Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew the wrath of Israel’s most influential newspapers on Thursday over what they described as lies issued by his office about a secret flight to Russia.

Netanyahu’s first major media fiasco since taking office six months ago began with a simple question many Israelis, using their leader’s nickname, asked on Monday: Where’s Bibi?

Explaining why he had disappeared from public view for a day, a statement issued on Monday by the prime minister’s office quoted his military attache as saying that Netanyahu had visited a security installation in Israel.

Israeli media reported he had toured a facility belonging to the Mossad intelligence agency.

But on Wednesday, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Netanyahu had, in fact, flown secretly to Moscow to voice concern over the possible sale of Russian anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

Keeping sensitive matters under wraps, newspaper commentators said, could be acceptable on grounds of national security.

But a false cover story? Israeli media, which have long abided by military censorship rules that force them to sit on security-related news, were outraged.

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Jason Ditz | AntiWar.com 

In an interview today on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulus,” Vice President Joe Biden said it was up to the Israeli government to decide if Iran constituted an existential threat and that the nation was “entitled” to launch a military strike against the nation if they wanted to.

Biden said the United States would make no effort to dissuade the Israeli government from launching an attack on Iran, but was deliberately evasive on the question of whether the US would provide Israel with access to Iraqi airspace for the strike, saying he didn’t want to “speculate.”

Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran over the past several years, and the right-wing coalition government elected earlier this year won largely on a platform of taking an even more hawkish position toward Iran than previous administraitons had.

At issue is Iran’s civilian nuclear program, which despite a lack of evidence Israel claims is being used to construct a nuclear weapon in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel is itself not a signatory of the NPT, and has a large, undeclared nuclear arsenal.

US defense officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have warned that a military attack on Iran, whether by the US or Israel, would be blamed on the US and would create a “disastrous backlash.”

Kurt Nimmo | InfoWars.com 

A press release buried on the FEMA website, dated June 30, 2009, announces a meeting between FEMA administrator Craig Fugate and Maj. Gen. Yair Golan of the Israeli Defense Forces Home Front Command. “I look forward to working with my Israeli counterpart as co-chair of an emergency management work group to improve emergency management practices in both countries,” said Fugate. “These partnerships are critical in ensuring that we are incorporating best practices and also working towards greater public preparedness.”

The Israeli National Emergency Management Authority and FEMA partnership was established under “an emergency management work stream workgroup established under a 2007 Memorandum of Understanding with DHS,” according to the press release. FEMA representatives attended the national preparedness exercise Turning Point 3 in Israel on June 1, 2009, and Israel sent observers to the TOPOFF 4 national exercise in the United States, as well as personnel to participate in FEMA emergency management training.

TOPOFF, or Top Officials, is billed as “the nation’s premier terrorism preparedness exercise” by the Department of Homeland Security. “Thousands of federal, state, territorial, and local officials engage in various activities as part of a robust, full-scale simulated response to a multi-faceted threat,” the DHS website explains.

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Google | AP

The Israeli navy intercepted a ship carrying foreign peace activists trying to break a blockade of Gaza on Tuesday and forced it to sail to an Israeli port, the military said.

A statement said the Greek-registered freighter Arion ignored a radio message from the Israeli military saying it would not be allowed to enter Gaza waters and ordering it to turn back.

The statement said naval personnel boarded the small vessel without any shots being fired.

The military said those on board would be handed over to immigration authorities on arrival in the southern port of Ashdod, and humanitarian cargo would be trucked into the Gaza Strip after a security check. The ship arrived at Ashdod port after nightfall.

An earlier statement by the voyage’s organizers, the Free Gaza Movement, said the vessel, renamed the Spirit of Humanity, left the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Monday bound for Gaza with three tons of medical supplies.

The 20 passengers include former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and other activists from Britain, Ireland, Bahrain and Jamaica.

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Lyndon Johnson ordered cover-up: Former navy lawyer

Toronto Star | Oct. 22, 2003. 10:43 PM

Lyndon Johnson ordered cover-up: Former navy lawyer

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - A former navy lawyer who helped lead the military
investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34
American servicemen says former president Lyndon Johnson and his defence
secretary, Robert McNamara, ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident
was an accident.

In a signed affidavit released at a Capitol Hill news conference, retired
captain Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the navy’s
inquiry to “conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

Boston was senior legal counsel to the navy’s original 1967 review of the
attack. He said in the sworn statement that he stayed silent for years
because he’s a military man, and “when orders come, I follow them.”

He said he felt compelled to “share the truth” following the publication of
a recent book, The Liberty Incident, which concluded the attack was
unintentional.

The USS Liberty was an electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was
cruising international waters off the Egyptian coast June 8, 1967. Israeli
planes and torpedo boats opened fire on the Liberty at what became known as
the outbreak of the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War.

In addition to the 34 Americans killed, more than 170 were wounded.

Israel has long maintained that the attack was a case of mistaken identity,
an explanation that the Johnson administration did not formally challenge.
Israel claimed its forces thought the ship was an Egyptian vessel and
apologized to the United States.

After the attack, a navy court of inquiry concluded there was insufficient
information to make a judgment about why Israel attacked the ship, stopping
short of assigning blame or determining whether it was an accident.

It was “one of the classic all-American cover-ups,” said retired admiral
Thomas Moorer, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who spent a year
investigating the attack as part of an independent panel he formed with
other former military officials. The panel also included a former U.S.
ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins.

“Why would our government put Israel’s interests ahead of our own?” Moorer
asked from his wheelchair at the news conference. He was chief of naval
operations at the time of the attack.

Moorer, who has long held that the attack was a deliberate act, wants
Congress to investigate.
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David Bromwich | HuffingtonPost.com

Today is the sixth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, she was run over by an armor-plated Caterpillar bulldozer, a machine sold by the U.S. to Israel, the armor put in place for the purpose of knocking down homes without damage to the machine. Rachel Corrie was 23 years old, from Seattle; a sane, articulate, and dedicated American who had studied with care the methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. At the time that she was run over, and then backed over again, she was wearing a luminous orange jacket and holding a megaphone. There is a photograph of her talking to the soldier of the Israel Defense Forces, in the cabin of his bulldozer, not long before he did it. None of the eyewitnesses believed that the killing was accidental. Perhaps the soldier was tired of the peace workers; it was that kind of day. Perhaps, in some part of himself, he guessed that he was living at the beginning of a period of impunity.

The Israeli government never produced the investigation it promised into the death of Rachel Corrie (as her parents indicate in a statement published today). The inquiry urged by her congressional representative, Adam Smith, brought no result from the American state department under Condoleezza Rice. Her story was lost for a while in the grand narrative of the American launching of the war against Iraq. Thoroughly lost, and for a reason. The  rules of engagement America employed in Iraq were taught to our soldiers, as Dexter Filkins revealed, by officers of the IDF; the U.S. owed a debt to Israel for knowledge of the methods of destruction; and we were using the same Caterpillar machines against Iraqi homes. An inquiry into the killing of Rachel Corrie was hardly likely, given the burden of that debt and that association.

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Paul Joseph Watson | PrisonPlanet.com 

The cousin of alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah has been exposed as a long standing Israeli spy in yet another startling intelligence connection between the Zionist state and the attacks on New York and Washington.

A New York Times report details how Ali al-Jarrah was a highly valued spy for Israel for no less than 25 years, sending reports and taking clandestine photographs of Palestinian groups and Hezbollah since 1983.

According to the article, “From his home in this Bekaa Valley village, Mr. Jarrah, 50, traveled often to Syria and to south Lebanon, where he photographed roads and convoys that might have been used to transport weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, investigators say. He spoke with his handlers by satellite phone, receiving “dead drops” of money, cameras and listening devices. Occasionally, on the pretext of a business trip, he traveled to Belgium and Italy, received an Israeli passport, and flew to Israel, where he was debriefed at length, investigators say.”

 To emphasize how highly regarded he was by Israel, Israeli officials even assured Jarrah that his town would be spared at the outset of the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict and that it was safe for him to stay at home.

“I never suspected him before,” said Raja Mosleh, the Palestinian doctor who was his partner for years in a school and health clinic. “But now, after linking all the incidents together, I feel he’s 100 percent guilty.”

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Reuters/Yahoo.uk

Israel is involved in a covert war of sabotage inside Iran to try to delay Tehran’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, a British newspaper said on Tuesday, quoting a former CIA agent and intelligence experts.

An intelligence source in the Middle East told Reuters last year Israel planned to target Iranian nuclear scientists with letter bombs and poisoned packages and had set off explosions in Iran. Analysts offered similar accounts and said such tactics would be credible, but no confirmation has been available.

Some analysts caution that reports of such a “dirty war” may form part of a psychological warfare campaign to unsettle Iran.

The intelligence source told Reuters that Israeli agents were working with Western governments and firms doing business with Tehran, whose Islamist leadership is a sworn enemy of Israel but denies accusations its nuclear programme has a military purpose.

Israel’s government, widely assumed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, declines all comment on such reports.

“Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran’s nuclear programme,” Britain’s Daily Telegraph said on Tuesday. “It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime’s illicit weapons project, the experts say.”

Quoting intelligence experts and an unnamed former CIA agent, the newspaper said Israel’s “decapitation” strategy had targeted members of Iran’s atomic programme, hoping to set back the country’s nuclear ambitions without resorting to war.
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Michael Chossudovsky | GlobalResearch.ca 

A very large delivery of  US weaponry to Israel consisting of 3,000 tons of “ammunition” is scheduled to sail to Israel. The size and nature of the shipments are described as “unusual”: 

“Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot,” one broker said, on condition of anonymity. 

“This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven’t seen much of it quoted in the market over the years,” he added.

“Shipping brokers in London who have specialized in moving arms for the British and U.S. military in the past said such ship charters to Israel were rare. (Reuters, Jan 10, 2009) 

The Pentagon has entrusted a Greek merchant shipping company to deliver the weapons to Israel:  

“The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tons of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.

The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as “ammunition” on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January. 

A “hazardous material” designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.(Ibid) 

It is worth noting that a similar unusually large shipment of  US ordinance to Israel was scheduled in early December:  

“Tender documents indicate that the German ship hired by the US in early December also carried a massive cargo of weapons that weighed over 2.6 million kg [2600 tons] and filled up to 989 standard 20-foot containers to Ashdod from North Carolina.” (Press TV, 10 Jan 2009)

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Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com 

Israeli Prime Minister Demanded Bush Halt Lecture to Stop Gaza Truce Vote

Taking a short break from lashing out at the international media for reporting the growing civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke in detail about the events leading up to the US abstention from the United Nations Security Council’s vote on the Gaza Strip ceasefire.

“Early Friday morning the secretary of state was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it.” Olmert said. “I said ‘get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call.”

A beaming Olmert then described telling President Bush “the US cannot possibly vote in favor of this resolution,” and spoke with pride of how embarrassed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was at having to abstain from voting for a resolution she helped to organize and gather support for.

The US abstention shocked diplomats, and made it easier for Israel to dismiss the ceasefire out of hand. At the time of the vote Rice declared that the United States supported the draft but could not vote for it because of their “special relationship” with Israel. Just days later Rice too was lashing out at the resolution as “unacceptable.”

Cynthia McKinney | GlobalResearch.ca

We don’t see the images. They are neatly censored from our view in this country. But everywhere else around the world the carnage that is Gaza is being seen and the people are revolted by what they see.

They see dead babies, decapitated bodies, defenseless relief workers killed. Maimed men, makeshift morgues, mortified mothers.

They see exploding white phosphorus shells, cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions.

They see what is reportedly the world’s fourth most powerful military using all of its power against a defenseless people.

In fact, they are witnesses to 15 days of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

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SeattleTimes.com 

Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter’s notebook.

The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.

Samuel J. Wurzelbacher (WUR’-zuhl-bah-kur) says he’ll spend 10 days covering the fighting.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants to let Israel’s “‘Average Joes’ share their story.”

Wurzelbacher gained attention during the final weeks of the campaign when he asked Barack Obama about his tax plan.

He later joined Republican John McCain on the campaign trail. At one stop, he agreed with a McCain supporter who asked if he believed a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel.

Reprehensor | 911blogger.com

(James Bamford has done another great deed for the public by revealing the extent of the NSA’s wiretapping on U.S. soil, and how the NSA sub-contracts the vast majority of its work to Israeli high-tech firms bristling with “former” Israeli military intelligence agents, and in the case of Verint, a company with serious corruption issues. It was Bamford who popularized the existence of Operation Northwoods in his 2001 book, Body of Secrets. In The Shadow Factory, he sheds light in the secret rooms of Verizon and AT&T, and shows the NSA to be a very poor custodian of the nation’s security.

On October 14, 2008, James Bamford talked about some of the shocking research in his new book on Democracy Now!, with Amy Goodman;

Along with the mass surveillance being conducted on all U.S. users of AT&T and Verizon by Narus and Verint, (according to Bamford), two other Israeli-owned companies, Amdocs and NICE Systems, have their fingers in the wiretapping pie as well.
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Alan Bock | AntiWar.com 

My early reaction to the Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip is perhaps more U.S.-centered than some others’. But the most significant aspect of the U.S. response, implicitly acknowledged in most news reports and commentary, is precisely that nobody really expects the U.S. to respond in anything other than a ritualistic fashion. The world and, at some level, most American leaders recognize that the U.S. can do little or nothing to affect the situation on the ground.

If there is a truce or a new territorial dispensation following the invasion (depending on its outcome, which is more likely to be mixed than decisive), the U.S. may bless it by holding a meeting in the Imperial City on the Potomac. But the capacity of the U.S. to influence the outcome of the conflict turns out to be marginal at best. And there is little stomach in the U.S. to insert the country into that conflict just now.

Thus, we have had ritualistic statements from the Bush administration blaming it all on Hamas. And of course Condoleezza Rice had to visit and wring her hands in public. This was predictable for an administration that has for the most part been a knee-jerk defender of anything and everything Israel has chosen to do during the past seven-plus years. There’s a slight wrinkle here, however. The administration has focused on criticizing Hamas while not quite endorsing the Israeli attacks unreservedly. And there has been no hint of eagerness to get involved directly, either through hosting mediation meetings, putting U.S. forces on the ground (even as “peacekeepers”), or resupplying Israel’s military (although it would not be surprising if discussions about the latter have taken place quietly). There seems to be a distinct lack of eagerness to be directly involved.

As for Barack Obama, he still has the one-president-at-a-time dodge available to him for a couple more weeks, and he is taking full advantage of it.

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David Edwards & Muriel Kane | RawStory.com

An Israeli patrol boat intercepted a yacht carrying three tons of medical supplies to Gaza in international waters early on Tuesday as it attempted to run an Israeli blockade. According to those on board, the patrol boat accused the relief vessel of being involved in terrorist activity and then deliberately rammed it, forcing it to return to port in Lebanon.

Among the yacht’s 16 passengers were doctors, journalists, and human rights activists, including former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). McKinney spoke to CNN from Lebanon, telling John Roberts, “Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and once on the side.”

McKinney described as “outright disinformation” a statement by the Israeli Foreign Ministry which called the charge that the ramming was deliberate “absurd.” According to the Israeli spokesman, the boat was struck as it attempted to outmaneuver the Israeli vessel.
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PressTV.ir 

“The security and intelligence division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) recently identified a network that was spying on the country’s military organizations,” Fars news agency quoted the chief IRGC commander, Brigadier General Mohammad-Ali Jafari, as saying on Monday. ”The network’s link with Mossad was established after extensive intelligence and tracking operations.

Members of the cell were arrested during an operation,” Brig. Gen. Jafari said. He added that sophisticated communication systems and other modern equipment had been confiscated during the crackdown. According to a senior Iranian counter-espionage official, Tehran has become involved in a ’serious intelligence war’ with Tel Aviv.
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Avraham Burg was a pillar of the Israeli establishment but his new book is causing a sensation. It argues that his country is an “abused child” which has become a “violent parent”. And his solutions are radical, as he explains to Donald Macintyre

The sunlight is filtered through the roof of palm leaves, the decorative strings of apples, coloured balls and paper streamers almost motionless on this still October morning. Nearby the autumn desert flowers are blooming and a ladder up against a tree indicates that someone has recently been picking olives. Here in Nataf, the select, upper-middle-class community idyllically set in the Jerusalem Hills where Burg lives with his wife Yael, just 1,000 metres from the border with the West Bank, it’s momentarily hard to focus on the sombre subject matter of his latest, explosive book, one which by his own – if anything understated – account “singlehandedly shook the foundations of the Zionist establishment overnight”.

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By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Monday, 8 September 2008

GETTY

On August 1 the Independent reported claims made in a book by two Israeli journalists that Shaul Mofaz in 2001 called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day.

The Israeli Attorney General has been urged to launch a criminal investigation into whether Shaul Mofaz, a leading prime ministerial candidate, ordered “war crimes” to be committed when he was the military’s chief of staff.

A leading Israeli law professor has written to justice officials, calling for the investigation into claims – highlighted by The Independent last month – that during a briefing to army officers in May 2001, after the start of the second Palestinian uprising, Mr Mofaz ordered a daily “quota” of Palestinian deaths.

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