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How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers For Its Cyberwar (nypost.com)
Lasrick quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate source): For more than three years, rather than rely on military officers working out of isolated bunkers, Russian government recruiters have scouted a wide range of programmers, placing prominent ads on social media sites, offering jobs to college students and professional coders, and even speaking openly about looking in Russia's criminal underworld for potential talent. From the New York Post: "Russia's Defense Ministry bought advertising on Vkontakta, the country's most popular social media site, to lure those who were more talented with a keyboard than an AK-47 rifle. 'If you graduated from college, if you are a technical specialist, if you are ready to use your knowledge, we give you an opportunity,' the ad promised, according to the Times. The ad went on to assure recruits that they would be part of units called science squadrons based at military installations where they would live in 'comfortable accommodation' and showed an apartment outfitted with a washing machine, the Times reported. The Defense Ministry even dangled the chance to dodge Russia's mandatory draft by allowing university students to join a science squadron instead and then questioned them about their proficiency with programming languages, the report said."
Someone managed to get access to someone else's email account? EPIC HACKZ0ring!
So is this fake news or not?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
A country that regularly invades other country to force a change in government gets its panties in a twist over a theory that someone might have taken an interest in their election. The US does this all the time.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
with LAN
If I didn't dodge the draft by other means I would very well have done this program
That's mildly interesting. As is normally the case, the article points out that the headline is bullshit. College students? That's where you find entry-level programmers, not "elite hackers". Nothing wrong with that, of course, you can train an entry-level programmer to damage computing systems just as readily as you can train them to build secure systems.
There are a few elite hackers, people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system, who write the payloads in assembler. Those elite ones, who write assembler, tend to be older more often than they are college kids. College kids tend to *use* the tools written by the older, more experienced and "elite" hackers.
So apparently Russia's nerds have the same problems with personal hygiene that western nerds do...
#DeleteChrome
people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system
We calls thems electrical engineers where I'm from.
because don't pretend the U.S. has not done this for a decade or more. Russia (and China) has got _nothing_ on the U.S. when it comes to staging a cyberwar on the world, as the NSA revelations have proven. This NYT article is a case of the Fake News you've been hearing about.
Wow, ya hey lets start a whole campaign to inform that public about how the WH, the seat of US gov got hacked, that will calm the public. You have a lot to learn about politics let along global politics.
The link in the summary is to the New York Post .
So this wasn't news when they hacked into CIA and the White House. But it's news when they broke into DNC?
That's because the DNC had a lot more secrets exposed.
There are a few elite hackers, people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system, who write the payloads in assembler.
Of course. A piece of code in assembler that gets injected on the system via a clever manipulation of the power phase and/or fan oscillation, delivered via Q-spoiling. Once infected, the host system sends an email to the hacker to let him know which version of Wordpress is running on the server so he can know which php file to upload and pwn the organization.
lucm, indeed.
Its been a few years since the company I work for had offices in Russia but at that time US export controls prohibited sharing quite a bit of engineering specifications with our team in Russia. So you have some very talented coders who cannot fully participate on projects where their stills and experience would be invaluable. I can only imagine how frustrating this must be and if an honest living cannot be made then the path to a less than honorable income becomes that much more enticing.
> I have no reason not to believe that the NSA and other government agencies recruit top talent in important fields from college,
I know they post employment ads just like any other organization who hires people. I would expect they recruit like other organizations - though possibly not as effectively as many companies. I'm in the security field and have been called about jobs for a lot of companies, only one of which sounded like potentially a front company.
One thing different about their ads is when you click to go to their online application site, it you're instructed to not tell anyone that you've applied - just in case they want to hire you for a clandestine, or more likely semi-clandestine role (typically not spy thriller stuff, just a fairly typical office job but you keep it on the down low).
I understand the intelligence services have had trouble recruiting since the Snowden revelations, which makes sense. Ten or fifteen years ago I probably would have considered a job hacking for the "good guys". Now, we know the good guys are bad guys.
As someone who helps run a Hacker Con here in the US, I can gar-un-tee you that most 'elite' hackers (not all, I'll give you there are a few outlives) were on BBS or at least owned a Commodore 64.
One guy I know got off of a criminal charge because the state's prosecutor said "he couldn't have been the one hacking, he wasn't home when it happened, he was on vacation in Texas" ... and everyone who knew what they were talking about... just stopped... quickly looked around... and was like ... "yep, guess you are right...." and they all walked out of there with the guy (it was a public hearing in front of a local magistrate).... Apparently the hardest part of the entire thing was not laughing when the DA said that....
I've given lectures to 2nd / 3rd year CS students at a Research 1 Tier University in the past few years... and very few of them even knew what SSH was... so yeah...
Obama, what an asshole. He gladly breaks the tradition of lame ducks not rocking the boat. He antagonizes Israel at the UN and now tries to declare war on Russia. What's next? Invade Ireland to seize Apple's cash, then nuke North Korea?
What an awful president. Good riddance.
lucm, indeed.
people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system
We calls thems electrical engineers where I'm from.
You fancy higher-level people.
--Physicist
Hey, how's it look way up there?
-Mathematician
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
There are a few elite hackers, people who really understand the low-leveling functioning of the system, who write the payloads in assembler. Those elite ones, who write assembler, tend to be older more often than they are college kids.
I'm not one of those guys, but I've partied with some of those guys (and no, not at defcon) and it seemed to me like plenty of them actually are college kids. Is there something mystical about assembler that prevents college kids from learning it?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't you know. Russia spies all descended on Wisconsin and told 300,000 Democratic voters from 2012 to vote elsewhere. Russia personally bumped Stein and Johnson's turnout from 7665 & 20439 to 31072 and 106,674 respectively. Russia told Clinton to not visit Wisconsin once in the general election.
Never you mind those Sanders supporters that said Fuck You to the DNC. (Seriously, how can anyone at DNC HQ say Sanders would have lost Wisconsin or Michigan?).
Wait a minute, you mean the President Elect chose to pimp out the US to a country that has to recruit tech talent with the promise of a fucking washing machine? A country that's sitting on untold natural resources but has an economy smaller than that of Spain?
Jesus, Trump should have at least held out for China. We might have actually gotten something out of that deal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
antagonizes Israel
If I was sending someone $3.1 billion per year I'd think they'd let me antagonize them as much as I wanted.
The Right is flipping out over Obama's $85M in 'vacation costs', that's all of 10 days of money sent to Israel.
That's because the DNC had a lot more secrets exposed.
And? It's a private organization. Hacking government facilities is far more worthy of official retaliation than hacking of a political party. Especially when the only thing which appears to have been exposed was the misdeeds by the DNC. The whole thing smells like a DNC cover up to blame a scapegoat de jour to distract the country from what Wikileaks actually exposed : system corruption within a party which is known for accusing others of "hypocrisy" whenever those others don't meet their own integrity criteria. Russia may have interfered with the US elections by allowing the US public know how the DNC unquestionably did interfere with the US primary election process (by using the Democratic Party resources to subvert one of the two leading primary candidates). If Russia was really in it to help Trump, where is the intelligence to show that RF hacked campaigns of all the other Republican primary candidates? If Trump is the Manchurian Candidate, where is any proof that he beat the other Republicans through Russian efforts? This is nothing but retaliation for exposure of how dirty the Democratic party has become. C'mon... they advertised on the most popular social network? And then made sure that the people they hired knew some programming languages? This is evidence of hacking elections? How dumb do you have to be to believe this? It seems to me more like "we lost the elections... round up the usual suspects" a la Casablanca.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
In my experience, a few young people can work at low level, assembler etc, and truly grok it but it's much more common for older people to have learned it. On the other hand, the youngest programmers are more likely to know how to use the framework of month, which is also a good thing to know.
Multiply the percentage of people in each age group who grok assembly by the percentage that have elite skills that normally come from many years of experience.
In 20 years of continually learning, I've already done it wrong 5,000 different ways. It's hard to screw up that much in just a few years, and learn the same lessons. Actually there's also a lot of benefit, to me, of cross-pollinating a lot of stuff I've done over the years; hacks I did with DirectX 8 and 9 give me ideas that I use today. It's tough for a college kid to say "hey maybe something like the hack I figured out in 1994 can be applied here."
And if you still don't think "let's find some Russians to blame" is the modus operandi for handling elections loss in the DNC, just recall this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chapman
They rounded up some RF nationals who worked in finance (not even in government) and expelled them ON JULY 4th in the year when they were trying to stem the tide of the upcomming losses which were to come from the Tea Party surge in the mid-term elections. Their "espionage" consisted of advising RF government in financial matters... imagine that. Some finance guys advising foreign government in financial matters. Don't take me wrong. I am a very vocal critic of Putin's government. And I usually find myself on the side of vehemently mocking RF apologists. RF could not sway Ukrainian election (which is why they had to resort to open warfare with Ukraine). But now we are supposed to believe that they can sway US elections? Why? Because there is a few RF citizens engaging in some credit card fraud? So Russians are these super hackers all of a sudden? But only when DNC losses the election. When the RF manages to get a glance at some military data, that's not news because that's on Obama's watch. I call bull shit.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
OK, can you get back to work now? I ordered a *big* fry with that burger, okay?
Yes, I guess the first thing I should learn is that when you try to pose as an insider, it helps if there is a mechanism to post anonymously, AC. Thanks. That was such a valuable lesson. Too bad calling someone a troll has become so cliche that it's almost trolling in itself. It could have been a very appropriate way to categorize your post.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Obviously. If it's not on Breitbart it's fake. :)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
> You will have the programmers to write/modify tools and find new zero-day cracks then you will have the people who use those tools and try to get into systems using defined and developed methods.
Even in the small to medium sized security company where I work, that's at least three, really four different groups. I write the tools. S sometimes the tools I write find basically the same vulnerabilities in new applications (such as yet another SQLi in yet another web application) , but real zero-days is a different skillset. Even amongst the zero-day crew, finding them is a different skillset than fully exploiting them. I can *find* a buffer overrun when an input causes the program to crash. Having it execute my choice of payload rather than just crash is a whole other level.
After submitting, I realized part of my post was probably unclear. Currently, I mostly write tools to find known vulnerabilities. If you didn't install the security patches on patch Tuesday, my tools will discover that. If you're still using an outdated cipher, my tools detect that. Brand new vulnerabilities are a different department located in a different country.
YEAH!!! .. and if I don't count my car payment, my car was FREE!!!!!
I'm sure the Russian government recruits computer talent in the many ways listed in the article. I would suspect the U.S. government does much the same.
The fake part comes in: Why publish this piece now? Why not, say, during the massive OPM breach?
Simple: Publishing it during the OPM breach would have harmed Obama, whom the New York Times and it's employees almost universally adore, while publishing it now helps prop up the false narrative that the Russians were behind the DNC leaks, not a disgruntled Democratic Party insider, and thus supposedly harms President-elect Donald Trump, whom the New York Times and it's employees almost universally loath.
Remember, among the revelations to come out just after the election were how the Times abandoned objectivity to go after Trump and how the entire newsroom is dedicated to driving a predetermined narrative rather than carrying out an objective search for truth.
This story was published because it fits an (unproven and probably false) narrative that Russia "hacked the election" because it theoretically harms Trump.
Further reading here and here.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
antagonizes Israel
If I was sending someone $3.1 billion per year I'd think they'd let me antagonize them as much as I wanted.
The Right is flipping out over Obama's $85M in 'vacation costs', that's all of 10 days of money sent to Israel.
The federal debt under Obama has increased by $8,946,567,665,023.71. That's just the debt, not the whole spending. The real problem here is not Israel.
lucm, indeed.
You can see some of the dirty russkie's under the table efforts here. http://www.arcyber.army.mil/Pa... We really have to do something about this.
Actually, it was done twice by 2 US presidents - Clinton and Obama. Both did what they could to try and get Netanyahu beaten in the Israeli elections - w/ Clinton sending Carville to manage Labour's campaign and actually pulling it off - getting Ehud Barak elected
While I don't believe that the WikiLeaks was the straw that broke the camel's back and tilted this election Trump's way, in the event that it actually did, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving candidate
Hillary didn't lose because of some "mandate from the minority" or because of perceived corruptions... She lost because she has the personality of a beige jumpsuit.
Trump won because he's the man you love to hate... Trump is EASILY as corrupt as Clinton, probably more so, but the conservatives can NEVER admit that because he's their backed horse now.
Just like every other vitriolic conservative personality, they feign outrage, while giving a slight wink and a nod of supporting the very thing they "stand" for... i.e. "drain the swamp!"
Bernie had personality and ran an arguably clean campaign and REAL grass roots support, but he was undoubtedly hamstrung by the DNC who were dead set on lifting Hillary to office. It is my firm opinion that Bernie would have decidedly beaten Trump... without a shred of doubt in my mind. On that score the democrats were a MAJOR factor in Trump's victory to the presidency.
Every time I hear the news try to pin the blame of the election results on "Russian Hackers" I can't help thinking of that scene in She Devil. The one where Bob is meeting with his lawyers who advise him to claim that hackers broke into his computer and committed the fraud knowing they will get the easy judge, but instead the judges are switched and it back fires on him.
The whole thing smells to high heaven. Take the warnings by the FBI to the DNC. If they knew the hacks were going on, then they must have had some monitoring agents already installed (at the ISP or locally) which tipped them off, or they were the ones carrying out the attacks running them through Russian nodes to conceal the source and keep plausible denial ability.
Seriously though, She lost, move on DNC and stop trying to start a war over this.
Is Trump's connection with Putin purely sexual, or are there US national security implications?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Republican domination of state houses during the census guaranteed their ability to gerrymander electoral districts to the point where they'll never lose control of the House. Tom DeLay might have served jail time, but he succeeded in utterly destroying any possible US argument that it is still a democracy, and delivered the country into the hands of mouth-breathing racist morons for the foreseeable future.
Grow up, you silly child.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Hey, maybe you could disagree and we can re-ignite the oldest flame war in computerdom.
I was doing assembler in highschool. It was the only way to get decent performance.
I doing plenty in Assembly for the Bulgarian People's Army in the 80s. There was a time I could read and edit in hexadecimal, getting things right most of the time. After the fall of the so called Communist government, I went to college in the US. Nothing mythical about Assembly and college, they mix just fine.
As a matter of fact, at least in the 90s, MIT had plenty of courses that used Assembly... and a few were you would actually design both a processor (with a very simple instruction set) and write the assembler (the program going from Assembly to binary code) for it.
This said, I have used (embedded) Assembly twice in the last twenty years, for the same reason both times: to wring a little bit more performance for data crunching that had to be performed in real time. Neither was for my day job. Then again, I'm not a hacker for the Russian government, the only government that's eeeeevil enough to employ *gasp* hackers.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Damn, missing 'was', 'were' instead of 'where'... It's funny how these things happen whenever I start thinking about the bad old times, when the only thing that was better was me.
No good deed goes unpunished...
"Okay, let me get this straight. Your completely ignoring the fact that the result of a national election was dictated by a foreign country in favor of a cheap shot against democrats?"
WHERE do you get this garbage?
THERE is NO evidence that the result of the election was "dictated by a foreign country"!!!!! Hillary Clinton's campaign idiot, John Podesta, stupidly responded to a phishing e-mail and in doing so handed over the access to his e-mail account to SOME HACKER located SOMEWHERE ON EARTH. Apparently, the unknown hacker then grabbed Podesta's e-mails and handed them to Wikileaks. There's a plausible report that even this phishing attack was not even the source of the Wikileaks info and that it was provided by a Democrat insider, possibly an annoyed Bernie supporter. IF this phishing attack affected the election, then what you are saying is that it was very unfair for the American people to find out the truths about Hillary and her team that were exposed and that by your reckoning the American people should have remained ignorant and been tricked into supporting Hillary (THAT would have been the electionhack the Democrats intended).
You Hillary supporters are just getting pathetic at this point - there's now a poll showing half of the Democrats think Putin hacked the voting machines (something even Obama says is impossible). It's just like you people who think Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her House; Palin NEVER said it, the words were said on SNL by Tina Fey who was impersonating Palin. If left-wing media outlets repeat a lie often enough, it appears that fact-starved bubble-occupying liberals will believe the lie.
Answer this: IF Obama knew Putin was hacking the election over the past year-and-a-half, then why did he do NOTHING to stop the hacks or punish the Russians until now, just before leaving office and after supposedly letting Hillary lose to the Russian hackers???? Obama theoretically has NSA people snooping on all net traffic and e-mails etc, so SURELY he could have detected it and defended the Democrat party from a simple phishing attack and SURELY he must have iron-clad proof of all the hack traffic and should have known exactly where all the hack traffic was coming from and going to. If you are right that Putin "hacked the election" then why did the most powerful man on Earth (Obama) let him do it????
Another Question: You Hillbots keep insisting Trump is Putin's puppet... where is any shred of evidence for this? Trump has certainly called Putin "smart", but if you Democrats are right that Putin hacked the election, then you agree that Putin is smarter than Obama. Trump has certainly said he disagrees with Putin's agenda but that Putin is a better leader than Obama, but this was a slam on the poor leadership of Obama and is certainly true if you consider who is getting more results from his efforts to lead his respective nation. Remember that Hillary actually enabled Putin to grab a big chunk of America's Uranium capacity and that her campaign boy Podesta is a registered lobbyist for Putin's banker...
WOW, now that is an intelligent rebuttal.
Instead of this sham governments could do a real job. For example standardize plugs, sockets, voltage, or say traffic signs for automation.
Now this should be modded extra funny not only this post, but this parent and its parent post as well! Good to see humor is not completely dead in this discussion board.
"Russian government recruiters .. placing prominent ads on social media sites"
Is there a link to the original adverts?
Watch some of the CCC talk videos. There are university students hacking commercial banking systems and games consoles for their dissertations. The games consoles in particular need a lot of assembler and low level work to recover keys, right down to the hardware level.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Hey guys, did you hear Russia is hacking the US? "No big deal, it's probably just propaganda" Hey guys, did you hear Hillary didn't secure her e-mail server? "OMG SHE'S THE DEVIL SEND HER TO PRISON FOR TREASON!" I love watching you morons try to justify your way out of your own stupidity.
A whole lot of "zero evidence" going on
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
While we're bombarded with news about Russian hacking, let's not forget that the first country that deployed what can be called a "cyber-weapon" is the USA.
Fine logic there.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually, it was done twice by 2 US presidents - Clinton and Obama. Both did what they could to try and get Netanyahu beaten in the Israeli elections - w/ Clinton sending Carville to manage Labour's campaign and actually pulling it off - getting Ehud Barak elected
While I don't believe that the WikiLeaks was the straw that broke the camel's back and tilted this election Trump's way, in the event that it actually did, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving candidate
So Trump was elected to give Hillary her just desserts? That's like setting yourself on fire to show the propane company you don't need their fuel to keep warm in the winter.
This country deserves every fucking thing coming to it over the next four years.
~X~
The NYT served as the Bush Administration's propaganda organ in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Now they are reprising that role for the Obama administration's last-ditch efforts to lie the country into war with Russia.
Are you incapable of reading, or typing? Or both?
No, I stated that the Democrats deserved what they got. They tried rigging Israeli elections twice - the first time successfully - and this time, assuming that this election was rigged against them (something I don't agree that happened), it was a just payback.
Nowadays, anyone with good technical assets is typically frowned upon in business, or at the very least not considered posivitely. "Just code monkeys" etc. When opportunity to prove yourself against your peers and often against former employers and offered a fair amount of money in the process, the choice is clear.
You are sooo right about the revenge of the monkeys. I won't explain.
Its a bear eat bear out there, bring your pepper spray and hiker trail bells.
Oh, that's great! I forgot about that... and an excuse to change the subject...
---
Montana Grizzly Bear Notice:
In light of the rising frequency of human/grizzly bear conflicts, the Montana Department of Fish and Game is advising hikers, hunters, and fishermen to take extra precautions and keep alert for bears while in the field. We advise that outdoorsmen wear noisy little bells on their clothing so as not to startle the bears that aren't expecting them. We also advise outdoorsmen to carry pepper spray with them in case of an encounter with a bear.
It is also a good idea to watch out for fresh signs of bear activity. Outdoorsmen should recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear poop. Black bear poop is smaller and contains a lot of berry seeds and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear poop has little bells in it and smells like pepper spray.
In AD 2101, cyber was beginning.
Captain: What happen? ....
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the cyber.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's you !!
CYBERRUSSIAN: How are you gentlemen !! All your cyber are belong to us. You are on the way to cyber.
Captain: What you say !!
CYBERRUSSIAN: You have no chance to cyber make your cyber. Ha ha ha ha
Oh, I absolutely consider them legit. I was just accepting the (incorrect) premise that it was illegitimate to sabotage their prospects, and then illustrating that they had done it for at least one foreign election previously - that in Israel. So it's like someone in a very fragile glass house throwing stones
California would not have tilted the election even if it had 50% more electoral votes than it currently does. I am suggesting that electoral college is a good system for putting a check on cluster fuck or group think or whatever else you want to call it. Obviously, the people in California are woefully misinformed and completely isolated from the opinions outside of those prevalent in that state. Having a place like that have such a huge impact on the rest of the country would be a gross step away from democracy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
gerrymandering would serve as an explanation if they didn't win 39 governships. Or if the popular vote victory would be more spread across the country. The won in the California outlier and the fact the Democrats actually lost the popular vote without the California outlier only proves the gerrymandering claim wrong.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Grow up, you silly child.
Fuck you, you silly cunt.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
First of all, Mr Knowitall, Israel has a government similar to UK - where the Prime Minister heads the government, not a president.
Second, I mentioned 'deserving candidate', not 'deceiving candidate'. What's wrong w/ you - did you learn reading in a school in a shitty school district?
Third, I never said it would be satisfying if Putin put Trump in power. What I said was that having tried their best to interfere in the Israeli elections, for the US to blame Russia for doing the same here is a case of pot, kettle, black. Aside from that, I do not believe any of the following:
- That Russia was the one that hacked the emails for Wikileaks: I happen to believe Assange on this one. While I in principle don't support Wikileaks hacking government computer systems, what they exposed here was funny, particularly the Clinton statement about being 2 faced
- That the wikileaked emails changed many minds. Those who oppose Clinton just had their worst suspicions about her, the DNC and the media confirmed, while those who supported her continued to support her.
- That Russia had any control on any voting machines, since few of them, particularly in WI, MI and PA, were connected to the internet
What I do believe as the reason for Clinton's defeat is that the same Bernie supporters who attended his rallies but didn't bother to turn up to vote to give him a fighting chance also stayed home for Clinton. If they couldn't bother to get their butts out to support their fav Bernie at the polls, why would they do that for someone who they liked even less? It's a lot more fun to hold loud demonstrations in the days following the results.
I never made any assumptions about you and the other AC. I knew you were different, and the above post was directed at you and you alone. Reading comprehension ain't your strongest point, and you illustrate it pretty emphatically.
About Israel, in 1999 or thereabouts, Bill Clinton did send James Carville to Israel to manage the campaign to oust Netanyahu, since he thought that Israel was the party that blocked peace. Except that he found out otherwise when Arafat rebuffed the most generous - and suicidal - offer that Ehud Barak could give, and restarted the Intifada. Of course, Obama learnt nothing from it, and repeated the same experiment, but this time unsuccessfully: the Israelis did not fire Netanyahu this time. Difference here is that Obama is perfectly fine w/ Israel being wiped off the map: he has more of an emotional bond w/ the Arabs, having been taught in Quran school in Indonesia when he was in his formative years
I do agree w/ you that Russia didn't do shit. Most people's minds were already made up, and Wikileaks just proved what people suspected.
Your nationality and religion have nothing to do w/ things: most US Jews are unfortunately anti-Israel, even if it means acquiescing in the supremacy of a geopolitical ideology that surpasses Nazism in its Judeophobia. Problem is that if Israel were to fall - which it would if it were forced back to its 1967 borders, it would mark a triumph of Islam unseen since the capture of Constantinople, and one would see a worldwide campaign to spread Islam just about everywhere, and impose Shariah law wherever possible.
Sharia law for Israel
Medina back to Israel