Hamas to Show an Improved Hand

Hamas to Show an Improved Hand
Organization Aims to Capitalize
On Intelligence Gains From Gaza Takeover
By CAM SIMPSON in Jerusalem and NEIL KING JR. in Washington
July 30, 2007; Page A4

When the Islamist group Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip in June it seized an intelligence-and-military infrastructure created with U.S. help by the security chiefs of the Palestinian territory's former ruler.

According to current and former Israeli intelligence officials, former U.S. intelligence personnel and Palestinian officials, Hamas has increased its inventory of arms since the takeover of Gaza and picked up technical expertise -- such as espionage techniques -- that could assist the group in its fight against Israel or Washington's Palestinian allies, the Fatah movement founded by Yasser Arafat.

Hamas leaders say they acquired thousands of paper files, computer records, videos, photographs and audio recordings containing valuable and potentially embarrassing intelligence information gathered by Fatah. For more than a decade, Fatah operated a vast intelligence network in Gaza established under the tutelage of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hamas leaders are expected as early as tomorrow to go public with some of the documents and the secrets they hold.

The exact nature of the threat posed by the intelligence grab in Gaza -- including any damage to U.S. intelligence operations in the Palestinian territories and the broader Middle East -- is difficult to ascertain. U.S. and Israeli officials generally tried to play down any losses, saying any intelligence damage is likely minimal.

But a number of former U.S. intelligence officials, including some who have worked closely with the Palestinians, said there was ample reason to worry that Hamas has acquired access to important spying technology as well as intelligence information that could be helpful to Hamas in countering Israeli and U.S. efforts against the group.

"People are worried, and reasonably so, about what kind of intelligence losses we may have suffered," said one former U.S. intelligence official with extensive experience in Gaza.

A U.S. government official said he doubted serious secrets were compromised in the Gaza takeover. Other officials said they had no reason to believe that U.S. spying operations elsewhere in the Arab world had been compromised.

Close ties between Hamas and the governments of Iran and Syria also mean that intelligence-and-spying techniques could be shared with the main Middle East rivals of the Bush administration. As the White House prepares to lead an international effort to bolster Fatah's security apparatus in the West Bank, the losses in Gaza stand as an example of how efforts to help Fatah can backfire.

The compromised intelligence Hamas says it now has ranges widely. The group alleges it has videos used in a sexual-blackmail operation run by Washington's allies inside Fatah's security apparatus. But the group also says it has uncovered detailed evidence of Fatah-controlled spying operations carried out in Arab and Muslim countries for the benefit of the U.S. and other foreign governments. Hamas also alleges that Fatah intelligence operatives cooperated with Israeli intelligence officials to target Islamist leaders for assassination.

"What we have is good enough for us to completely reveal the practices [of Fatah-controlled security services], both locally and throughout the region," said Khalil al Hayya, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, who has assumed a leading role on the intelligence issue for the Islamist group.

Michael Scheuer, a former top CIA counterterrorism analyst who left the agency in 2004, said the U.S. had provided the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority with "substantial help" in training as well as computers, other equipment and analytical tools. Other former intelligence officials confirmed that the U.S. gave Fatah-controlled services sophisticated intelligence-gathering equipment, including eavesdropping technology, though these officials wouldn't provide more precise details about the technology.

This kind of technology, along with the knowledge it yields, is broadly known in intelligence circles as "Sigint," which is shorthand for "signals intelligence." It can include eavesdropping equipment, devices used for intercepting radio, microwave and telephone communications and telemetry technology that allows the user to pinpoint the location of someone holding a communication device, such as a cellphone.

"The United States invested a lot of effort in setting up this system in Gaza -- construction, equipment, training… filings, the logistics, the transportation. It was a big operation, and it's now in the hands of the other side," said Efraim Halevy, who formerly headed both the Mossad, which is Israel's foreign-intelligence agency, and Israel's National Security Council. Mr. Halevy said, however, that he didn't want to overemphasize the value of Hamas's potential intelligence gains.

Avi Dichter, Israel's public-security minister and the former head of Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence-and-counterterrorism agency, also said he didn't want to overemphasize the potential benefits to Hamas. But he confirmed that the Islamist group seized Sigint technology and expertise during its Gaza sweep. He declined to provide specifics, but said it had been provided by the Americans, the British and the French.

Mr. Dichter, who left the Shin Bet when his five-year term as its chief ended in 2005, also said the potential damage goes beyond Hamas's ability to turn the technology against its enemies. Now, he said, the militants could gain an understanding of how such technology is used against them, allowing them to adopt more sophisticated counter measures.

"It's not only the tools. It's also the philosophy that's behind them," he said.

Hamas leaders are being vague about the equipment and technological know-how they captured. Mr. Hayya said some important former Fatah operatives in Gaza, all of whom were granted amnesty after Hamas took over, were now cooperating with the group on intelligence matters.

Easier to assess is the threat posed by the military hardware Hamas picked up after the takeover. The militant group seized an arsenal of arms and munitions captured from U.S.-backed security forces loyal to Fatah and its leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr. Dichter said Hamas gained roughly the same number of weapons during a few days that it would have taken the group nearly a year to amass from smuggling operations.

Hamas says it is using the armaments to build a popular army in Gaza. Israeli intelligence and security officials estimate the Islamist group has some 13,000 armed men in Gaza.

As for Fatah's secrets, Hamas leaders say they grabbed intelligence stashes from three locations: the headquarters in Gaza City of the Preventive Security Force; the Palestinian Authority intelligence headquarters, which were housed in a Gaza City office known as "Il Safina," or "the ship"; and a nearby satellite-intelligence office dubbed, "Il Mashtal," or "the nursery."

As Hamas fighters moved in during their June sweep across Gaza, Fatah officials burned some papers and stripped data from computers. But the Hamas conquest was so quick that significant caches remained for the taking, according to the militant group.

All three sites were long under the sway of Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan, who first became an important CIA ally in Gaza in 1996. At the time, then-CIA director George Tenet began working openly with Mr. Dahlan and other Palestinian officials to build up security services aimed at combating the rise of Hamas and like-minded extremist groups that rejected the Oslo peace accords.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Tenet declined to comment on the CIA-Fatah cooperation, his relationship with Mr. Dahlan or Hamas's gains. Mr. Dahlan on Thursday formally resigned his Palestinian Authority post. Mr. Dahlan hasn't commented publicly since resigning and he couldn't be located for comment. Associates in the West Bank said he was abroad.

Mr. Hayya, the senior Hamas leader, said hundreds of the group's Hamas's operatives have been culling through and analyzing the intelligence troves since their seizure, with specialists in security, forensic accounting and administration conducting detailed assessments. Significant portions of these assessments are close to completion, Mr. Hayya said.

Some of the most potentially explosive claims from Hamas center on the alleged activities beyond the Gaza Strip of Palestinian agents loyal to Fatah. Mr. Hayya alleged the CIA utilized Palestinian agents for covert intelligence operations in other Middle Eastern countries. Hamas, he said, now possesses a roadmap detailing the names and actions of "those men whom thought were going to continue to be their hand across the region."

Some former U.S. intelligence officials who worked closely with the Palestinian Authority confirmed that such overseas spying arrangements beyond Gaza existed with the Palestinians in the past and said they likely continued, bolstering the credibility of Hamas's claims.

Whitley Bruner, a longtime CIA officer in the Middle East, recalled that "some of our first really good information on [Osama] bin Laden in Sudan" in the early 1990s "came from Palestinian sources." Before leaving the agency in 1997, Mr. Bruner participated in many of the first cooperative sessions organized by Mr. Tenet between the CIA and the Palestinians.

"It's not unlikely that continued to do things for the U.S. well beyond the territories," Mr. Bruner said. "Palestinians are embedded all over the place, so they have access to things that the U.S. doesn't."

Others are more circumspect. Bruce Reidel, who worked for nearly 30 years as a U.S. Middle East specialist, both as a CIA intelligence officer and as an adviser to Presidents Clinton and Bush, said there is sure to be "quite a treasure trove of materials that would document relationship with the CIA." Mr. Reidel said during his time in government, which ended in 2005, "the Palestinians were always trying to prove that they had unique access and information," but he said he was skeptical of Hamas's claims that such operations ventured far beyond Gaza and the West Bank.

Mr. Hayya alleges that while many officials from Arab and Muslim nations knew Mr. Dahlan was cooperating with U.S. intelligence agencies inside the Palestinian territories, many of those same leaders "are going to be amazed and surprised when they discover had actually worked against them for the Americans." He wouldn't directly answer a question about which nations were allegedly being spied on, but he said Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had the most to be concerned about from potential disclosures.

Jabril Rajoub, a Fatah rival to Mr. Dahlan who was long his West Bank counterpart and most recently served as Mr. Abbas's national security adviser, said he was aware of the alleged outlines of these operations, though he said he was unaware of their details. He called the Gaza-based network a "for-hire" intelligence operation, adding that it was active around the Middle East and provided information to the Americans, the British and others.

Mr. Hayya also said there is a substantial amount of evidence detailing cooperation between Fatah and Israel. There is evidence several militant leaders were targeted as a result of such cooperation, he alleged. This includes circumstantial evidence that he was personally targeted in an Israeli assassination attempt after he was fingered by Fatah intelligence officers as a top security threat.

After taking over Gaza, Mr. Hayya said Hamas recovered notes from a meeting of senior Palestinian Authority intelligence officials in which they discussed Mr. Hayya's value to the Islamist group. On May 20, less than a week after the meeting, an Israeli missile was fired into his home, killing eight people. Mr. Hayya was en route at the time, but says the strike came about five minutes after his 35-year-old cousin, Ibrahim, entered the home. The Hamas leader said he and his cousin look very similar.

"They thought it was me," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Shin Bet declined to comment.

Write to Cam Simpson at cam.simpson@wsj.com and Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com

Our apartheid state

Our apartheid state

07.24.07, 16:08

Yossi Paritzky

Three racist, discriminatory decisions undermine Israel's democratic character

One of the clearest rules that distinguishes a democratic state from a non-democratic state is the principle of equality when it comes to rights and obligations. In a democratic country, all citizens regardless of race, religious, gender or origin are entitled to equality when it comes to national assets, services and resources, and all citizens regardless of race, religion, gender or origin are equally obligated by national duties.

For example, in a democratic country everyone must pay taxes (although at different rates, of course,) and everyone must obey the law. On the other hand, every citizen in a democratic state is entitled to enjoy individual freedoms. One is entitled to purchase assets in the country, marry anyone he or she wish, work wherever one wants, study whatever one wishes, and express himself or herself as they wish.

• In short, equality is the basic tenet of a liberal western democracy and without it a country is not democratic in practice although possibly democratic by law.
  

• Last week, in a series of three decisions that are separate but connected through a stench of racism and discrimination, Israel entered the dismal pantheon of non-democratic states.
  
• This past Wednesday, Israel decided to be like apartheid-era South Africa, and some will say even worse countries that no longer exist.

Let's start with obligations. In a democratic country that has mandatory military service, all citizens must serve with no exception (aside from those who are unable to for health reasons or similar grounds.) A person should not be getting an exemption from service based on one's religion or race. And there, with a slight hand gesture, the Knesset decided to "extend" the legislation known as the Tal Law – which initially was meant to be valid for five transitory years only, in order to examine the possibility of integrating the strictly Orthodox into the IDF.

This was a blatantly anti-democratic arrangement and even those who drafted it reemphasized that it was merely a temporary agreement for five years only, yet around here the temporary becomes permanent, particularly when we're talking about discrimination and racism.

'Tainted sect'

The second apartheid decision has to do with the apparent "good news" that those who are unable to wed as a result of religious limitations would be able to marry each other now. What a disgusting expression that is. In a democratic country, a couple is allowed to marry however it wishes and the State is not at all allowed to interfere in this choice. It must allow any man to marry the woman he chooses (and in some countries same-sex marriages are also allowed,) because the State has no interest, and must not have one, in an individual's happiness and in the person one chooses to spend their life with.

But around here the situation is different. The division is based on religions and sects, and a member of one religion is not allowed to marry someone of a different religion. This has led to the emergence of a situation whereby an Israeli whose mother isn't Jewish, therefore making him non-Jewish according to Jewish law, was unable to marry in Israel at all.

Yet instead of allowing such person or any other person to marry as they wish, the government decided to establish a new sect. Now, a tainted sect has been created of people who can only marry among themselves. And so, an IDF officer whose last name is Rabinovich or even Cohen, who was born to a Jewish father but not a Jewish mother, would not be able to marry the woman who served in the army with him because she, lo and behold, is a kosher Jew while he is "tainted."

The culmination of this chutzpa is the fact that the current justice minister makes pretenses to call this racist arrangement a "breakthrough."

Anti-Zionist forces come together

The third racist decision was the one that banned Arab citizens of Israel from purchasing national land. Well, not all land, but only a part of it - Jewish National Fund land.

Imagine the French government banning Jews from purchasing land in Paris and its vicinity. Imagine that the United States would ban Jews from purchasing land in New England, because that's the cradle of American culture. What would we say then?

Yet when it comes to Arabs we keep silent, because we have been accustomed to think that in Israel there are citizens of various ranks and not everyone is entitled to the same rights.

The highlight of this absurd situation is that racist discourse takes place in the Israeli Knesset, yet nobody sees their own racism. Arab Knesset members, who justifiably protested the terrible discrimination against them, voted in favor of the Tal Law, which allows discrimination among Jews.

Instead of Arab Knesset members backing the enlistment of Arab Israelis to the army and playing an appropriate role when it comes to duties and rights, they preserve the racism. And so, all the anti-Zionist forces joined together – the Arabs, strictly Orthodox and settlers – to bring Israel to a place of chaos and darkness, blatant racism and screaming discrimination. All of them joined forces in order to bring us to a state of apartheid.

History has amused us by bringing these decisions at the beginning of the month of Av. Anyone who will be studying the destruction of the Third Temple, that is, the collapse of the Zionist enterprise and of the State of Israel, would certainly emphasize the above-mentioned disastrous decisions.

History played another trick by bringing these decisions a day after Jabotinsky Day was marked. Ze'ev Jabotinsky was a full-fledged atheist, secular, and Zionist who wrote that Arabs and Jews will be playing in this country together. Had he been resurrected and seen those who pretend to be his successors pass these despicable and contemptible decisions, he would certainly wish to die.

The writer is a former Shinui cabinet minister

High Court reissues order for IDF to raze wall near Hebron

High Court reissues order for IDF to raze wall near Hebron
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Mon., July 30, 2007 Av 15, 5767

The High Court ordered the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday to dismantle a concrete barrier near Hebron within two weeks.

The order comes one day after the court ruled that the IDF deliberately delayed the implementation of an earlier ruling to do so.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch instructed the army to implement a ruling made in December 2006, which required the army to remove within six months a concrete wall running along Route 317, south of Hebron.

The 2006 ruling came in response to a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel along with Arab inhabitants of nearby villages.

The court's ruling last December accepted the petitioners' claims that the barrier, 82 centimeters tall and 41 kilometers long, was an attempt to defy a previous ruling preventing the state from constructing the separation fence along the road.

The High court also issued Tuesday severe criticism of the state's foot-dragging on the issue. It gave the IDF a week to destroy the barrier, and a further week to remove its remains from the road.

On Monday Beinisch said that the IDF deliberately delayed implementing the 2006 ruling. This was after the court reexamined the issue, following complaints by petitioners that the state had not carried out the court's instructions.

"The court ruled to remove the wall. This is no way to treat the court," Beinisch told the state prosecutors. "The state issued an order on the matter. Why was it not followed? I am struggling to understand the method that you chose to pursue."

Justice Ayala Procaccia added that

"if this is how the state treats court rulings, what can we expect from the ordinary citizen? What message are you interested in sending here?"

According to petitioners, the smaller concrete wall was set up to obstruct Palestinian shepherds from crossing the road with their herds of livestock. The petitioners claim this was done to keep the area east of Route 317 under the control of Jewish settlers.

The court rejected the state's claims that the barrier was meant to protect drivers and prevent them from sliding off the road, and gave the army six months to dismantle it. The court added that the state could find alternative solutions, but only after the barrier was dismantled.

However, 48 hours before the six-month period the court had afforded it to dismantle the wall, the state requested an extension, explaining it had come up with an alternative solution. This solution had in fact already been rejected by the court: The defense establishment proposed to put gaps in the wall at fixed intervals of 200 meters.

Meanwhile, the petitioners requested that the court hold the state in contempt for failing to meet the court's deadline for removing the wall. The court is expected to rule on the matter today. Sources who are involved in the case said they expected the court to order the state to destroy the wall immediately.

Surprisingly, former adviser to the defense minister, Hagai Alon, who sided with the calls to dismantle the wall, said its destruction would be unfortunate.

"This unnecessary barrier cost hundreds of millions of shekels that came out of the budget for no reason, because the IDF tried to cite security needs to explain a political move," he said.

Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch.

Wanted, for crimes against the state

Wanted, for crimes against the state
July 24 2007
The Guardian

For many years, Azmi Bishara has been one of the most prominent voices representing the 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel. But now he is a fugitive, facing some of the most serious allegations ever made against an Israeli MP. What happened? In a rare interview, he talks to Rory McCarthy

When war broke out in Lebanon last summer there were few dissenting voices in Israel. Opinion polls showed unprecedented public support for the conflict. Politicians and pundits crowded television studios to argue that Israel was fighting for its survival in its battle to wipe out Hizbullah.

But one Israeli MP saw it differently. Hizbullah, he wrote, was a resistance movement, fighting a war brought on by an Israeli government led by "mediocrities, cowards and opportunists" who were responsible for "barbaric vandalism and the deliberate targeting of civilians".

After a decade as a member of parliament in the Knesset, Azmi Bishara, politician, author and academic, had long established a reputation as the most outspoken political figure to emerge from Israel's Arab minority. Soon after the war was over, Bishara and a handful of MPs from his Balad party travelled to Syria and Lebanon, both "enemy states", where he continued to denounce his government. He did not have to wait long for a reaction: in September the Israeli attorney general ordered police to begin a criminal investigation.

It wasn't the first inquiry into Bishara's activities, and so he was not surprised when six months later he was called in to Petah Tikva police station, near Tel Aviv, for questioning. He twice met two police officers and then left for what he insists was a prearranged speaking tour to Jordan.

It was only while he was away that investigators leaked details of the case to the Israeli press. Although Bishara has not been charged, it has now emerged that he is under investigation for money laundering, contact with a foreign agent, delivery of information to the enemy and, most seriously, assistance to the enemy during war - a charge that can carry the death penalty.

These are some of the most serious allegations ever levelled against an Israeli MP and effectively mean that Bishara must either remain in exile abroad, or return to face the prospect of a lengthy jail sentence, or worse. But Bishara is also the most prominent advocate of Arab political rights within Israel, and the investigation has exposed a widening rift in Israeli society between the Jewish majority and the 20% Palestinian minority.

Bishara has not returned home. In April he handed in his resignation from the Knesset at the Israeli embassy in Cairo. For now he is living with his wife and two young children in a friend's empty flat in an apartment block in Amman, Jordan.

"The symbolic action of bringing me to trial and condemning me - they want it. I know they want it," he says, in a rare interview with the Guardian. "I'm not going to let them succeed; I'm always two steps ahead."

He sits back on the sofa, dressed in a polo shirt and chinos, with his mobile phones laid out on the coffee table. On a desk behind him is a laptop and on it the draft of a new book he is writing about democracy in the Arab world.

Bishara denies the accusations brought against him, and argues that the real reason for the investigation is not his actions during the Lebanon war but his long-held and widely published call for a fundamental change to the nature of the Israeli state: his belief that the country should no longer be a Jewish state but must protect Arab rights and become a "state for all its citizens".

"They want to condemn the whole political ideology and put it as if it's a cover for another kind of activity, which is not true," he says.

In March, the Israeli mass-market Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper published a story reporting that wire-tappings conducted by the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service, had recorded Bishara's conversations during the war. It said he spoke to "Hizbullah contacts" and directed them to "optimal targets for their rockets". It also reported that he had obtained "hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash" through money-changers in east Jerusalem, using such codewords as "book", which the newspaper said meant $50,000, "English", which it said meant dollars, and "Hebrew", which it said meant shekels.

"Investigators said they knew Bishara was using codewords because he suspected he was being wire-tapped; they said they burst into fits of laughter when Bishara placed an order for 'Half a book, in English,' meaning $25,000," the newspaper reported.

Bishara insists the allegations are untrue. He says he did not speak to anyone from Hizbullah during the war.

"Is it true I have been on the phone? Yes, and people were listening. But was I speaking to Hizbullah? The answer is no."

He did speak to politicians and journalists in Syria and Lebanon, but said he had no secret information to pass on.

"We don't have that kind of information to pass to anybody," he says. "What could I say that's not in the media? It's unbelievable. It's not serious at all."

The allegations of money laundering, he says, are "nonsense", and when he used the word "book" in his phone conversations with a money-changer he says he was talking only about books they had lent each other.

"It was about books, really about books. He kept taking books from me and giving me books. He's a real book collector. He reads. But that's all," he says. "It's a whole case of turning political, ideological, intellectual activity into a security suspicion."

Bishara is a Roman Catholic and a leftist, born into a lower-middle-class family in Nazareth. His father was a health inspector, trade unionist and one-time communist, his mother a teacher. During the 1948 war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes, Bishara's family stayed on in the country that became Israel. Bishara studied at Haifa and Hebrew universities, and his Communist party connections offered him the chance to take a doctorate in philosophy at Humboldt University in East Berlin in the 1980s. Like most Arabs in Israel, he rejects establishment definitions and describes his nationality as simply Arab Palestinian.

Born in an Israeli city eight years after the creation of the state of Israel, he holds Israeli citizenship, which makes him part of the country's 20% Arab minority and entitles him to vote and to stand for election to parliament. He can trace his family back hundreds of years to a village north of Nazareth, in what is today northern Israel.

Before his resignation, his Balad party held only four seats in the Knesset in a country where many Arab Israelis still tend to vote for the mainstream political parties, particularly Labour - now part of the ruling coalition. Even Bishara admits there is not widespread public support for his ideas among his own community. One opinion poll earlier this year found that three-quarters of Arab Israelis would support a constitution describing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

However, in recent months, that has begun to change. For a start, racism against Arabs in Israel is rising, according to at least one recent poll. In a survey for the Centre Against Racism, a poll of Jewish Israelis found that

• more than half believed it was treason for a Jewish woman to marry an Arab man;
  
• 40% said Arabs should no longer have the right to vote in parliamentary elections; and
• 75% opposed apartment blocks being shared by Jews and Arabs.

At the same time, more and more prominent Arab Israelis are adopting ideas similar to Bishara's and proposing a fundamental challenge to the Jewish nature of the state. Four separate documents have emerged since December, each making a similar case. Adalah, a human rights group, issued a draft constitution that said Israel should be defined not as a Jewish state but as a "democratic, bilingual and multicultural state". It called for an end to the Law of Return, which gives automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, and it called on Israel to "recognise its responsibility for past injustices suffered by the Palestinian people".

Then, earlier this month, in a remarkable interview with the Ha'aretz newspaper, Avraham Burg, a Jewish former speaker of the Knesset and former chair of the Jewish Agency, delivered his own denunciation of Israel's structure.

"It can't work any more," he said. "To define the state of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite." Burg too called for a change to the Law of Return and was highly critical of what he called Israel's "confrontational Zionism".

For Bishara, such comments only reinforce his long-held opinions.

"Everything is said as if there is an elephant in the room that nobody wants to speak about, which is called a state of all its citizens," he says. "But the idea won. This idea now is the real rival of the Zionist state. This is the first time you have a real challenge."

The Law of Return, he argues, is a fundamental problem, as is the idea of a state both Jewish and democratic.

"The problem with this state is that it cannot grant equality. It cannot separate religion and state, and it will always have an ideological mission that will keep it from integrating in the region or serving its citizens." He describes Israel as a "colonial democracy".

"The basic relationship between a state and its citizens should be citizenship, not ethnic or religious affiliation," he says. "Who is a citi-zen of Israel? Is my cousin in Lebanon who left the country in 1948 allowed to come back or not? This is basic. But somebody who can prove that his mother is Jewish, from Brooklyn - he can come."

However, the reality is that there is little chance that any of these ideas will become law in the near future. Israel does not have a constitution and, though there are frequently talks about how a draft might look, there remain wide differences on other issues beyond Jewish-Arab relations, particularly the fraught question of the relationship between secular and religious Jews.

There has been a harsh reaction to this ideological challenge. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet, was reported earlier this year as warning that a radicalisation of Israel's Arab minority was a "strategic threat to the state's existence". In March, a rightwing MP introduced a bill in the Knesset that would in future require all MPs to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state and to its national anthem and flag.

"We have to do everything to keep Israel as a Jewish state," said Arnon Soffer, head of Geostrategy at Haifa University and a leading advocate of the argument that Arab Israelis and Palestinians constitute a "demographic threat" to the Jews. "It is clear for me that to be a minority in this region is the end of the Jewish people, of the Jewish dream, of the Jewish state," he said. "They use words like 'democracy', but if they are in power, it is the end of democracy. We have to stop being naive."

Bishara is dismissive of those who argue that Arabs already have sufficient rights within Israel - notably citizenship, the right to vote and the right to speak out. These are no more than concessions, he says.

"You took the land and gave me freedom of speech," he says. "Who's winning here? Let's revise the deal. Take your freedom of speech and give me back Palestine. How about that?"

The longer the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continues, he says, Arab Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories will draw closer and the argument for a single, binational state will grow stronger, an argument that he openly favours.

"If it continues like this, in the end the issue of the Arabs in Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will meet," he says. "Binational means that the Arabs also should recognise that the Jews are a nationality. It doesn't mean the destruction of the state. It means two political entities will have to live together. It's a huge compromise."

Special report

Israel and the Middle East

Anthology of bigotry

Anthology of bigotry
26 July - 1 August 2007
Issue No. 855

The Israeli state is trying desperately to foreclose all exceptions to its unequivocally racist land laws, writes Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

Israel's parliament last week approved by an overwhelming majority the first reading of a bill to ensure that much of the country's inhabited land remains accessible to Jewish citizens only -- a move described by one leading local newspaper as turning Israel into a "racist Jewish state".

The private member's bill, called the Jewish National Fund Law, has received cross-party support. The first reading was approved by 64 legislators, with 16 -- most of them Arab MKs -- opposed. Supporters ranged from former premiere Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, to Ami Ayalon, a recent challenger to head the Labour Party.

The legislation is designed to nullify the threat posed by a Supreme Court judgment, reached in 2000, that potentially opens the door to thousands of Arab families leaving the tightly controlled areas assigned to them and choosing where they live. Currently Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of the population, are barred from buying homes in most of the country.

The move is the latest in a series of battles since Israel's establishment in 1948 to ensure exclusive Jewish control of land through an international Zionist organisation known as the Jewish National Fund (JNF). By the time of Israel's founding, the JNF had bought about six per cent of historic Palestine for Jewish settlement. Rather than demanding that these territories be handed over by the JNF, the new state authorities assigned the organisation a special, quasi- governmental status. The JNF was also given a significant share of the lands and property confiscated from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled during the 1948 War.

Today, the state has nationalised 80 per cent of land inside Israel, and the JNF holds another 13 per cent. Neither sells land to private owners on the grounds that it is being held in trust for worldwide Jewry. Instead, they offer long-term leases on the land in their possession.

The JNF has far more power than the division of land suggests, however: its 13 per cent share is reported to include some 70 per cent of the country's inhabited land; it effectively controls a government body known as the Israel Lands Authority that manages the 93 per cent of land owned by the state and the JNF; and it dominates committees set up to vet applicants to hundreds of rural communities.

Because the JNF charter forbids it from selling or leasing land to non-Jews, this arrangement has allowed the JNF to discriminate against Arab citizens on behalf of the government. The JNF's control of the Israel Lands Authority and the vetting committees has ensured that Arab citizens are excluded from most of the 93 per cent of nationalised land.

Instead they have been restricted to the three per cent of Israel on which Arab communities already exist or which is privately owned by Arab citizens, though even much of this land falls under the jurisdiction of Jewish regional councils that refuse to allow Arab families to build on it. Dozens of other Arab communities are classified as illegal because the state refuses to recognise them, even though they predate Israel's establishment.

The JNF's stranglehold on the management of Israeli land was finally challenged in 2000 when the Supreme Court compelled the vetting committee of a rural community, Katzir, to consider the application of an Arab family, the Kaadans, for a plot of land advertised for sale. Katzir's committee, which until the ruling had been refusing even to deal with the Kaadans' application, subsequently rejected the family on the grounds that they were not "socially suitable". Seven years later the court has yet to offer the Kaadans proper redress.

However, the Kaadans ruling opened the way for other Arab families to demand the right to bid for homes in communities designed only for Jews. The JNF has twice tried to market homes in a new neighbourhood of Karmiel, a town in the Galilee, but has been forced to cancel the tender on each occasion when families from a nearby Arab community, Sakhnin, applied. A petition to the Supreme Court submitted in 2004 on behalf of the Arab families has yet to be heard.

In the meantime, the JNF is reported to be considering withdrawing from the long-standing arrangement that places the Israel Lands Authority in charge of managing all public land, including JNF land. As the court ruling applies only to land managed by the Israel Lands Authority, the JNF would be still entitled to discriminate if it marketed its own housing schemes without the help of the Israel Lands Authority.

The government has been desperately seeking a way both to maintain its relationship with the JNF and not to provoke a second court ruling against it. Earlier this year it announced that land was to be offered to Jews and Arabs without discrimination. In compensation, the JNF would be given state land of equal value every time it was forced to lease land to an Arab family.

The scheme has been criticised by human rights groups which fear it will perpetuate and ultimately exacerbate discrimination by increasing the amount of land under JNF ownership: the JNF will still own the land it is leasing to Arab families but it will also be sold additional land from the state.

The new bill seeks to prevent even the government's proposed minor concession by nullifying the Supreme Court ruling. The legislation states: "the leasing of JNF lands for the purpose of settling Jews will not be seen as unacceptable discrimination." Before the legislators voted, the Knesset's legal adviser, Nurit Elstein, cleared the bill of accusations that it was racist.

Arab Knesset member Wassel Taha, of the National Democratic Assembly, said:

"Only an insane Knesset would pass a racist law that affirms the great land theft of 1948 and turns it into Jews- only property."

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Licence to kill

Licence to kill
Samson is the latest incarnation of Israel's policy of murdering Palestinians, relates Saleh Al-Naami

The four men in traditional Arab garb didn't attract the attention of Ahmed Khalil, 27, when he drew near his farm not far from the town of Beit Hanun in northern Gaza. They looked like the vegetable merchants who usually come to buy produce in the early hours of the day. But as soon as they approached, two of them fired at his head with pistols equipped with silencers. He died immediately.

The four men, disguised as Palestinians, were members of the most recent death squad formed by the Israeli government in Gaza to eliminate Palestinian fighters. The four thought that Khalil was a member of the resistance movement on his way to carry out an operation against an Israeli target, Israeli military sources later said. The Southern Zone Command of the Israeli army said that the death squad was formed on instructions of the Israeli mini-cabinet, which urged the army chiefs of staff to take more aggressive action against the resistance in Gaza, so as to end the firing of local-made rockets at Israeli settlements.

The new death squad is code-named Samson. It is a new edition of the Arabists, or units made up of men in Arab garb with orders to attack resistance men deep inside Palestinian territories. On the outskirts of Gaza, members of such squads often abduct farmers and hand them over to Israel's internal intelligence service, Shabak, for interrogation. There, the men are routinely coerced to supply information about the resistance. Yediot Aharonot recently admitted that Palestinians were being blackmailed by the Shabak into working as informers.

Such units have been operating for a long time in the West Bank. They are called Duvdevan (Hebrew for cherry) and are responsible for most of the target killings of leaders of the Palestinian resistance. Israeli television has just aired a documentary on the training of such units. Experts in makeup, language training and undercover operations help train Duvdevan members. The latter are often disguised as vegetable merchants and told to drive around in Mercedes pickups, the same type of vehicle favoured by Palestinian merchants. The occupation army now has the Arabists as well as the Samson units working undercover in Palestinian territories.

As part of its clampdown on resistance movements, the Israeli army has reactivated the reconnaissance infantry unit dubbed Egoz (or shell nuts in Hebrew). The unit was created in 1993 to act as a spearhead in operations against Hizbollah in south Lebanon. Once an offshoot of the elite Golani Brigade, the unit was disbanded following Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000. Now the unit has been reformed and told to patrol residential areas in various West Bank towns with orders to clash with resistance groups planning to fire at Israeli settlements or military targets. Egoz sets up road blocks on major streets in the West Bank in an attempt to arrest suspects and secure the roads leading to Israeli settlements.

The Israeli army has also formed a unit, dubbed Kharouf, which shoots at any Palestinian acting suspiciously on main roads. Another unit, called Duchifat, combs areas prior to military assaults in the West Bank. The Israeli army still maintains several elite death squads, such as Sayeret Metkal, which is affiliated to the staff command and was led in the 1970s by Ehud Barak, current prime minister. In 1990, Barak said in a Russian-language bulletin handed out to Russian emigrants that he used to feel "immense joy" at the sight of his victims's heads being blown up. Former premiere Binyamin Netanyahu also served in the same unit, so did former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon.

The Israeli army has turned Palestinian territories into a shooting range for the special units of the navy and the air force corps, a place where they hone their skills of target killing. And yet the West Bank and Gaza are far from their usual turf. Take for example Force 13 of the Israeli navy commandos. This unit is supposed to operate only at sea, but it has participated in dozens of assassinations and abductions in the West Bank and Gaza. One of the best-known operations conducted by Force 13 was the killing of Dr Thabet Thabet, Fatah Tulkarm representative in mid 2002. Force 13 was formed and for a while led by Ami Ayalon, the former navy commander who challenged Barak recently for the leadership of the Labour Party. In his election campaign, Ayhalon boasted of having personally "killed more Arabs" than all the Jews killed by Hamas.

Shamuel Romeh, who was one of the leaders of Shabak, said that the elite units specialised in target killings work closely with the Shabak, which collects data about the targets from Palestinian informers. General Gadi Eisencott, commander of the northern zone and former commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, said that the use of elite units in target killings carries a "deterrence" message to the Palestinian resistance movement, one that is far more effective than shelling by planes.

"When a Palestinian terrorist knows that soldiers of the special units can fire at his head point blank while he is standing in the alley outside his home, this is a message to the rest of terrorists that our long army can reach any of them,"

he told the newspaper Haaretz.

Although service in the Israeli army is mandatory, service in the death squads is voluntary. According to Israeli television Channel 2, most those who volunteer for service in the elite units are followers of the religious Zionist current, who combine military and religious zeal with racism toward the Palestinians and Arabs.

Israel's official institutions offer young people incentives to get them into the elite units. Military expert Rami Edelis says that one of the major considerations for promotion in the army is service in these units. When members of such units go back to civilian life, they are given priority in employment as well as scholarships.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Critique of the Author, A. Jay Cristol

Published Commentary: The Liberty Incident
Critique of the Author, A. Jay Cristol
See also: The Liberty Incident's Analysis and Criticism and Summary of Position.

charlatan. n.

...A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud...

The Liberty Incident is faithful to the "Big Lie Theory" of propaganda: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Attributed to Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda under Adolf Hitler

Background

A. Jay Cristol is a master of the art of lying through misdirection. His book is a perfect example of this talent. Without directly lying, he arranges facts (and omits others) in such a way as to lead a reader to a completely false conclusion. If challenged, he can reply that he didn't really lie, the error of fact only exists in the reader's mind. In addition to the articles in this critique which deal with the application of Cristol's special talent to the telling of the story of the Israeli attack on USS Liberty, it is instructive to see how he has done the same thing to give a false impression as to his own background. Since there is no evidence that he has ever sought to correct these factual mistakes, one can only assume that they were the intended result of his design.

Cristol presently works as a United States Bankruptcy Judge in Miami, Florida. Though he styles himself as "a federal judge," this description is a bit misleading. He works for the federal government and is given the title of judge, but he is not a United States District Judge or Circuit Judge. These positions require Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. Mr. Cristol, an appointee of circuit judges, has never had his name placed before nor confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Cristol writes of himself on his web site:

"In November 1951, during the Korean conflict, A. Jay Cristol joined the US Navy as an aviation cadet, earning his Navy Wings of Gold in April 1953. He deployed with VS-37, a Navy anti-submarine squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Princeton (CV-37) to the Western Pacific and the Sea of Japan. He was also part of TG70.4 during February 1955, in support of evacuating Nationalist Chinese from the Tachen Islands near the Communist China mainland in the South China Sea. He flew day and night missions as both a hunter pilot flying the Grumann AF-2W and a killer pilot flying the Grumann AF-2S. He was subsequently attached to the Fleet All Weather Training Unit, Pacific at San Diego, California as an instrument flight instructor and taught maneuvers for the delivery of nuclear weapons. Upon returning to civilian life, Cristol joined the Naval Air Reserve where he qualified as a four-engine Navy transport plane commander. In the 1960s, he flew operational flights during the Cuban Missile Crises and volunteer airlift missions to Vietnam.

After 18 years as a Naval aviator, Cristol joined the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He graduated with distinction from Naval Justice School. He served as a lawyer for another twenty years. His duties included teaching law of war and serving as the administrative officer for the summer Naval Reserve law courses. In 1983, he was made an honorary professor by the Naval Justice School. He has performed special active duty in the office of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations. In the 1980s, the Department of Defense sent him to the International Institute of Humanitarian Law at San Remo, Italy to lecture on Law of Naval warfare to senior foreign military officers. Captain Cristol retired in 1988. He wears more than a dozen military decorations including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal.

In civilian life, Cristol became a lawyer and practiced civil law. He served as Special Assistant Attorney General of Florida during the 1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965 sessions of the Florida Legislature. In 1985, after 25 years of law practice, he left his position as senior partner in a firm he founded to accept an appointment to the federal bench. He continues to serve as Chief Judge Emeritus in the Southern District of Florida. He is also an adjunct professor, teaching at the University of Miami School of Law.

An interest in international terrorism led him to enroll in the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Miami where he researched and wrote on terrorism. Because of his background as a navy pilot, a navy lawyer (JAG), a lecturer in law of naval warfare, a civil lawyer, and a federal judge, members of the faculty encouraged him to research and write about the Liberty incident. He spent ten years researching the subject and was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Miami Graduate School of International Studies. His collection of research material on this subject is considered to be the largest and most complete of any collection on the subject in the entire world. After completing his dissertation, he obtained declassification of additional heretofore secret documents through many Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals. His book, The Liberty Incident, was written to update and complete the historical record. He has written numerous articles on law, aviation, history, and other subjects.

Judge Cristol remains an avid aviator. He made his first flight in a Piper J-3 Cub on Biscayne Bay in 1945. He has personally piloted a Ford Tri-Motor, the Goodyear Blimp, a Soviet MiG-15, and many other unique, antique, or historic aircraft. In 1998, he became one of the few persons to have an airplane named after him when Pan Am named one of their 727 aircraft the Clipper A. Jay Cristol. He is a founding member of the National Museum of Naval Aviation at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida and a founding member of the Wings Over Miami Military and Classic Aircraft Museum in Miami, Florida."

This autobiographic description gives the strong impression that Cristol was a combat pilot during the Korean War, though it does not say so explicitly. In fact, he graduated from flight school less than 90 days before the Armistice was signed. He never flew from an aircraft carrier anywhere within striking distance of Korea. His carrier pilot career was limited to training missions in the South China Sea during peacetime. Cristol has done nothing to correct the misimpression created by his self styled description of his war career.

This misdirection through a careful choice of words has achieved his desired goal. Here are some quotes off Internet sites that write admiringly of Cristol, incorrect statements that he has never seen fit to correct:

He says ''virulently anti-Semitic organizations'' like the Liberty Lobby continue to ''fan the fires'' about the Liberty to smear Israel, when similar friendly-fire disasters have been all but forgotten, including the 1968 Pueblo, 1975 Mayag�ez and 1987 Stark incidents.

He speaks of his favorite aircraft, the Grumman Avenger -- which former President George Bush flew in World War II -- in rhapsodic terms.

``Some enchanted evening, you look across the room and fall in love.''

Cristol left Miami Beach High School to become a Naval aviation cadet during the Korean War and qualified to fly off aircraft carriers. He flew combat missions in the Far East and participated in an airlift evacuation of nearly 80,000 Chinese nationals from the Tachen Islands to what was then Formosa (Taiwan) in 1955.

He became a military flight instructor before returning to South Florida, where he flew briefly for Eastern Airlines, then earned undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Miami.

ACTIVATED TWICE

A Naval reservist, Cristol was activated during the Bay of Pigs crisis and the Vietnam War, during which he flew airlifts. He taught summers at the Naval Justice School in Newport, R.I., and practiced law until he was appointed to the bench in 1984. [Emphasis added]

Notice that those who do not accept his version of events are not just "anti-Semitic," but rather ''virulently anti-Semitic.'' As with many of the claims he makes for himself, there is absolutely no evidence to support this characterization of those who do not agree with him. The Miami Herald did take the bait he had put out and wrote "He flew combat missions in the Far East," something that never happened. If Cristol ever wrote to the newspaper to correct their error, there is no evidence of it.

In another glowing review, this time by the American Israel Political Action Committee, he is described as a "combat pilot." Again, this is a patently false description. If Cristol ever saw combat, that fact has become a closely guarded secret.

Thirty-five years after that awful event, the anti-Israel slander has at last been debunked. A. Jay Cristol - a former U.S. Navy combat pilot and lawyer now serving as a federal judge in Florida - has just published his groundbreaking book The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship (Brassey's, 2002), which proves conclusively that the Israeli attack was indeed a tragic mistake. [Emphasis added]

AIPAC's comment shows that they know as little about Cristol as they know about the Israeli attack on USS Liberty - and their characterizations of both are equally false.

Another pro-Israeli organization describes him as a former "fighter pilot":

"Judge A. Jay Cristol, Ph.D., was a Navy fighter pilot who served for 18 years as a Naval aviator,"

Note that this description also speaks of Cristol's "18 years as a Naval aviator," which for a reservist (as Cristol was) equals about nine months of active duty time.

This next description is a classic. This comment relates to meetings of the Association of Former Intelligence Professionals.

"For AFIO, he brings in speakers like federal judge and ex-naval intelligence officer A. Jay Cristol, and Rear Adm. James "Jay" Carmichael, commander of the local Coast Guard district. Besides being a great place to pick up the latest spy spin and conspiracy tales, the AFIO lunches aim to bring together the somewhat amorphous local intelligence community. "We're generally speaking to the choir and they know it," Spencer admits. "It's primarily a networking thing." Spencer says he's got aspirations to start scholarships for local students who want to enter an intelligence field, and fund intelligence programs at a local university."

Cristol's background has now morphed from that of a simple reservist into that of a Korean war combat fighter pilot who also happened to be a former Naval Intelligence office. This is not the first time that someone has bestowed this title on him. At a Coral Gables book signing event, the Mayor introduced him as a "former Naval Intelligence officer" and he simply stood there beaming. He made no effort whatsoever to correct the Mayor's mistake.

Analysis

As with everything else written by Cristol, you must read and parse his claims about himself very carefully. He never says that he was a Korean War combat fighter pilot; he only implies that he was. Though his use of terms like "Korean conflict" (which he defines as running a year longer than the actual war), he implies that he flew during the actual war. He speaks of flying "hunter" and "killer" missions off the USS Princeton. Again, this implies combat. In fact, he flew ASW training flights. He speaks of flying missions off an aircraft carrier "during the Korean conflict", yet he never came any closer to Korea than flying training missions thousands of miles away in the South China Sea - well after the Armistice had been signed.

This is important because it illustrates how he deliberately omits key facts in order to create a false impression in the mind of the reader. If criticized later, he can claim that he did not explicitly misstate anything and if there is confusion, it is entirely in the mind of the reader. This is a tactic that he uses on almost every page of The Liberty Incident.

For example, on page 43 of The Liberty Incident he tells another whopper in an attempt to explain and excuse the failure of the IDF pilots to identify Liberty while attacking:

"...Because very little time remains after firing ceases until the aircraft will fly into or strike a surface target, fighter and attack pilots are told repeatedly to fire and pull up. Most pilots including this author will confess that they have in fact delayed pull-up to observe their hits. .."

Again, through the skillful use of tense and phrasing, he implies, without actually saying so, that he is an experienced combat pilot who had extensive experience strafing targets. If challenged, again he can respond that he did not say that explicitly and it is the reader's mistake if he or she concluded otherwise.

He also fabricates things. Cristol claims to have conducted interviews with people who deny that they were ever interviewed by him, including several Liberty survivors. Cristol�s interaction with Captain Ward Boston provides an excellent example of this sort of claim.

Captain Boston said that Cristol telephoned him several years ago to discuss the Liberty court of inquiry. Boston told Cristol that he wouldn�t talk about anything having to do with Liberty that wasn�t already public record. This included his personal thoughts and opinions as well as his private conversations with Admiral Kidd and the other members of the court. Cristol persisted. He asked Boston about his background and a variety of other matters, which Boston did answer, but Boston consistently refused to discuss anything about Liberty that wasn�t in the public record.

A few years later, Cristol wrote to Boston to tell him that he was going to visit Coronado (where Boston lives) and wanted to arrange to visit Boston. In the letter, Cristol recited a number of things that Boston purportedly told him in their earlier conversation. Boston said that he had told Cristol nothing of the sort. Cristol called Boston to confirm their meeting. Boston told Cristol that Cristol�s understanding of the earlier conversation was completely wrong and that he did not say any of the things that Cristol had attributed to him. He also told Cristol that he would be out of town and couldn�t meet with him.

Notwithstanding any of this, Cristol still claims that he interviewed Boston twice and implies that they discussed the court of inquiry and other issues Boston had previously refused to discuss with anyone else. That is patently untrue.

When Boston spoke with Cristol the first time, he suggested that if Cristol had questions about the court of inquiry, he should talk with Admiral Kidd. Cristol then called Kidd and spoke with him. About an hour after Boston spoke with Cristol, Kidd called Boston. They discussed Cristol and their mutual dislike for him. Kidd concluded by opining that he thought Cristol was an Israeli agent. This is memorialized in a sworn statement written and signed by Captain Boston.

Cristol claims to have made 15 trips to Israel while doing his research. He does not say whether he paid for these trips or someone else paid for them. While Cristol made an effort to talk to every Israeli who even remotely had anything to do with the attack on Liberty, he spoke with very few crewmembers.

Cristol�s book contains what purports to be a transcript of the air to ground communications between the Israeli pilots, MTBs, and controllers. Another Israeli, Ahron Bregman, has criticized the honestly of Cristol�s translation. The following is from a fax sent by Bregman to the Liberty Veterans Association:

"I understand from your letter (31 Jan 2003) that according to Dr, Jay Cristol the only difference between my and his interpretation of the conversations of the pilots before and during the attack on USS Liberty is the "tone" of those conversations. Yes, the tone seems to be one issue on which we disagree, but then the tone is very important for in these tapes the tone sometimes makes the music. It is sufficient to listen to the tone of Robert (here I am using the names used by Cristol in his book) at 1353 where he says: "What do you say?" to realize that, in fact, he refers to the previous suggestion of L.K. that it might well be that the ship is American. It seems that when it suits him Cristol himself refers to the tone of conversations. At 1412, according to Cristol, Kislev says: "Leave her!" and Cristol then adds in brackets: "There is a dramatic change in the tone of Kislev's voice". So here we are. The tone is indeed a matter that should be taken into consideration when analyzing the tapes.

But it seems that Cristol and me differ on substance as well. You see, Cristol is not a plumber, or a mechanic but rather a Judge - a Federal Judge - and as such his is the world of words and he fully understands - I am pretty sure - the meaning of words and the need to be accurate when using them. But when it comes to the audiotapes it seems as if Cristol no longer understands the importance of words and in his text there are omissions and the text itself is sometimes heavily edited. Here is an example (and for the sake of accuracy I am not even quoting from "A History of Israel" but rather straight from the tapes):

Cristol's version:

13:54

LK: What is that? Americans?

Shimon: What Americans?

Kislev: Robert, what did you say? [No one answers.] [This a bracketed comment in Cristol's transcripts.]

Bregman's version:

13:53

LK: What is it? American?

Shimon: How do you mean, American?

Kislev: Robert, what do you say? [namely: what's your opinion and clearly a reference to the query just raised regarding the ship's identity - AB] [The bracketed text is a comment of Bregman.]

Robert: I didn't say [the tone: I don't want to know - AB] [The bracketed text is a comment of Bregman.]

Why did Cristol edit the text by saying that "no one answers" where in fact Robert does answer by saying "I didn't say" in a tone which suggests "1 don't want to know" or "no comment"?"

Another critical moment in the audiotapes comes a bit later:

Cristol's version:

14:13

Menachem: Kislev, what country? [Menachem has become concerned.]

Kislev: Possibly American.

Bregman's version:

14:14

Menachem: Kislev, what state?

Kislev: Probably American

Menachem: What?

Kislev: Probably American.

Why did Cristol shorten this passage?? In order that the word "American" will not ring in our ears for too long? True, this latter passage is far from being a "Smoking gun", but why to edit such a critical moment in the event??"

Time Machine

Among the endorsements shown on the back cover of The Liberty Incident is one from Vice Admiral Donald Engen:

"The name I want you to remember is Jay Cristol. . . . He knows more about the Liberty than anybody else in the world. . . . He's got the most balanced view of anybody I've ever known."

What is the purpose of a book jacket quotation? Presumably, it is to advise prospective readers of the opinions of knowledgeable experts who have read the book and recommend it.

The Liberty Incident was copyrighted by its publisher, Brassey's, in 2002 - the year of the book's publication. Notice the date of death in the photo below.

Arlington National Cemetery

Cristol cannot be trusted with respect to any fact he reports. He has a timeline on his web site that he uses as a supplement to his book. On that timeline, among the other errors, he showed sunrise for June 8, 1967 as occurring at Liberty's reported position at 0515. [He has since corrected his error, but only after the accuracy of his entire timeline became an issue in dispute.] The Naval Observatory on line computer service shows sunrise as occurring at 0442. Cristol can't even be trusted to be accurate with something as simple as the time of sunrise.

Readers should assume that ALL of his facts are incorrect. Check each and every one of them. Do not take on faith anything Cristol writes - ever.