Unlimited "Israel, What the fuck" thread

[Junkenstein]

So there's a decent story regarding Israel quite often and I've just been shoving them in random news. Flicking back over the past few months, there's pretty much no end of strange shit so I'll start shoving it here instead.

Today, we have this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25108559

A Hollywood producer behind hit films such as Pretty Woman and Fight Club has said he spied for Israel in support of its nuclear programme.

Arnon Milchan, who was born in what is now Israel, gave an account to Israeli investigative programme Uvda.

Mr Milchan said he performed dozens of clandestine missions on behalf of Israel after he was recruited by Shimon Peres, now Israel's president.

"I did it for my country and I'm proud of it," he said.

Mr Milchan told Uvda that rumours of his own involvement with Israel had swirled around Hollywood for years and he wished he had addressed them head on.

"In Hollywood, they don't like working with an arms dealer, ideologically... with someone who lives off selling machine guns and killing," he said. "Instead of someone talking to me about a script, I had to spend half an hour explaining that I'm not an arms dealer.

"I'm not an arms dealer, I don't sell guns, I don't sell rockets," he added. "If people knew how many times I risked my life, back and forth, again and again, for my country."

Like many of these stories, I have no idea how much shady shit is also involved here beyond "A lot". What you can see is the reaction to the story. Is the USA pissed and demanding extradition? Behave. The man is clearly crazy and there is no history of people in entertainment being involved in espionage. There will certainly be no collusion of any sort or any money changing hands either. 

The other scary thing is the straight up bug eyed "I'M RIGHT" conviction. From the Knesset to the frontier settlers this attitude scares the shit out of me. If his claims have any substance then I'm sure he'll have been convinced he did the correct thing. Which could have some unpleasant repercussions in the future.

[Junkenstein]

In contrast, stuff like this is pretty routine:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25111227

sraeli security forces have killed three suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank, according to Israel's Shin Bet internal intelligence agency.

Two of the suspected militants were from a Salafi jihadist network that was active in the area, Shin Bet said.

Members of the movement are thought to operate in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

According to security agents, the network was planning attacks on Israel in the coming days.

And always pops up around tales like the above. Like the above, there's probably much more going on here than I (can) know about. As such, I'll just try and be fair about this and keep a running death toll from tales featured in this thread.

Israeli - 0
Palestinian - 3

[Junkenstein]

What's new?
This is new.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25211759

A senior commander of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah has been killed near Beirut, the group says.

Hassan Lakkis was "assassinated" near his home in Hadath - 7km (4.3 miles) south-east of the Lebanese capital, Hezbollah TV channel Al-Manar said.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for his death but Israel denies the accusation.

The BBC's Jim Muir, in Beirut, says little is known publicly about Lakkis, but he was reputedly close to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The news comes a day after Hassan Nasrallah said Saudi Arabia was behind last month's bombings outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut.

Got to give Israel the benefit of the doubt here considering this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25210712

The head of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah has said Saudi Arabia was behind last month's bombings outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut.

Hassan Nasrallah told Lebanon's OTV television the attack was linked to the Saudi intelligence services.

The Sunni jihadist group Abdullah Azzam Brigades said it was behind the double suicide bombing which killed 25 people.

In the interview, Hassan Nasrallah said the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, the al-Qaeda-linked group, "has an emir and he is Saudi".

He said he believed that the group was "linked to the Saudi intelligence services".

The story here seems to be "Listen to Israel make a lot of noise while totally ignoring the probable culprits". Good luck determining the responsible people too as if it was SA actors they could be all sorts of nationalities. When was the last time you even thought about Chechen rebels before Boston?

It's likely and probable that Israel had a hand in intel gathering though so while the trigger was probably pulled by a third party, I doubt there's many tears in the Knesset over the regrettable incident.

[Junkenstein]

Possibly poisoned man possibly not poisoned:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25205170

A team of French scientists probing the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 do not believe he was poisoned, according to leaks from their report.

They have reportedly concluded he died after a "generalised infection".

A previous report by Swiss scientists said tests on his body showed "unexpected high activity" of polonium.

This "moderately" supported the theory, long believed by many Palestinians, that he was poisoned, the report said.

Arafat's widow, Suha Arafat, told reporters in Paris she was "upset by these contradictions by the best European experts on the matter."

The Swiss say yes, France say no. Nothing suspicious here.

Last month, a forensic expert said that the levels of radioactive polonium found in Mr Arafat's remains by the Swiss scientists were 18 to 36 times higher than normal.

Nothing suspicious at all.

[Cain]

The idea that the Saudis would not have least asked the Israelis for actionable intelligence on this Hezbollah commander seems somewhat unlikely.

Saudi Arabia isn't exactly known for its subtle information gathering processes, rather belonging to the school of "hope they're a Sunni nutcase, or else bring a briefcase full of cash" school of intelligence acquisition.

To be fair, people routinely overestimate the cunning and skill of Mossad, who are convinced Iran is one or two years away from a nuke, every year, for the past twenty years.  But they at least know how to go about infiltrating agents, turning people...actually managing humint, even if Mossad have not exactly covered themselves in glory in the past decade.  It's not like Mossad has really gotten ahead of any actual security threat posed to Israel in the past decade, instead preferring to whack the occasional militant with obviously stolen passports and possibly kill an old man with polonium.

I mean, shit, I could do half of that.

But predicting the Arab Spring, the increasingly Global Jihadist worldview of successors to Fatah, the 2006 Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead etc....yeah.

[Junkenstein]

Israel news with no deaths?

OK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-25672377

A global advertising company that denied its child-obesity campaign promoted "fat-shaming" has caved to public pressure and pulled a series of ads, it appears.

JCDecaux asked members of the public to post humorous images to its Hebrew-language Facebook page, putting the most popular images up on billboards around Israel.

"When your child gains weight, his smile becomes smaller," read one in Tel Aviv - showing an overweight child with enlarged cheeks and a tiny mouth. Another showed a cartoon of three children on a one side of a see-saw but just one on the other, with the headline "one in every four children in Israel is obese".

I'm sure we all remember what an effective tool shame is for changing people's behaviour for the better.

[Random Probability]

Then we have this little gem:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/14/politics/u-s-israel-kerry-remarks/

(CNN) -- U.S. officials reacted angrily Tuesday to comments attributed to Israel's defense minister criticizing Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians.
The derisive remarks appeared in a popular daily Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronot, and reflect Moshe Yaalon's skepticism of the Kerry-led U.S. efforts "both in private conversations in Israel and in the U.S."
"American Secretary of State John Kerry, who turned up here determined and acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor, cannot teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians," Yaalon said, according to the paper.

And then the "apology":

"Israel and the United States share a common goal to advance the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians led by Secretary Kerry. We appreciate Secretary Kerry's many efforts towards that end," the release said. "The defense minister had no intention to cause any offense to the secretary, and he apologizes if the secretary was offended by words attributed to the minister."

So basically Mr. Yaalon said "Kerry is an idiot", to which the Israeli government then followed with "sorry if that offended you".

Judging from what my Israeli acquaintances have to say about the Obama government, their overall opinion has slipped from "stupid" to "abysmally stupid", at least insofar as the Middle East is concerned.

I haven't been watching Obama administration policies in the Middle East at all until the past few months, but the word "clueless" comes to mind.  Are they so hamstrung by Affordable Care that they can no longer tell their ass from their elbow?  What can they possibly be thinking?

[Cain]

The White House are pretty hopeless...but the Israeli government has also been very hostile to the White House since the word "go".  Almost irrationally so, I mean, this is all pre-Arab Spring stuff I'm thinking of, and they were being mindlessly antagonistic towards Obama.

Probably because the Israeli and American right are joined at the hip, and the cross-pollination of memes has equally unhinged them, and having being used to getting their own way when Bush was President they weren't keen on Obama's NSC people, who are far more "America-first" types.  Obama can't be trusted to secure Israeli interests, and furthermore serves as an example to other American politicians who are less than supportive of Israeli policies.

[Junkenstein]

It seems that the possibility of any kind of two-state solution is pretty much dead:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26085337

The Israeli military has removed Palestinian activists protesting at a deserted village in the West Bank.

Dozens of demonstrators had spent a week camping at Ein Hijleh in the Jordan Valley.

The final status of the area is a key point of contention in US-brokered peace talks with Israel.

The raid took place as aid agencies expressed alarm at a rise in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian property, particularly in the Jordan Valley.

The map emphasises just how much of a problem the settlements have now caused. They won't be surrendered and they will fight tooth and nail to stay. More land grabbing at 11.

[Cain]

And if Israel did ever give them up, you'd no doubt see settler terrorism occuring, both against Palestinians and the Israeli government (remember what happened to Rabin?  I bet every Israeli leader since has).

[Junkenstein]

Oh, undoubtedly. It's a situation which is almost guaranteed to be self perpetuating.

I've been reading up on the longer term goals of the Israeli planning department. To say "religiously motivated" would be something of an understatement. There appears to be a desire in the long term to reclaim Israel's' apparent historic borders which could lead to all sorts of fun as the Euphrates seems to feature highly and large chunks of Iraq are apparently required. Thar be lunacy here.

[Cain]

Bump

http://www.juancole.com/2014/04/settlers-christian-village.html

Although the majority of these attacks have occurred in the West Bank, Christians in Jerusalem and throughout Israeli have also come under attack. As a series of 2012 Haaretz articles pointed out, Christian clergy who dress in 'priestly garb' are frequently spat on as they walk through Jerusalem's Old City; as one priest commented 'it's almost impossible to pass through Jaffa Gate without this happening'. In fact, these anti-Christian attacks have become so frequent that in 2012 the Catholic leadership of Palestine issued a statement entitled, Declaration of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, in which they urged the Israeli authorities to address the 'teaching of contempt' in Israeli schools. Suggesting that, 'the time has come for the authorities to act and to put an end to this senseless violence and to ensure a "teaching of respect" in schools for all those who call this land home.'

However, the Deir Rafat attack also highlights the contempt that the settler movement and radical right hold for the peace process. Other areas of the Monastery at Deir Rafat were tagged with the slogans, 'America is Nazi Germany' and 'the price to pay for the peace agreement', which suggests that the settler movement in some way associates attacks on Christian sites with revenge against America or the international community.

The settlers are really getting out of control.  There's a really nasty undercurrent to Jewish fundamentalism, it's disdainful of women, non-Jews and "the West" in general.  Sounds kinda like the fundamentalist version of another popular religion in that part of the world.

But most interestingly, it seems to absolutely hate America.  And it's bleeding over into the popular culture.  Consider the absolutely hysterical attacks on Obama from Israeli commentators and protestors.

[LMNO]

And yet, we continue to give Israel billions of dollars.

[Cain]

Nothing new there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein#Iran.E2.80.93Iraq_War

You'll note the prevalance of the Bush family in these deals.  Just coincidence...well in this context, at least.

[Junkenstein]

Related:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-27128902

Rival Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas announce reconciliation deal

More to follow.

Just broke, but almost certainly worth a look at when more details are out.