Top 10 Intelligence Agencies of the World

A governmental agency that is devoted to gather information regarding national & defence matters is called intelligence agency. Intelligence agencies also interact with other national/governmental institutions about national security & can share materials. Some intelligence agencies are also involved in assassination, arm trafficking or dealing & spreading misinformation or propaganda to support their own or their governments’ benefits. Let’s have a list of top 10 intelligence agencies of the world. This list has been published on August 24, 2011

10. RAW (India)
Formed: 21 September 1968
Headquarters: New Delhi, India
Parent agency: Prime Minister’s Office, GoI

An effective instrument of India’s national power, Research and Analysis Wing has been always in limelight due to its relation with KGB and MOSSAD. RAW agents are considered as eyes of the king. It was formed in September 1968, after the newly independent Republic of India was faced with 2 consecutive wars, the Sino-Indian war of 1962 and the India-Pakistani war of 1965, as it was evident that a credible intelligence gathering setup was lacking. Working under ‘cover’ and aggressive intelligence are its primary weapon to destabilize the target country. Its primary function is collection of external intelligence, counter-terrorism and covert operations. In addition, it is responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons, in order to advise Indian foreign policymakers. Until the creation of R&AW, the Intelligence Bureau handled both internal and external intelligence.


09. ASIS (Australia)
Formed: 13 May 1952
Headquarters: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Annual budget: $162.5m AUD (2007)
Minister responsible: Minister for Foreign Affairs

Mission is: To obtain and report information on the Southwest Pacific area. We aken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale. Render aid and assistance to locale efforts in enemy occupied territories. Step ahead for the war against terror. Australian Secret Intelligence Service is the Australian government intelligence agency responsible for collecting foreign intelligence, undertaking counter-intelligence activities and cooperation with other intelligence agencies overseas. For more than twenty years, the existence of the agency was a secret even from its own government. Its primary responsibility is gathering intelligence from mainly Asian and Pacific interests using agents stationed in a wide variety of areas. Its main purpose, as with most agencies, is to protect the country’s political and economic interests while ensuring safety for the people of Australia against national threats.


08. ISI (Pakistan)
Formed: 1948
Jurisdiction: Government of Pakistan
Headquarters: Islamabad, Pakistan

Established in 1948 for safeguarding Pakistan’s interest, monitoring opposition politician and sustaining military rule in Pakistan, ISI is one of the very well organized intelligence agency in world. Apart from its outstanding structure it is controversial too and once it was termed as state within a state due to its cross-purpose policies. The Inter-Services Intelligence was created as an independent unit in 1948 in order to strengthen the performance of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. Its success in achieving its goal without leading to a full scale invasion of Pakistan by the Soviets is a feat unmatched by any other through out the intelligence world. KGB, The best of its time, failed to counter ISI and protect Soviet interests in Central Asia. This GOLD MEDAL makes it rank higher than Mossad. It has had 0 double agents or Defectors through out its history, considering that in light of the whole war campaign it carried out from money earned by selling drugs bought from the very people it was bleeding, The Soviets. It has protected its Nuclear Weapons since formed and it has foiled Indian attempts to attain ultimate supremacy in the South-Asian theatres through internal destabilization of India. It is above All laws in its host country Pakistan ‘A State, with in a State’. Its policies are made ‘outside’ of all other institutions with the exception of The Army. Its personnel have never been caught on camera. Its is believed to have the highest number of agents worldwide, close to 10,000. The most striking thing is that its one of the least funded Intelligence agency out of the top 10 and still the strongest.


07. BND (Germany)
Formed: 1 April 1956
Employees: 6,050
Agency executive: Gehlen Organization
Parent agency: Central Intelligence Group

A lengthy track records of success by crafts of intelligence played in national and international politics. With specific means available solely to itself, the BND collects secret information which can’t be obtained otherwise. The fast supply of profound information to the political decision-makers. The Bundesnachrichtendienst is the foreign intelligence agency of the German government, under the control of the Chancellor’s Office. The BND acts as an early warning system to alert the German government to threats to German interests from abroad. It depends heavily on wiretapping and electronic surveillance of international communications. It collects and evaluates information on a variety of areas such as international terrorism, WMD proliferation and illegal transfer of technology, organized crime, weapons and drug trafficking, money laundering, illegal migration and information warfare. As Germany’s only overseas intelligence service, the BND gathers both military and civil intelligence.


06. DGSE (France)
Formed: April 2, 1982
Preceding agency: External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service
Minister responsible: Minister of Defence

One of the most extensive technological spy network ever uncovered in Europe and the United States. It is said that the agents of DGSE are not only resourceful but also the coolest cats around….Claim to fame. Directorate General for External Security is France’s external intelligence agency. Operating under the direction of the French ministry of defence, the agency works alongside the DCRI (the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence) in providing intelligence and national security, notably by performing paramilitary and counterintelligence operations abroad. The General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) of France has a rather short history compared to other intelligence agencies in the region. It was officially founded in 1982 from a multitude of prior intelligence agencies in the country. Its primary focus is to gather intelligence from foreign sources to assist in military and strategic decisions for the country. The agency employs more than five thousand people.


5. MSS – China
Jurisdiction: People’s Republic of China
Headquarters: Beijing
Parent agency: State Council

Foreign as well as domestic intelligence agency of China. It’s mission is to ensure “the security of the state through effective measures against enemy agents, spies and counter-revolutionary activities designed to sabotage or overthrow China’s socialist system.” Ministry of State Security is the security agency of the People’s Republic of China. It is also probably the Chinese government’s largest and most active foreign intelligence agency, though it is also involved in domestic security matters. Article 4 of the Criminal Procedure Law gives the MSS the same authority to arrest or detain people as regular police for crimes involving state security with identical supervision by the procuratorates and the courts. It is headquartered near the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. According to Liu Fuzhi, Secretary-General of the Commission for Politics and Law under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Minister of Public Security, the mission of the MSS is to ensure “the security of the state through effective measures against enemy agents, spies, and counter-revolutionary activities designed to sabotage or overthrow China’s socialist system.” One of the primary missions of the MSS is undoubtedly to gather foreign intelligence from targets in various countries overseas. Many MSS agents are said to have operated in the Greater China region (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) and to have integrated themselves into the world’s numerous overseas Chinese communities. At one point, nearly 120 agents who had been operating under non-official cover in the U.S., Canada, Western and Northern Europe, and Japan as businessmen, bankers, scholars, and journalists were recalled to China, a fact that demonstrates the broad geographical scope of MSS agent coverage.


04. MI6 (United Kingdom)
Formed: 1909 as the Secret Service Bureau
Jurisdiction: Government of the United Kingdom
Headquarters: Vauxhall Cross, London
Minister responsible: Foreign Secretary
Parent agency: Foreign and Commonwealth Office

If you like watching Hollywood movies then you must be knowing James Bond and his fondness of sophisticated guns, beautiful babes and Smirnoff. This British spy agency is popular for its notorious and daredevil agents with a clear understanding of what they are expected to achieve. The British have had a long public perception of an effective intelligence agency (due to the success of the unrealistic, yet entertaining, James Bond movies). This perception matches reality. MI6, the British equivalent to the CIA, has had two big advantages in staying effective: The British Official Secrets Act and D notices can often prevent leaks (which have been the bane of the CIA’s existence). Some stories have emerged. In the Cold War, MI6 recruited Oleg Penkovsky, who played a key part in the favorable resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Oleg Gordievski, who operated for a decade before MI6 extracted him via Finland. The British were even aware of Norwood’s activities, but made the decision not to tip their hand. MI6 also is rumored to have sabotaged the Tu-144 supersonic airliner program by altering documents and making sure they fell into the hands of the KGB.


3. CIA – America
Formed: September 18, 1947
Employees: 20,000
Parent agency: Central Intelligence Group

CIA is the largest of the intelligence agencies and is responsible for gathering data from other countries that could impact U.S. policy. Familiar name between kids and movie lovers. We can notice almost flicks of Hollywood suffering from CIA syndrome but in real life epitome in its field. On it’s 50th anniversary, President Clinton said: By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage. Indeed, no one knows that what CIA really does. It is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers. The CIA also engages in covert activities at the request of the President of the United States of America. The CIA’s primary function is to collect information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and to advise public policymakers. The agency conducts covert operations and paramilitary actions, and exerts foreign political influence through its Special Activities Division. It has failed to control terrorism activities including 9/11, Not even a single top level Al-Queda leader captured own its own in the past 9 years – ‘they missed 1 Million’ Soviet troops marching into Afghanistan’. Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, Have the found them yet? -Number of defectors/ double agents numbers close to a thousand. On 50th anniversary of CIA, President Clinton said ”By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage. Indeed, no one knows that what CIA really does”. Highly funded and technologically most advanced Intelligence set-up in the world.


02. KGB - FSB (Russia)
Formed: March 1954 (KGB) - Formed: 3 April, 1995 (FSB)
Employees: 350,000
Headquarters: Lubyanka Square
Preceding agency: KGB

One of the most dreaded player in the game of spying. It lives on the principle of – It is not sufficient to know, it is necessary to react. Their operations are preserved in number of novels, especially their game of cat and mouse with western spies. The Federal Security Service of Russian Federation (FSD) is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet-era Cheka, NKVD and KGB. The FSB is involved in counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and surveillance. Its headquarters are on Lubyanka Square, downtown Moscow, the same location as the former headquarters of the KGB. All law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Russia work under the guidance of FSB, if needed. For example, the GRU, spetsnaz and Internal Troops detachments of Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs work together with the FSB in Chechnya. The FSB is responsible for internal security of the Russian state, counterespionage, and the fight against organized crime, terrorism, and drug smuggling. The number of FSB personnel and its budget remain state secrets, although the budget was reported to jump nearly 40% in 2006.


01. The Mossad
Formed: December 13, 1949 as the Central Institute for Coordination
Employees: 1,200 (est)
Parent agency: Office of the Prime Minister

Justice is the greatest concern of man on earth. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the miscreants. How can we forget the massacre of eleven Israeli Olympians in Munich Olympics 1972 by Palestinians and after that revenge of Mossad (entitled as wrath of God) in a much similar Hollywood style. Famous for their secret action and acute aim.
The Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection and covert operations including paramilitary activities. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security), but its director reports directly to the Prime Minister. The list of its successes is long. Israel’s intelligence agency is most famous for having taken out a number of PLO operatives in retaliation for the attack that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. However, this agency has other success to its name, including the acquisition of a MiG-21 prior to the Six-Day war of 1967 and the theft of the plans for the Mirage 5 after the deal with France went sour. Mossad also assisted the United States in supporting Solidarity in Poland during the 1980s.

ACLU Turns Blind Eye to Sharia in America

Daniel Mach, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, and Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights program, recently co-authored an article on the Huffington Post attacking legislative efforts to prohibit the application of foreign laws inconsistent with the rights granted by the U.S. and state constitutions or state public policy.

The article posits a series of disjointed, hypothetical misapplications of the legislative efforts to prevent sharia from encroaching into our legal system. Yet, the authors cite no actual examples of misapplications of laws already passed and in force, in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arizona. The authors fail to distinguish this American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation from other legislative efforts, such as the Oklahoma constitutional amendment, which do not explicitly reference the protection of constitutional rights and public policy in prohibiting application of sharia or foreign law.

Further, the authors contend that these laws, explicitly protecting established constitutional rights, are superfluous because the First Amendment already protects these rights, and then allege that these laws violate the religious freedom granted by the First Amendment. The authors thereby dangerously conflate the judiciary's interpretation and enforcement of secular law with interpretation and enforcement of religious doctrine. The freedom of religion and establishment clauses of the First Amendment do not address the application of foreign law, including sharia, in American courts, and, as demonstrated below, have not been applied to prevent such application.

Additionally, American courts have repeatedly held that freedom of religion does not require the judiciary to void secular laws which may incidentally conflict with religious doctrine, and that the First Amendment prohibits the judiciary from interpreting or enforcing religious doctrine. For example, in the case of S.D. v. M.J.R., the New Jersey Superior Court of Appeal reversed a trial court judge who did not find sexual assault to have been proven when a husband admitted forcing his wife to engage in sex, because the husband lacked criminal intent as he was a Muslim, and sharia, as described by an imam, mandated that a wife submit to her husband's sexual advances. The New Jersey appellate court cited several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that held that freedom of religion does not include violating criminal laws, including Reynolds v. United States and Cleveland v. United States regarding polygamy, and Employment Div., Dep't of Human Res. of Oregon v. Smith regarding smoking peyote, even when religious doctrine permits or mandates the prohibited practice. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church and its progeny, have also consistently held that deciding disputes over religious doctrine violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Most egregiously, the title of the article, "Anti-Sharia Law: A Solution In Search Of A Problem," suggests that the enforcement of sharia law in the United States is simply not a problem worth addressing. The authors completely ignore dozens of published state appellate decisions in which American courts addressed litigants who demanded the enforcement of sharia, and on many occasions succeeded.

A recent study entitled "Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases," released by The Center for Security Policy, identifies 50 such appellate court cases from 23 states. Many of these cases involve blatant violations of constitutional rights, usually to the detriment of women and children, including the enforcement of foreign custody orders to wrest children from their mothers.

For example, a Maryland appellate court in Hosain v. Malik enforced a Pakistani custody order, issued under a sharia rule granting sole custody to the father when the child reaches age seven, handing a little girl brought to America by her mother over to the father. The Maryland court bowed to the Pakistani court order even though the mother did not appear for the Pakistani proceedings, because, although she may have been arrested for adultery if she returned to Pakistan for the hearing, and been subject to "public whipping or death by stoning," the court found such punishments were "extremely unlikely." The judges explicitly proclaimed that the best interest of the child should not be "determined based on Maryland law, i.e., American cultures and mores," but rather "by applying relevant Pakistani customs, culture and mores." The court, explaining that "in the Pakistani culture, the well being of the child ... is thought to be facilitated by adherence to Islamic teachings," intentionally applied Islamic, rather than American, cultural and legal precepts.

In contrast, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to favor sharia in Amin v. Bakhaty. In Amin an Egyptian wife and mother committed the Egyptian crime of leaving Egypt without her husband's permission. She traveled to Louisiana with her child in an attempt to improve her relationship with her husband who lived in the U.S. and visited her only once per year in a hotel room in Egypt. Her husband, upon learning she traveled to the U.S., traveled to Egypt, had her convicted of the crime, filed for divorce and custody under Egyptian law, and then traveled to Louisiana to seize their child under the Egyptian custody decree. Louisiana's highest court explicitly rejected the demand to enforce Egyptian child custody law because "Islamic family law ... structures some of the rights between family members based solely on gender" and not "the minor child's best interest." The Louisiana Court explained that under Louisiana law "a parent's interest in a relationship with his or her child is a basic human right." However under the sharia-based law of Egypt "it is most likely that [the mother] will be deprived of a relationship with [the child] if she is forced to return to Egypt to pursue custody or visitation rights." Thus, the Louisiana Court rejected the sharia-induced award of sole custody to the father.

These two cases, as well as dozens of others cited in the Center's study, including similar cases involving child custody and misogyny, demonstrate that American courts have followed divergent paths on addressing sharia law. Legislatures, as representatives of the people, should appropriately direct the courts to avoid the enforcement of sharia law when such enforcement violates American constitutional and public policy norms. Clearly, the child custody cases in Maryland and Louisiana involved issues of gender discrimination, denial of freedom of travel, disregard for the best interests of a child, lack of procedural due process, and cruel and unusual punishment. The ACLU, claiming to be the defender of American constitutional rights, should be sensitive to the obvious breach of those rights implicated in applying many aspects of sharia, and not ignorantly stereotype all efforts to address such breaches as religious intolerance.

Legislative efforts, such as the passage in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arizona of the ALAC legislation, drafted by the American Public Policy Alliance, should be applauded, and similar efforts in other states encouraged by all Americans who support upholding American constitutional rights, including, ostensibly, even the ACLU.

Stephen M. Gelé is an attorney practicing in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has litigated a wide variety of civil issues in Louisiana courts for the past eighteen years. He testified on behalf of Lawyers Against Sharia before the Louisiana Legislature in support of passage of the American and Louisiana Laws for Louisiana Courts Act designed to impede the intrusion of sharia law into the Louisiana legal system.



American Thinker

US Cheers Bin Laden's Death

Hundreds flock to Ground Zero after Obama declares terrorist dead. 'Great day to be American,' says one

by Associated Press

Hundreds of jubilant people streamed to the spot where the World Trade Center towers fell almost 10 years ago, waving American flags, snapping pictures and breaking into song early Monday to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden.

It was easily the happiest crowd ever at a site where more familiar scenes are bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace" and solemn speeches memorializing the dead during annual anniversary ceremonies.

Guy Madsen drove from his home in New Jersey with his son when he heard of bin Laden's death.

"This is Judgment Day and we're winning," he said.

Farther uptown in Times Square, dozens stood together on the clear spring night and broke into applause when a New York Fire Department sports utility vehicle drove by, flashed its lights and sounded its siren.

A man held an American flag and others sang "The Star-Spangled Banner."

And in Washington, a large group gathered in front of the White House, chanting "USA! USA!" and waving American flags. The throng had filled the street in front and was spilling into Lafayette Park.

Will Ditto, 25, a legislative aide, said he was getting ready to go to bed Sunday night when his mother called him with the news. He decided to leave his home on Capitol Hill and join the crowd. As he rode the subway to the White House, he told fellow passengers the news.

"It's huge," he said. "It's a great day to be an American."

George Washington University student Alex Washofsky, 20, and his roommate Dan Fallon, 20, joined the crowd.

"George Bush said, `Bring him to justice, dead or alive,' and we did it," said Washofsky, a junior and a member of the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps.

The crowd began gathering before President Barack Obama addressed the nation at about 11:30 pm Sunday.

Some people sprinted up on foot to join the crowd. Others arrived on bicycles, and some people brought dogs.

He's dead, but now what?

In Dearborn, Michigan, a, heavily Middle Eastern suburb that's home to one of the nation's largest Arab and Muslim communities, a small crowd gathered outside City Hall, chanting "USA" and waving American flags.

Across town, some honked their car horns as they drove along the main street where most of the Arab-American restaurants and shops are located.

At the Arabica Cafe, the big screen TVs that normally show sports were all turned to news about bin Laden.

Cafe manager Mohamed Kobeissi says it's finally justice for those victims.

In Philadelphia, at a game between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies, chants of "USA! USA!" began in the top of the ninth inning at Citizens Bank Park. Fans could be seen all over the stadium checking their phones and sharing the news.

Shirley Miller watched a headline flip across a monitor in Chicago's O'Hare Airport before her daughter and husband texted her with the same news: Bin Laden was dead.

But for the 42-year-old Miller, whose son has deployed twice to Afghanistan following 9/11, the news didn't soothe worries that bin Laden's death could prompt more attacks against the U.S.

"OK. He's dead, but now what?" Miller asked as she flew from Chicago to Little Rock, Arkansas.

"It's kind of scary because you don't know what's going to happen," she said. "It could get worse."

Obama Administration Corrects Clapper's Claim That Muslim Brotherhood Is 'Secular'

The Obama administration took the rare step Thursday of correcting its own intelligence chief after the official claimed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed the Islamist group during a hearing on Capitol Hill earlier Thursday. He testified that the organization has "pursued social ends" and a "betterment of the political order," and downplayed its religious underpinnings.
"The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' ... is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam," Clapper said. But the DNI later issued a statement to "clarify" that claim.

"To clarify Director Clapper's point, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak's rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation. He is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization," DNI spokesperson Jamie Smith said.

While the Brotherhood has renounced violence, one of its goals is to pursue the creation of an Islamic state. The CIA's own website lists the Brotherhood as a "religious-based" party.

Clapper's claim quickly drew scrutiny on Capitol Hill, even before his office walked back the statement. "I am concerned that the DNI's assessment does not agree with recent public statements by senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood nor does it agree with the organization's publicly stated goals," Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said in a written statement, describing the group as "radical." "They're as secular as Billy Graham and the pope are secular," former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said.

The Clapper remark came amid new developments in Egypt. Some expected President Hosni Mubarak to step down in the face of massive protests, but he instead announced that while he was transferring some authority to his vice president he would remain in power until elections in September.

Regardless, a number of U.S. officials have expressed concern about the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is officially outlawed under Mubarak, seizing political power in the state.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement Thursday that the United States should facilitate a "post-Mubarak transition in order to avert further violence and restore calm." As part of that, she said the United States should "guard against the use of the transition process by nefarious elements such as the Muslim Brotherhood to directly or indirectly undermine Egypt's evolution to a democratic republic."
This isn't the first time Clapper has stumbled on the public stage.

During a televised interview in December alongside other top security officials, Clapper was stumped when asked about a major set of terror arrests in Great Britain.

The White House later acknowledged that Clapper had not yet been briefed about the sweep, while defending him as "the consummate DNI."

by FOX News

ADDITION:

What is Muslim Brotherhood?

Since its founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood (Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) has profoundly influenced the political life of the Middle East. Its motto is telling: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

The Muslim Brotherhood applied the term jahiliyya to all societies not practicing a government ruled by Sharia, Islamic law. Accordingly, only societies governed by Sharia are recognized as true Muslim societies through their recognition of Allah’s divine Book (Quran) and their dedicated efforts to create a purified Islam polity.

The Brotherhood argued that it is every Muslim’s duty to fight for the establishment of a true Islamic State, and in doing so they accept and live by Sharia. Qutb and his followers carried the idea of jahiliyya to a more extremist level and argued that nations not governed by Sharia are open to attack from Sharia practicing Muslims. Terrorist groups, such as Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq justify their attacks on other nations (ex: suicide bombings) by preaching these ideas imbedded in the Brotherhood and Qutb’s philosophies.

Qutb thus provided an ideological frame work based in principles of Islam (jahiliyya and jihad) with which Muslims could fight an unjust government.

For Hassan al-Banna jihad represented each Muslim's duty to Allah to follow Islamic law even when it is difficult to do so. Jihad offers a manner in which Muslims can prove their loyalty to Allah by not backing away from their beliefs even when hostilely confronted about them. Al-Banna witnessed how Muslims had abandoned Jihad, a prominent practice of Islam. Therefore, al-Banna called for a return to militant jihad and he stressed its importance by switching from teaching the traditional schooling of Islam to its young members, in favor of educating them in religion and physical education in order to prepare them for a jihad: a system of training called jihadia (Hiro 61; Spears). According to the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology, those who abstain from jihad will be dishonored and punished by Allah in death.

The Brotherhood, also, revived and reinstated the Islamic doctrine of Martyrdom. Al-Banna said that muslims should “learn the art of death” and they should “deliberately and purposefully plan how hard to make their deaths count for the cause of Islam” (Brown 215).

Israel Tested Stuxnet Worm in Dimona Nuclear

In what is described as a joint Israeli-U.S. effort to undermine Iran's nuclear ambitions, the New York Times says tests of the destructive Stuxnet worm occurred at the Israeli nuclear complex in Dimona.

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.

In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran’s ability to buy components and do business around the world.

The gruff Mr. Dagan, whose organization has been accused by Iran of being behind the deaths of several Iranian scientists, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could delay a bomb until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from Israel’s long-held argument that Iran was on the cusp of success.

The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.

In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex — and ingenious — than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009.

Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence.

In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities.

Seimens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults.

“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.

Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.

But Israeli officials grin widely when asked about its effects. Mr. Obama’s chief strategist for combating weapons of mass destruction, Gary Samore, sidestepped a Stuxnet question at a recent conference about Iran, but added with a smile: “I’m glad to hear they are having troubles with their centrifuge machines, and the U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to make it more complicated.”

In recent days, American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity have said in interviews that they believe Iran’s setbacks have been underreported. That may explain why Mrs. Clinton provided her public assessment while traveling in the Middle East last week.

By the accounts of a number of computer scientists, nuclear enrichment experts and former officials, the covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing, from the Germans and the British.

The project’s political origins can be found in the last months of the Bush administration. In January 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to undermine the electrical and computer systems around Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center. President Obama, first briefed on the program even before taking office, sped it up, according to officials familiar with the administration’s Iran strategy. So did the Israelis, other officials said. Israel has long been seeking a way to cripple Iran’s capability without triggering the opprobrium, or the war, that might follow an overt military strike of the kind they conducted against nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

Two years ago, when Israel still thought its only solution was a military one and approached Mr. Bush for the bunker-busting bombs and other equipment it believed it would need for an air attack, its officials told the White House that such a strike would set back Iran’s programs by roughly three years. Its request was turned down.

Now, Mr. Dagan’s statement suggests that Israel believes it has gained at least that much time, without mounting an attack. So does the Obama administration.

For years, Washington’s approach to Tehran’s program has been one of attempting “to put time on the clock,” a senior administration official said, even while refusing to discuss Stuxnet. “And now, we have a bit more.”

Finding Weaknesses

Paranoia helped, as it turns out.

Years before the worm hit Iran, Washington had become deeply worried about the vulnerability of the millions of computers that run everything in the United States from bank transactions to the power grid.

Computers known as controllers run all kinds of industrial machinery. By early 2008, the Department of Homeland Security had teamed up with the Idaho National Laboratory to study a widely used Siemens controller known as P.C.S.-7, for Process Control System 7. Its complex software, called Step 7, can run whole symphonies of industrial instruments, sensors and machines.

The vulnerability of the controller to cyberattack was an open secret. In July 2008, the Idaho lab and Siemens teamed up on a PowerPoint presentation on the controller’s vulnerabilities that was made to a conference in Chicago at Navy Pier, a top tourist attraction.

“Goal is for attacker to gain control,” the July paper said in describing the many kinds of maneuvers that could exploit system holes. The paper was 62 pages long, including pictures of the controllers as they were examined and tested in Idaho.

In a statement on Friday, the Idaho National Laboratory confirmed that it formed a partnership with Siemens but said it was one of many with manufacturers to identify cybervulnerabilities. It argued that the report did not detail specific flaws that attackers could exploit. But it also said it could not comment on the laboratory’s classified missions, leaving unanswered the question of whether it passed what it learned about the Siemens systems to other parts of the nation’s intelligence apparatus.

The presentation at the Chicago conference, which recently disappeared from a Siemens Web site, never discussed specific places where the machines were used.

But Washington knew. The controllers were critical to operations at Natanz, a sprawling enrichment site in the desert. “If you look for the weak links in the system,” said one former American official, “this one jumps out.”

Controllers, and the electrical regulators they run, became a focus of sanctions efforts. The trove of State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks describes urgent efforts in April 2009 to stop a shipment of Siemens controllers, contained in 111 boxes at the port of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. They were headed for Iran, one cable said, and were meant to control “uranium enrichment cascades” — the term for groups of spinning centrifuges.

Subsequent cables showed that the United Arab Emirates blocked the transfer of the Siemens computers across the Strait of Hormuz to Bandar Abbas, a major Iranian port.

Only months later, in June, Stuxnet began to pop up around the globe. The Symantec Corporation, a maker of computer security software and services based in Silicon Valley, snared it in a global malware collection system. The worm hit primarily inside Iran, Symantec reported, but also in time appeared in India, Indonesia and other countries.

But unlike most malware, it seemed to be doing little harm. It did not slow computer networks or wreak general havoc.

That deepened the mystery.

A ‘Dual Warhead’

No one was more intrigued than Mr. Langner, a former psychologist who runs a small computer security company in a suburb of Hamburg. Eager to design protective software for his clients, he had his five employees focus on picking apart the code and running it on the series of Siemens controllers neatly stacked in racks, their lights blinking.

He quickly discovered that the worm only kicked into gear when it detected the presence of a specific configuration of controllers, running a set of processes that appear to exist only in a centrifuge plant. “The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit,” he said. “It was a marksman’s job.”

For example, one small section of the code appears designed to send commands to 984 machines linked together.

Curiously, when international inspectors visited Natanz in late 2009, they found that the Iranians had taken out of service a total of exactly 984 machines that had been running the previous summer.

But as Mr. Langner kept peeling back the layers, he found more — what he calls the “dual warhead.” One part of the program is designed to lie dormant for long periods, then speed up the machines so that the spinning rotors in the centrifuges wobble and then destroy themselves. Another part, called a “man in the middle” in the computer world, sends out those false sensor signals to make the system believe everything is running smoothly. That prevents a safety system from kicking in, which would shut down the plant before it could self-destruct.

“Code analysis makes it clear that Stuxnet is not about sending a message or proving a concept,” Mr. Langner later wrote. “It is about destroying its targets with utmost determination in military style.”

This was not the work of hackers, he quickly concluded. It had to be the work of someone who knew his way around the specific quirks of the Siemens controllers and had an intimate understanding of exactly how the Iranians had designed their enrichment operations.

In fact, the Americans and the Israelis had a pretty good idea.

Testing the Worm

Perhaps the most secretive part of the Stuxnet story centers on how the theory of cyberdestruction was tested on enrichment machines to make sure the malicious software did its intended job.

The account starts in the Netherlands. In the 1970s, the Dutch designed a tall, thin machine for enriching uranium. As is well known, A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist working for the Dutch, stole the design and in 1976 fled to Pakistan.

The resulting machine, known as the P-1, for Pakistan’s first-generation centrifuge, helped the country get the bomb. And when Dr. Khan later founded an atomic black market, he illegally sold P-1’s to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

The P-1 is more than six feet tall. Inside, a rotor of aluminum spins uranium gas to blinding speeds, slowly concentrating the rare part of the uranium that can fuel reactors and bombs.

How and when Israel obtained this kind of first-generation centrifuge remains unclear, whether from Europe, or the Khan network, or by other means. But nuclear experts agree that Dimona came to hold row upon row of spinning centrifuges.

“They’ve long been an important part of the complex,” said Avner Cohen, author of “The Worst-Kept Secret” (2010), a book about the Israeli bomb program, and a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He added that Israeli intelligence had asked retired senior Dimona personnel to help on the Iranian issue, and that some apparently came from the enrichment program.

“I have no specific knowledge,” Dr. Cohen said of Israel and the Stuxnet worm. “But I see a strong Israeli signature and think that the centrifuge knowledge was critical.”

Another clue involves the United States. It obtained a cache of P-1’s after Libya gave up its nuclear program in late 2003, and the machines were sent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, another arm of the Energy Department.

By early 2004, a variety of federal and private nuclear experts assembled by the Central Intelligence Agency were calling for the United States to build a secret plant where scientists could set up the P-1’s and study their vulnerabilities. “The notion of a test bed was really pushed,” a participant at the C.I.A. meeting recalled.

The resulting plant, nuclear experts said last week, may also have played a role in Stuxnet testing.

But the United States and its allies ran into the same problem the Iranians have grappled with: the P-1 is a balky, badly designed machine. When the Tennessee laboratory shipped some of its P-1’s to England, in hopes of working with the British on a program of general P-1 testing, they stumbled, according to nuclear experts.

“They failed hopelessly,” one recalled, saying that the machines proved too crude and temperamental to spin properly.

Dr. Cohen said his sources told him that Israel succeeded — with great difficulty — in mastering the centrifuge technology. And the American expert in nuclear intelligence, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Israelis used machines of the P-1 style to test the effectiveness of Stuxnet.

The expert added that Israel worked in collaboration with the United States in targeting Iran, but that Washington was eager for “plausible deniability.”

In November, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, broke the country’s silence about the worm’s impact on its enrichment program, saying a cyberattack had caused “minor problems with some of our centrifuges.” Fortunately, he added, “our experts discovered it.”

The most detailed portrait of the damage comes from the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington. Last month, it issued a lengthy Stuxnet report that said Iran’s P-1 machines at Natanz suffered a series of failures in mid- to late 2009 that culminated in technicians taking 984 machines out of action.

The report called the failures “a major problem” and identified Stuxnet as the likely culprit.

Stuxnet is not the only blow to Iran. Sanctions have hurt its effort to build more advanced (and less temperamental) centrifuges. And last January, and again in November, two scientists who were believed to be central to the nuclear program were killed in Tehran.

The man widely believed to be responsible for much of Iran’s program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a college professor, has been hidden away by the Iranians, who know he is high on the target list.

Publicly, Israeli officials make no explicit ties between Stuxnet and Iran’s problems. But in recent weeks, they have given revised and surprisingly upbeat assessments of Tehran’s nuclear status.

“A number of technological challenges and difficulties” have beset Iran’s program, Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, told Israeli public radio late last month.

The troubles, he added, “have postponed the timetable.”





NY Times

The Third Jihad

A must-see 4 video clips from a new documentary on the cultural jihad already taking place in America.

What's Obama's Agenda?

Op-ed: American President Obama aims to de-legitimatize Israel, until it gives in.

by Moshe Dann

Why would President Obama place American prestige, money and influence on the line for a three-month restriction on Jewish building in areas conquered by Israel in 1967? Another round of negotiations is doomed to fail, since Palestinian leaders have already refused to resume talks unless the freeze applies to eastern Jerusalem. Why is Obama pushing this snowball, knowing that any substantive agreement is unlikely in such a short time, if at all?

Agreeing to Israeli conditions for a written commitment not to demand further construction halts, a squadron of fighter planes, and blocking Palestinian moves toward statehood at the UN for one year might serve Obama as an excuse for vetoing a Palestinian appeal to the Security Council. But that hardly seems worth the concessions to Israel. And then, what happens after a year?

Accepting US "incentives" (bribes) is humiliating for Israel – putting politics and money before principle. PM Netanyahu promised that the initial freeze was "one-time-only." And, accepting Israeli conditions is degrading for America. Both sides are morally compromised; but, Israel is portrayed as venal and conniving, trying to avoid making peace, while extorting rewards – a typical anti-Jewish stereotype.

Elliott Abrams and Michael Singh wisely observe: "the troubling precedents set by this package will serve to dim rather than enhance prospects for a breakthrough in peace negotiations…The most worrying aspect of Obama's package is the linkages it establishes between Israeli concessions on settlements (and apparently on the pace of construction in Jerusalem as well) and other unrelated policy matters…With this latest gambit, the United States is trying to rescue a policy that is not worth rescuing. "

What if, however, Obama's goal has nothing to do with any "peace process," agreements, or concessions? What if, magician-like, he and his administration are distracting from their hidden agenda: delegitimizing Israel?

In April, Obama suggested that the safety of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America's "vital national security interests" were linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he blamed Israel for the impasse.

Israel is trapped
Obama's strategy to weaken and isolate Israel by forcing concessions is evident in his focus on Israeli settlements as "illegal" and "unacceptable," his extreme protests against any and all Jewish home-building in Judea and Samaria, even Jerusalem, and his direct challenge to Israel to expose its nuclear capability and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Demanding another "freeze" for 3 months fits the pattern of maligning Israel.

After the moratorium expires, assuming that nothing changes, Israel will again be blamed and vilified for failing to make "concessions for peace," "stealing Palestinian land," and "oppressing Palestinians." Obama can claim that he tried his best; the Palestinians will be given a pass; and Israel will be further ostracized and condemned. Israel is trapped.

If Israel agrees to American conditions and accepts the bribes, she loses her integrity and the advantage she now has – having unilaterally frozen Jewish construction for more than a year without any positive results. If Israel doesn't agree, she will appear unwise and ungrateful, further undermining her position. Obama can again blame Israel for preventing peace, for American inaction against Iran, and its failures in Afghanistan.

Given Israeli and Palestinian demands, and realities, Obama knows that a three-month deal will achieve nothing; the outcome, however, will denote Israel as a pariah state. This is consistent with the process of de-legitimization that has spread throughout the world.

That explains why the US did not object to condemnations of Israel at the UN and in Europe, Obama's "outreach to the Muslim world," and his enmity towards Israel.

Filled with prejudices and distortions of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright, and anti-Israel friends, like Rashid Khalidi, Obama's hostility to Israel, like many European politicians, is aggravated by Israel's resistance to his demands; but, punishing Israel for refusing to agree with him has real consequences which threaten Israel's survival.

Unable to defeat her militarily, Israel's enemies condemn her as immoral, illegal, an outlaw among nations, guilty of apartheid, war criminals, anti-human, even Nazi-like.

Obama's policy failures, therefore, are not just naive mistakes, or impractical; they seem intended to ostracize and weaken Israel until she gives in.

Obama's radical change in American foreign policy towards Israel, his over-reaction to apartment-building for Jews in eastern Jerusalem, his deliberate snubs and offensive attitude, serve to demonize Israel, and cripple her standing in the world.

This agenda ignores a simple fact: If this was a territorial dispute, it would have been resolved during the last 63 years. A second/third Arab Palestinian state will not end the conflict, but perpetuate it; and, with the help of Hamas and Hezbollah via Iran, threaten Israel's survival and the stability of the entire region.

Blaming Israel for resisting such a state creates an atmosphere of hatred and contempt. That de-legitimization seems to be exactly what Obama's administration seeks.





Ynet News

Obama’s Iran Failure

Unlike Arab leaders, American president fails to understand scope of Iranian threat

by Shoula Romano Horing

For the last two years President Obama has been obsessing with “engaging” the Muslim world while ignoring the “moderates” in the Islamic countries who have been imploring the US to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.

For two years President Obama and his administration have fabricated a mythical argument that progress on the Israeli–Palestinian issue through the stopping of settlement construction will help get the “moderate” Arab nations in the region like Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf State, Egypt and Jordan on board in stopping Iran.

But the confidential documents from US embassies made public on WikiLeaks reveal that those countries have already been on board, by hounding and begging the Obama administration to take military action, including airstrikes and the use of ground forces, against the Iranians

Moreover, while Obama was wasting time and personally orchestrating public confrontations with Israel over the settlement issue and the creation of a Palestinian state, it seems that Arab Sunni leaders, in private communications with US officials, did not even mention the settlements or the Palestinian issue as their main urgent concern. As one Middle East expert from Cairo told the Los Angeles Times, the official stance in the Middle East led by Arab Sunni states has always been” that it is Iran and not Israel that poses the main threat to the region.”

According to WikiLeaks, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah urged the US to attack ”evil” Iran, saying that “it is necessary to cut the head of the snake.” King Hamad of Bahrain was quoted in 2009 as saying ”the Iranian nuclear program must be terminated by whatever means necessary. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.” Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed urged the US not to appease or engage Tehran, referring to it as an “existential threat” and stating that “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”

Iran is not Soviet Union
It appears that Arab leaders agree with Prime Minster Netanyahu‘s assessment that Iran is the main threat to peace and stability in the Middle East and not the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and that economic sanctions may hurt Iran but military action is the only way to stop it.

It seems that Obama chooses to ignore the concerns about Iran from his friends, and feels compelled to occupy himself with sideshows like the Israeli-Palestinian issue and “settlements” because he does not understand the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran. Obama does not believe in a military solution because he believes it is possible to “contain” Iran as the US contained the Soviet Union. But he does not understand that contrary to the Communist leaders, Iranian leaders are not “rational “adversaries.

To understand Iran’s ambitions it is necessary to understand Iran’s religious ideology. The Iranian regime believes that the right religion for humanity is Islam and the right sect of Islam is Shiite and not Sunni. Iran’s ultimate aim is to establish global Islamic rule, a new Islamic empire, but this time under Shiite leadership.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated in the past his belief that amidst the chaos of a catastrophic war, the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, would make his prophesied Messianic return and establish new order where the whole world would convert to Shiite Islam. This belief lies at the heart of Iran’s ambition to spread its influence and acquire nuclear weapons and this is the reason such ambition is dangerous not only for Israel but for Sunni Arab countries, Europe and the world. Acquiring nuclear capability would give Iranian leadership even more room for reckless and aggressive foreign policy.

The Sunni Arabs understand the Iranian Shiite ambitions for regional hegemony and the threat to their survival, even though Obama does not. The Israeli government should stop participating in the sideshows of Obama and refuse any requests for a settlement freeze or negotiations over a future Palestinian state until the Iranian threat is eliminated.

Shoula Romano Horing is Israeli-born and raised. She is an attorney in Kansas City, Missouri and a national speaker; Her blog: www.shoularomanohoring.com

Does Settlements Freeze Deal Make Sense?

Freeze debate should take into account some facts about settlements, US politics

by Yoram Ettinger








1. The complex nature of Jewish construction in the settlements:

* If Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria prejudges the outcome of negotiation, wouldn't Palestinian construction in Judea and Samaria have the same effect?!

* If the uprooting of Jewish communities advances peace, why would the uprooting of Arab communities undermine peace?!

* The call for uprooting Arabs is immoral; isn't the uprooting of Jews just as immoral?!

* If the 300,000 Jews, among 1.5 million Arabs, in Judea and Samaria constitute an obstacle to peace, how would one define the 1.5 million Arabs, among 6 million Jews, within pre-1967 Israel?!

* If Jewish settlements/communities in Judea and Samaria (established1967) constitute the obstacle to peace, why was the PLO established in 1964?! Why did anti-Jewish Palestinian terrorism flare up during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s?! Why did the Arab-Israel wars erupt in1948/9, 1956 and 1967? Why did an unprecedented Palestinian terrorism surge follow the 1993 Oslo Accord and the 2005 uprooting of 25 Jewish communities in Gaza and Northern Samaria?!

* Past freezes, slowdowns and dismantling of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria intensified pressure and exacerbated terrorism – what would be the impact of another freeze?!

2. White House promises, guarantees and commitments by US presidents are evasive and illusive:

They are replete with escape routes, ambiguity, non-automaticity, and always subject to US' – and not the recipient's – interests. Even the tightest US treaty – with NATO – allows the US to consider the activation of military force.

3. Precedents of US commitments raise doubts:

* The 1954 US-Taiwan defense treaty was concluded by President Eisenhower and terminated by President Carter in 1979.

* In 1957, Israel retreated from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for President Eisenhower's Executive Agreement, which committed US military deployment should Egypt violate Sinai's demilitarization and blockade Eilat.

* In 1967, Egypt violated Sinai's demilitarization and blockaded Eilat, but President Johnson declared his predecessor's commitment non-binding.

* In 1975, President Ford sent an official letter to Prime Minister Rabin, declaring that the US shall give great weight to Israel's position that the Golan Heights should remain under Israel's control. In 1979, President Carter declared Ford's letter non-committal.

* In 1982, President Reagan stipulated – in order to overcome Congressional opposition – that the F-15s sold to Saudi Arabia would not be stationed in Tabuq, south of Eilat. In 2003, President Bush justified the Saudi deployment of the fighter planes to Tabuq by altered strategic regional circumstances.

* In 1991 President Bush promised Prime Minister Shamir – in return for Israeli restraint in face of Iraqi Scud missiles - to favorably consider granting Israel $10 billion loan guarantees for the absorption of one million Soviet Jews, and to dedicate 30% of the bombing in West Iraq to the destruction of the Scud launchers. Prime Minister Shamir kept his side of the bargain; President Bush did not!

* In 2000, President Clinton promised Israel $800 million for the retreat from Southern Lebanon, none of which has reached Israel.

4. An American president is not omnipotent, and Congress has the capabilities to enhance US-Israel cooperation:

An American president represents one third of the US government, equal in power to the other third, the US Congress. Unlike the Parliamentarian system, a US president does not determine the list of candidates to the Legislature, the identity of congressional leaders, nor the slate of legislation to be introduced in Congress. A president is constrained by a robust system of checks and balances and by a complete separation of powers between the Executive and the Legislature.

It was Congress – sometimes in defiance of presidents - which terminated US military involvement in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola and Nicaragua, facilitated the Jewish Exodus from the USSR (the "Jackson-Vanik Amendment"), cut foreign aid to Turkey following the latter's invasion of Cyprus, accelerated the fall of South Africa's White Regime (overriding Reagan's veto), etc.

In 1991, Congress forced President Bush to transfer to Israel $700 million worth of military systems, in addition to a $650 million emergency grant and the refurbishing of the port of Haifa for the benefit of the Sixth Fleet.

5. Congress shares policy-making power, while possessing exclusive legislative power:

Congressional posture is bolstered during economic crises (e.g. currently) and presidential posture is enhanced during wartime.

In 1995 and 1999, Congress intended to force the president to transfer the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but Israel's prime ministers urged Congress to temper the legislation, thus dooming the effort.
In October 1998 – a few days before the convening of the Wye Plantation Conference – Democratic congressional leaders told Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "When it comes to opposing pressure on Israel, we are with Newt (Gingrich)." However, an Israeli prime minister pulled the rug from under their feet….

The US Congress – equipped with the Power of the Purse – has the Constitutional capabilities to initiate, suspend, amend and rescind policies. Congress can direct presidents to exercise the veto power at the UN Security Council, supply Israel with vital military systems in face of mutual threats, etc.

Will Jerusalem learn from history by repeating – or by avoiding – critical errors?!





Ynet News

The Price of Arrogance

Just like in America, here too public will overcome, punish liberal elite in elections.

by Adi Mintz

So what did we learn from the midterm US elections? We learned that “Yes, we can” – a revolution is possible. We realized that when the damage caused by arrogant liberalism and members of the politically correct camp is great, it prompts a popular uprising. Suddenly it turned out that in America, the general public despised the elites that are trying to lead it and felt that it’s being deceived. At that point, the public demanded a return to America’s fundamental values, and the suitable people took the lead and defeated the arrogance and haughtiness.

For years now, Israel’s elites have been very successful in leading the nation through an ongoing attempt to undermine the fundamental values that brought the Jewish people back to its land after a 2,000-year exile. The liberal elites managed to marginalize Zionism’s constitutive national narrative and took over the legal system, academia, and other establishments.

As an example, look at the two figures who reflect the dramatic change undergone by the elite. Ehud Barak, the kibbutz member raised on socialist education and personal sacrifice, joined an elite army unit, and realize the value of personal sacrifice for the sake of society. Yet what does he represent today? Hedonism, capitalism, opportunism, and the willingness to sacrifice national assets for the sake of personal, short-term goals.

The second figure grew up in the Livni household, where her parents, former Irgun fighters, raised her on passionate love for the Land of Israel and willingness for personal sacrifice for the sake of salvaging and liberating the country. Yet now she “finally sobered up” from the Eretz Yisrael delusions, via the “thinking people’s elite.” At this time she is leading the effort to hand over Jerusalem and abandon the Land of Israel’s heart.

We’re not a normal people
The elite poisoned Israeli society with an illusion of normalcy. It forgot that we are not a normal people; we are a people that survived the horrors of the exile and preserved its uniqueness in Yemen, Germany, Morocco, and the Ural Mountains. Yet we are also a Jewish state within a hostile Arab-Muslims region. Those who create the illusion that we can live a life of European normalcy here, that we can rest and live here like all other nations, weaken our stamina and produce cracks in the wall built by Israeli society and the State of Israel in the face of the flood threatening to drown us. This flood is waiting for moments of weakness, and for the defensive wall to turn into a spider web, as Nasrallah characterized it.

The message from America last week was that the sober general public knows how to overcome and overstep the heads of the liberal elite. It was able to wake up on time and drive away the arrogance and haughtiness.

In Israel, the vast majority of the general public is deeply connected to its Jewish identity. Despite the poison being injected by creators of the illusion culture, and despite the constant tainting of the atmosphere and the boycott letters against Ariel’s cultural hall, the people of Israel remain loyal to their nation and country.

The ceaseless academia and media attacks on our nationality, the Zionist ethos and militarism merely served to reinforce the pride of Israelis nationwide. These efforts are prompting the healthy, powerful counter reaction of the proud, patriotic Jew who fully backs up the army and who believes in the State of Israel’s righteousness; the Jew who under no circumstances would give up our hold on Jerusalem, on King David’s city, and on the City of our Forefathers, Hebron.

Anyone who commissions polls today and is not biased realizes where the wind is blowing. He realizes that the residents of Kiryat Shmona, Ashdod and Sderot are slowly returning to their roots; to the values of Jewish solidarity and Zionist fulfillment. Politicians on the Right and Left would do well to grasp the people’s spirit and pride. The “enlightened” talk about “occupation” and “Palestinian narrative” failed to weaken the nation, and on the day of judgment the liberal arrogance that came back to haunt Obama will also haunt Israel’s liberals.





Ynet News

Radical Islam Targeting America

Terrorists convinced that they can get away with murder, and even be rewarded.

by Yoram Ettinger

The United States is justly perceived as the role-model for democracy: freedom of expression, religion, movement, media, Internet and election. Therefore, the US is perceived as a lethal threat by Muslim regimes in the Middle East, all of which are autocratic, representing an ethnic minority (or a military clique), suppressing the majority and fearing democracy.

The US is properly perceived – by rogue Muslim regimes - as the most effective hurdle on their way to attain historically-strategic goals: Saddam Hussein's drive to control the Arab World, Assad's aim to reassert Greater Syria (encompassing Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, parts of Turkey and Israel), Iran's aspiration to dominate the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, etc.

The US has been targeted as a scapegoat by autocratic Muslim regimes, blaming the US – along with the West and the Jewish State – for the humiliation, frustration and rage over the failure to reclaim the glory of ancient Islam.

Since the 7th century, the vision of Islam has been the gradual domination of the globe. According to Prof. Bernard Lewis, the leading expert on Islam, Muslims believe that their victory in Afghanistan, over the USSR, caused the fall of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, they are convinced that defeating the US would be less difficult, in view of American retreats from Vietnam (1973), the US Embassy in Teheran (1979/1980), Beirut (1983) and Somalia (1993) and the expected evacuation/retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They assume that anti-US terrorism (e.g. 1995/6, 1998 and 2000 anti-US Islamic terrorism in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and Yemen, culminating in 9/11) entails sustained punishment, while yielding US concessions and retreats overseas and eventually on the US mainland.

Anti-US Islamic terrorism has been emboldened by counter-terrorism officials – such as John Brennan and Eric Holder, President Obama's Advisor on Countering Terrorism and Attorney General respectively - who claim that there is no military solution to terrorism, that there is no global terrorism, that there is no Jihadist terrorism, since "Jihad is a process which purifies the soul" and that terrorism is largely a law-enforcement challenge rather than a military issue. Such deficient moral clarity breeds a deficient operational clarity, emboldening further terrorism.

Rogue/autocratic Muslim regimes have realized that terror is the most effective anti-US weapon, increasingly on the American mainland. They assume that Western leaders have reconciled themselves to engagement and coexistence with terrorism, rather than endeavor to devastate terror regimes through a systematic series of disproportionate traumatic blows.

Terrorism provides the element of deniability, while eroding the confidence of Americans in the capability of their government to maintain homeland security. Terrorists are convinced that they can get away with murder, and even be rewarded. They have concluded that the pen and the tongue are extremely effective in complementing the sword in the battle against Western civilization, led by the US.

The current Islamic assault on the US mainland, through the proliferation of many dormant terror cells and a campaign of conversion to Islam - largely funded by Saudi Arabia - is presented by Yehudit Barsky, Director of Middle East and International Terrorism Division of the American Jewish Congress:

Omar Ahmed, co-founder of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which has been connected to Hamas and other Islamic terror organizations: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant…The Koran should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

US-born Imam Zaid Shakir, a frequent participant at CAIR's seminars, is a co-founder of the Muslim Zaytuna College, Berkeley, California, which aims at producing Islamic scholars, who will entrench Islam in the US: "Every Muslim who is honest would like to see America become a Muslim country. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be a Muslim." Zaytuna College highlights the supposed relevance of the Sharia laws to the US legal system.

US-born Al-Qaeda operative, Anwar al-Awlaki, inspired US-born Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered 13 American soldiers on November 9, 2009 at Ft. Hood, Texas. He trained Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, who attempted to detonate explosives on December 25, 2009 in Northwest Airlines flight on route from Amsterdam to Detroit.

US citizen Faisal Shahzad was trained by Taliban and inspired by Anwar Al-Awlaki, attempted the May 1, 2010 Times Square car bombing.

The Al Shabaab, "Holy Warrior Youth Movement," is recruiting in the US via Internet. Eight Al Shabaab recruits – including converts to Islam - were arrested in Minnesota.

Is it realistic to assume that rogue Muslim regimes, which have employed terrorism since the 7th century in order to settle intra-Muslim conflicts, would not employ terrorism in order to settle their conflicts with the US – the "Big Satan"?! Islamic terrorism constitutes a clear and present danger to the US and to the Free World, irrespective of the Arab-Israeli conflict, independent of the Palestinian issue and regardless of Israel's policies or even the very existence of Jewish State – the "Little Satan."

Professor Fuad Ajami, a leading Middle East scientist, issued a warning to US policy-makers in the NY Times back in 1986: "No American diplomatic scheme would spare America the fury of those bent upon eradicating its presence in the region. It is a false reading of a large civilization to say that the terror springs from the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians... It springs from deeper social, economic and political pressures within Mideast society, from the traumas of dislocated newly urbanized youth...Some of it is hatched by merciless men for whom terror is a profession that pays... It does not advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians to pretend that it would solve a problem much larger than their conflict..."




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