, published a fascinating novel that constitutes an indictment of Ben Gurion for his relations with Germany. “Demoncracy – the rule of Satan” is the title of the novel (The “demon” can be read in Hebrew also as Dimona, the place in the Negev desert where the nuclear reactor was built), which combines fiction with provable facts. “Satan” is Ben Gurion, who was willing to decree Nazi vermin to be whitewashed and to permit Germany to develop a nuclear bomb program of its own in return for aid in the amount of 500 million deutschemarks and German technicians for Dimona.
My findings so far in the German archives do indeed corroborate the claims about financial assistance, and an interview with a German nuclear scientist who was sent to Israel during the 1960s strengthens the suspicion that the Israel availed itself of the expertise of German physicists who had worked on the Nazi nuclear project.
Even if there if only a part of the theory that has been proposed here is true, not only does that put the Eichmann trial in a different light, but it could also explain why both Israel and Germany are keeping documents on the kidnapping of Eichmann secret.
Below is a link to a conversation I had on the subject on Moshe Timor’s program “Shishi Ishi” [personal Friday – trans.] on Israeli state radio’s Station 2 on 7 August 2010: (in Hebrew)
http://www.esnips.com/doc/52f1d5be-43b6-4030-ae11-567e210ef008/se-eichmann-timor
Peace summit or the height of folly?: The Guardian CoF
Can an activists’ peace summit at the top of Mont Blanc help bridge the abyss of Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Peace activists from Israel’s University of Haifa on the summit of Mont Blanc. Photograph: AP
With Israel-Palestine diplomacy leading nowhere and the situation steadily worsening in recent years, even the most optimistic doves have had their wings clipped by the hawks who prey on every fledgling initiative, often before it has had a chance to hatch.
Against the backdrop of this political vacuum, a group of young Israelis and Palestinians (all of whom are citizens of Israel) have quite literally held their own peace summit – at the top of Mont Blanc.
Backed by the Swiss NGO Coexistences, the eight young men and women scaled Europe’s highest mountain after months of rigorous training as part of an initiative called Breaking the Ice, which seeks to thaw relations between ordinary Palestinians and Israelis. According to the organisers, mountaineering was chosen because it is an activity that requires a lot of trust and co-operation. Mountains, being imposing and seemingly insurmountable edifices, are also highly symbolic. This is not the first time Palestinians and Israelis have joined forces: for example, a similar group journeyed all the way to Antarctica in 2003 – but their gesture has largely been lost in the wilderness of conflict.
Drawing on an all together different set of symbols, sceptics may wonder whether such small-scale stunts aren’t slightly futile. Do those intrepid activists have their heads so high in the clouds that they’ve lost sight of the conflict grinding on relentlessly in the valley below?
At this point, it may be worth asking what the young people involved took from their experience. Well, some were sceptical too, to begin with. “I used to think this sort of programme romanticised the reality, and the reality is not good,” admits Lobna Agbaria, a Palestinian-Israeli law student. “But I live in this reality; this is the situation, so what can I do to help improve [it]?” The experience of such intimate proximity also helped to reshape their perspectives. “This project actually changed my political opinion,” acknowledges Tomer Ketter, an Israeli postgraduate student of geophysics. “Now that I have real friends who are Arabs, I think it opens an entire other world to me.”
Herein lies the most valuable contributions of such efforts. What critics fail to grasp is that those initiatives do not pretend to entertain grand objectives; they are not about waving a wand to magically bring peace to the Holy Land. In a world where Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs rarely meet, any effort to build a modicum of understanding and empathy is welcome. In this regard, the idea behind a group like Combatants for Peace is doubly poignant. It not only brings together Israelis and Palestinians in a common cause, its members are all ex-fighters who have laid down their arms and reject violence, thereby dispelling two common stereotypes: that the other side only understands the language of violence, and that they cannot work with one another.
Some do find that dialogue and co-operation for their own sake are not enough. “I think most efforts [like these] are to be praised,” says Labeeb Baransi, a Palestinian who left his native land to study in the UK and now runs an ICT company in Jordan. “If they carried out the joint effort to support a two-state solution I do feel they have just wasted a tremendous amount of energy. They would have gained a great deal more if they spent it on promoting the one state solution.” Baransi advocates a single secular state for all Israelis and Palestinians, and founded a Facebook group which counts Palestinians, Israelis, Arabs, Jews and other supporters as members.
With top-level talks consistently proving to be dismal failures, direct contact between Israelis and Palestinians can establish grassroots dialogue and trust. Diplomacy has failed to deliver partly because of the disparity in power between the two sides and the absence of visionary and honest leadership, but also because of the almost complete lack of understanding between people. That is why I have, over the years, become convinced that Israelis and Palestinians need to start a bottom-up peace movement based on dialogue and civil rights issues: both sides are increasingly finding common cause over civil rights questions, as evidenced during regular joint protests held in Bil’in.
Although I am in favour of a bi-national, secular state eventually emerging, I do not hold out much hope of any final resolution – one or two states – occurring any time soon. For the time being, the most we can hope for is to help Palestinians and Israelis learn to walk together. As Heskel Nathaniel, who led the 2003 Antarctica expedition, put it: “We want people to see that even enemies can find a way to do great things if they decide to take on the challenge together.”
UNRWA calls Israeli TV portrayal of Palestinian refugees a ‘stack of lies’: Haaretz
UN relief agency lashes out at Israel Broadcasting Authority for airing on national TV what it branded a dishonest portrayal of the organization.
The United Nations’ relief agency for Palestinian refugees, lashed out Tuesday at the Israel Broadcasting Authority for airing what it called a a dishonest portrayal of the organization on Saturday in “Ro’im Olam” on Channel 1 television.
The news magazine’s anchor and the journalist behind the segment have fired back.
Right-wing journalist David Bedein’s “For the Nakba”, UNRWA said, contains numerous inaccuracies about its operations in Palestinian refugee camps and educational institutions. It depicts large graffiti that lionize Palestinian suicide bombers and includes an interview with Palestinian children who profess a desire to become “martyrs.”
“Ro’im Olam” presenter Yaakov Ahimeir sought comment from UNRWA’s Christopher Gunness, who watched the segment before it aired. Gunness said he warned of numerous inaccuracies, which were never corrected.
In a letter written prior to the airing, Gunness said UNRWA schools do not contain murals of suicide bombers, and that the textbooks shown are for use by 12th graders, while UNRWA schools do not go beyond ninth grade.
Gunness said students making derogatory statements about Israel are not enrolled at UNRWA schools, whose pupils are identifiable by their school uniforms. The spokesperson added that UNRWA does not sanction events that officially mark the Nakba, as the segment suggested. Gunness denied the film’s assertion that a student in an agency-run school was an 18-year-old suicide bomber.
Gunness accused Channel 1 of airing “a stack of lies,” and said editing the errors was “a matter of integrity.”
In response, Ahimeir said: “Chris Gunness viewed the film before the broadcast, and his response was broadcast in full.” After he sent me additional material, Ahimeir said, “This was also read on the air by me as UNRWA’s response.”
Bedein denied Gunness’ claims. Palestinian kids, he said, study the materials from the textbooks at a young age, and the mural of the suicide bomber was seen at the entrance of the UNRWA school at the Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.