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On Retirement, Israeli General Takes Credit for Stuxnet Attacks
dinscott writes "Last month, The New York Times ran a story about Stuxnet having been developed by the Americans and the Israelis as a part of a joint project, but it was based on claims by confidential sources. It now seems that the information from these sources was correct. The Haaretz — Israel's oldest daily newspaper — reports on a surprising video that was played at a party organized for General Gabi Ashkenazi's last day on the job."
So did he get added to the "no fly" and terrorist watch lists?
In other words, it confirms nothing.
"The Haaretz" is redundant since the Hebrew prefix 'ha' means 'the'.
How is Israel "keeping the Middle East nuclear-free" when it is widely regarded to have at least 100 nuclear weapons of its own? The Dimona Nuclear Complex is not exactly a secret.
However the Bible, the world's first and oldest printed book, fails to mention any aspect of this story, including the General's involvement.
You obviously forgot to check the Apocrypha.
#DeleteChrome
I would argue that all the points you make do in fact point to "Bully" and that is never a good thing.
Not to pick bones, but "Her inception" to all the other countries there, basically meant that someone came and took the land away from them! Of course they are annoyed and angry about it!
Does Israel get a pretty short straw? Absolutely, but I do have to say that I don't believe that they are making it easier for themselves. For the most part, that can be said about most nations in that region. The biggest player on a field should earn the respect of the other players and get them to follow suit rather than simply intimidating, running clandestine operations and in your words "assassinating nuclear scientists in other countries".
There aren't many fundamentalists compared to moderates, but every time one of them is killed, all the moderates close to that person will feel just that little more tired, angry or plain out infuriated - giving a net result of more fundamentalists. On the other hand, each act of compassion, each charitable hand extended will keep the moderates calm and you might even find a few of the fundamentalists starting to question violence.*
Stop the cycle of violence. BE the bigger man you claim you are.
* This idea really works anywhere in the world, not just the middle east. When will people figure out that the carrot will always win over the stick.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Hamas doesn't want peace with Israel in the long term:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
The only peace they want is one where Israel is wiped out.
Fatah's old charter also stated similar stuff: http://www.alzaytouna.net/arabic/?c=1598&a=97061
Article (8) The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism.
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
Article (19) Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.
Apparently their new one no longer calls for Israel's destruction. http://jta.org/news/article/2010/01/27/1010372/new-fatah-charter-omits-negationist-language
But there will be problems as long as most of them continue to hold on to the popular "radical/extremist Islam" concepts listed here: http://www.tawfikhamid.com/abcs-test-for-radical-islam/
You're operating on outdated ideas there.
First, the Quran does not say that, I think you're getting such a ridiculous notion from a neocon/zionist/Islamophobe. No "real Palestinian" (who?) would tell you that.
Second, look at The Palestine Papers. The Palestinian government just fell because the PA was scandalously offering to give away Jerusalem and most of Palestine with nothing in return, and yet Netanyahu's government rejected the offers.
Thirdly, the president of Iran is such a red herring. Does he control the military? No. Did he say "wipe Israel off the map?" No. To quote his exact words in Farsi: "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." No such idiom exists in Persian, and Ahmadinejad actually just quoted an old speech of Khomeini in which he said “The occupation regime (over Jerusalem) must vanish from the page of time.” It's not about tanks going into Israel, but more like how Regan said the USSR would one day only exist in a history book. Of course Ahmadinejad does wish Israel would disappear, but he is not the Supreme Leader so he cannot make such an order. It's like the US Secretary of the Interior saying Iran should be invaded, he has no authority to do so. Believe it or not, Ahmadinejad denies he is anti-Semitic, he supports Jewish leaders in Iran and groups like Naturei Karta, and insists he is anti-Zionist, not anti-Judaism.
Punishing people as a group for the actions of their freely elected government does not in fact strike me as collective punishment. Israel has certainly engaged in collective punishment in the past, but the Gaza/Hamas example seems poorly chosen.
If you allow that as an example of collective punishment, then would you consider economic sanctions collective punishment? What about imposing tariffs that lead to unemployment and hardship in the target country?
What about a declaration of war against an a country that has a draft?
Heck, is there any way you can think of to prosecute a war at all without effectively engaging on collective punishment?
I agree that it would be really nice if wars weren't fought, of course. But I don't see how one can be fought with modern weapons between modern states or any semblance thereof without ending up in collective punishment territory, with the exception of blitzkrieg campaigns with limited objectives like the 1967 Arab-Israeli war (and even that arguably had collective punishment as part of the consequences)...
That may have been the case for decades, but look, it's 2011. The facts have changed since the 1960s.
Egypt today has a peace treaty with Egypt and a separate one with Jordan. Israel and Turkey have a mutual defense treaty, and Turkey is a NATO member so attacking Israel will bring about massive retaliation from North American and European allies. Iraq, supposedly "Israel's greatest threat today" according to Ariel Sharon, is no longer a threat. I'd say that the neighborhood is far safer than it was 50 years ago; do you still see Israeli planes being hijacked?
Israel is one of the richest countries, with a GDP per capita bigger than Spain or South Korea. The US gives it billions of dollars in military aid and Most Favored Nation free trade status. Does anyone seriously think Israel is under threat of no longer existing?
Israel is generally safe from most of its neighbors. Maybe it would be even safer if it stops its policy of bashing all Arabs (as Israeli FM Avigdor Liberman does) or provoking its neighbors to anger by Israeli MKs referring to Arabs as "worms."
[quote] No. Did he say "wipe Israel off the map?" No. To quote his exact words in Farsi: "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." No such idiom exists in Persian, and Ahmadinejad actually just quoted an old speech of Khomeini in which he said “The occupation regime (over Jerusalem) must vanish from the page of time.” [/quote]
Maybe people who say things like: "The occupation regime (over Jerusalem) must vanish from the page of time.” Should stop being suck fucking morons and stop saying shit like that because things like that will be interpreted by a lot of people fanatic muslims, anti-muslims, the whole western world , and a lot of people i forget to mention here, as: "We should wipe Israel of the map"
It can either be that he is to dumb to realize that quotes like that will just flame the hatred because people interpret it as calls for agression, but my guess is that if he's got the brain to get to be leader of a country, he fully realizes that...
You can be all 'he didn't say that, and he meant it in a good way' but that's bullshit... He knows he says thing that can be interpreted in a wrong way.... even if he doesn't comprehend that he shouldn't lead a country anyway....
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
This is a tangent, but it's funny to me how what are called the "moderate Arab states" have been the most repressive, either socio-religiously (Saudi Arabia), or politically (Jordan and the Persian Gulf states).
Sadly, a lot of different factors combined to destroy the only multi-cultural democracy in the Middle East: Lebanon.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Technically speaking, Microsoft really deserves more of the credit than Gabi Ashkenazi.
However the Bible, the world's first and oldest printed book, fails to mention any aspect of this story, including the General's involvement.
I didn't know they had translated the bible to Chinese thousand years ago...
- These characters were randomly selected.
"Nobody is saying "he meant it in a good way," but there's quite a difference in what he actually said and people interpreting it as a sign of genocidal intent."
It is reasonable to suppose that the interpretation of genocidal intent might be reasonable given the throngs of thousands chanting "Death To Israel" many weeks per year for for 32 years, and the support for Hezbollah which has an explicitly exterminationist policy.
If the interpretation was "we want Israel to change its policies to have a much more satisfactory resolution so that Jews and Arabs will live peaceably", that clarification could have been offered.
But as far as I am aware, the ratio of that vs "Death To Israel" is something like zero to 30,000.
You're an idiot.
Not quite, actually
First of all, USA does not provide Israel with any help. . .
Yes, actually, it does. Israel currently receives more than $3 billion in (mostly military) aid from the US of A.
Jews compose no more than 0.3% . . . 30% of Nobel prizes . . . this is why they flourish.
You're wrong again. I won't dispute the statistics, but I will dispute the conclusion. They (oops, We) flourish because of a strong tradition of academic study, necessitated by the sheer volume that one needs to learn before Bar Mitzvah (and Bat Mitzvah for the more modern Jew). Further, in some areas of the world, Jews were forbidden from owning land (see the definition of "ghetto") so they were, by necessity, forced into academia, banking and other "service" occupations.
There was a single attack on the USA, and it went to war with another country. There is a terrorist attack on Israel every day. . .
Again, you grossly mis-charactarize, and ignore certain facts. The attack that brought down the World Trade Center (WTC) wasn't the first on that pair of buildings. Further, there was another (not of middle-east origin) terrorist attack in Oklahoma several years before the WTC was brought down. To make matters worse, we have more money than we deserve, and our president at the time was an authoritarian zealot.
I don't care to suggest that Israel, and Jews more generally don't have a difficult time, but your posting shows an ignorance that can't go without some response.
I just read the original article, and as a fluent Hebrew speaker, can safely say that it's been grossly misquoted and misinterpreted.
During the generals retirement party, news coverage of both the Stuxnet and the Syrian reactor attack was shown, probably as part of a recent army related events montage. This was no power-point slide titled "recent accomplishments". The conclusion drawn here are akin to claiming that the US was responsible for the recent unrest in Egypt, since news coverage of that even was played at the retirement party of a state secretary...
Israel may have been responsible for these events, but I'd hardly say this "evidence" is conclusive
What part about the movable-type printing press -- albeit with more expensive ceramic letters -- being invented by the 1040 AD by Bi Sheng in China, did you fail to understand? Basically before being snarky and condescending, do make sure that you're not the one who's the ignorant idiot.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.