Israel – Page 8 – Antiwar.com Blog

Say What You Will About Cynthia McKinney…

But no matter what one thinks of Ms. McKinney, she backs her convictions not just with her own money but her very skin: she went as a human rights advocate aboard a Gaza relief boat. And this morning, that boat was rammed three times by an Israeli patrol vessel, leaving it damaged and forcing it to take a detour in Tyre, Lebanon.

Sometimes former US Rep. and recent Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney comes across a little…ah…wild-eyed. I do happen to agree with most of her foreign policy positions, and she even seems to prefer a hands-off approach to Zimbabwe and, surprisingly, liberal cause cÃ©lÃ¨bre Darfur. I do find her positions on trade to be poorly informed but this isn’t kookery — most politicians hold similarly dirigiste views.

“I would call it ramming. Let’s just call it as it is,” McKinney said. “Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and once on the side.

“Our mission was a peaceful mission, but our mission was thwarted by the Israelis, the aggressiveness of the Israeli military.”

No other current or former US Congressperson has done something similar, as far as I know. Dennis Kucinich is calling for a United nations inquiry, and I suppose that’s a nice gesture. But Ms. McKinney got herself on board a ship to steward relief supplies to the suffering civilians of a war zone beseiged by weapons her own country financed. Maybe it takes a little wackiness to get us some real activism.

Extrude Mahmoud

In an interview in Der Spiegel, former Mossad agent and current cabinet minister, Rafi Eitan suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might find himself in front of an International Criminal Court in The Hague if he doesn’t watch himself. Anyone with even modest knowledge of the 81-year-old Eiten’s activities, in particular his role in Adolf Eichmann’s capture, can’t rule this out as idle speculation, but as my friend Tom wondered, “why would Eitan say this publicly?”

Sure, Ahmadinejad must already figure he is one of the top picks on Mossad’s hit list, so this simply can’t be a clumsy message to the yappy Iranian leader. Besides, Mossad gets off on well-planned and highly secretive operations anyway. Why would Eitan blow the surprise for his former bosses if high profile abductions were still high on their docket? Hmm….

I might’ve glossed over this morning’s story as politics as usual if it were not for last week’s revelation, also by Eitan, that Mossad allowed Nazi witch doctor Josef Mengele get away when agents in Buenos Aires had the opportunity to nab him. Of course, that wasn’t a botched effort: Mossad had to let Mengele escape so they could be assured of completing the more important Eichmann abduction.

Now, I’m not a psychologist, nor do I generally play one on the Internet, but this paroxysm of Eitanmania is too juicy not to analyze. All fisherman great and small have a fish-that-got-away story, and the Mengele tale smells like Eitan’s. Could the Ahmadinejad story likewise be the ramblings of a famous fisherman, whose best days are long over but likes to make people believe he has live bait on his rusty but still sufficiently bent hook? Or is it possible that someday we’ll learn that Mossad did try to kidnap Ahmadinejad, and failed. I only hope we don’t have to wait 50 years for that fish story.

A tip of the pen to Tom Walls for the headline and this morning’s news story.

Should the Israelis Arrest Benny Morris?

As Justin Raimondo points out in his article this morning, “A Brazen Evil,” noted Israeli scholar Benny Morris wrote an op/ed in Friday’s New York Times, “Using Bombs to Stave Off War,” in which he advocated that the U.S. government or the Israeli government attack Iran. In his op/ed, Morris wrote, “if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war â€” either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.”

Why is this quote so striking? Because Morris implicitly admits that the Israeli government has nuclear weapons, even though that government has never so admitted. In 1986, Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, revealed that fact and for his troubles, was kidnapped by the Israeli government, tried for treason in secret, and forced to spend 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement. His treason? Revealing Israel’s nuclear weapons program. It’s true that he violated a non-disclosure agreement, but that’s not treason. Presumably the treason is that he revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program, with the non-disclosure agreement being irrelevant.

Guess what? In last Friday’s New York Times, Benny Morris revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program. So shouldn’t he be charged with treason too?

Did Israelis Leak New Spy Info to Thwart War?

Over at the American Conservative magazine’s blog, Antiwar.com columnist and former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reports that Israeli sources have indicated to him that the recent leak to the FBI about the new-old Israeli spy case came from inside the Israeli government toward the end of thwarting Ehud Olmert, Dick Cheney and the War Party’s plans to expand the Middle Eastern slaughter to Iran â€“ and that there are more spies to be revealed…

Israeli sources are reporting that the FBI investigation of the Ben-Ami Kadish spy case resulted from a leak coming from inside the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. …

[Yosef] Yagur, who is now retired and living in Israel, was Kadishâ€™s case officer, handling the cases of both him and Jonathan Pollard. Before the anonymous leak of information, the FBI had no idea that Kadish had been a spy for Israel. Now it is investigating a number of US citizens, including an individual who held very senior security positions in the Clinton and Bush White Houses.

How many different people fit the definition, “an individual who held very senior security positions in the Clinton and Bush White Houses”? Can’t be too many… More to the point, why would the Israeli government do such a thing as out their own agents (albeit past ones) to the FBI? According to Giraldi,

The leak of the information at the present time is believed to be linked to proposed closed congressional hearings at the end of this month in which the White House had planned to use several Israeli intelligence officers to provide evidence on the alleged Syrian nuclear program that was bombed on September 6, 2007. It is now unlikely that Israeli intelligence officers will allow themselves to be questioned because they would almost certainly be asked about Israeli spying on the US. Vice President Dick Cheney and Olmert had apparently planned on using the congressional briefings as a launch pad to intensify diplomatic and military pressure against both Syria and Iran. It is believed that the â€œdovesâ€ in the Olmert administration who leaked the information are seeking to make a military confrontation more difficult and are hoping that negotiations, particularly with Syria, will instead take place.

According to the LA Times, these Congressional hearings about the bogus Syria-North Korea Plutonium factory were meant by the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute to be a simple “box-checking exercise,” on the great clipboard of war in the words of AEI vice-warmonger and Ahmad Chalabi champion, Danielle Pletka.

Gareth Porter’s new article explains how the installation of General Petraeus as Royal Viceroy over the Middle East and Central Asia helps smooth the road to war. Perhaps the new and forthcoming spy revelations will help push the scales back the other way.