who do you think you are kidding, mr hitler

Ban’s Gaza report will clear Israel of war crimes — source
Salwa Jandoubi, KUNA, Apr 30 2009

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s report on the Israeli attack on UN facilities in Gaza earlier this year will clear Israel of war crimes, a diplomatic source disclosed on Thursday. The source told KUNA that the report started with the reasons why Israel launched its attacks on Gaza, focusing on the rockets Hamas launched against it and not on the occupation. He added that the report also put the blame on the failing security aspect of the UN facilities in Gaza. The report, the source noted, did point the finger at Israel but stressed that the air strikes Israel conducted against those facilities were “accidental and were absolutely not premeditated.” The report, prepared by a Board of Inquiry led by Ian Martin and established by Ban last February, further clears Hamas from stockpiling or launching any rockets from the UN facilities. The source said the whole report is written in such a way that Israel will be cleared of any war crimes accusations. It further said that Israel cooperated with Martin and his team on the condition that the information used in the investigation remain confidential. This raises the question how Ban will meet the Security Council’s expectation that the report be circulated among its members. Ban may opt to present it orally without mentioning all the report’s details. Martin gave the report to Ban last Friday. Ban reviewed it but is still considering how best to deal with it. UN spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters this week that the report is currently being studied by the Office for Legal Affairs. She added that Ban intends to present the information in the report to the Security Council next week. However, she added, it was “not determined yet what the format for that presentation would be.”

death in june: of runes & men (live in NY)

police state UK

Anti-terrorism stop and searches rocket
Michael Holden, Reuters, Apr 30 2009

The number of people who were stopped and searched by police using counter-terrorism powers almost trebled last year, government figures showed on Thursday, prompting concern from opposition politicians. Home Office statistics showed that there were 124,687 stop and searches under the Terrorism Act 2000 in 2007/8, up from just under 42,000 in 2006/7. The vast bulk, almost 90%, occurred in the London area covered by the Metropolitan Police. Of those stopped, 1,271 were arrested but only 73 were detained for terrorism offences. Conservative home affairs spokesman Chris Grayling said:

People will be highly suspicious about the scale of stop and search under terror laws. This will only serve to reinforce the view that many anti-terror powers are being used for unrelated purposes.

In total, officers carried out 1,223,860 stop and searches in 2007/8, up 17% from the year before. Of these, 53,250 were carried out “in anticipation of violence,” an increase of 19%. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said stop and search was an important power for the police but added there was clear guidance and its use must be proportionate.

‘feminists & anarchists’, tsk tsk

Police station protest turns ugly
Daniel Edelson, Ynet, Apr 30 2009

Police made eight arrests Thursday during a protest at a Tel Aviv police station. Demonstrators were protesting a police raid on two websites that promote draft-dodging in Israel and the simultaneous arrests of several activists involved in their activity. About 50 protestors arrived at the Dizengoff St. Police Station; six women and two men were detained by Police Special Forces. Ayelet Maoz, an activist with the Coalition of Women for Peace and one of the organizers of the protest, said the police had been excessively violent with the demonstrators:

They were pushing people into the street without stopping the traffic. There are a few people here who nearly got run over. These are women over 80 years of age. This is not how the police are supposed to behave in Israel. We plan to file a complaint.

She said the law did not require them to file for a permit to stage the protest because it was merely an act of maintaining a quiet presence there throughout the day. A police statement said the demonstrators had been offered a meeting with the station chief but had refused:

This was an illegal protest staged by feminists and anarchists. The women besieged the station and would not allow anyone to enter or exit.

The statement added that attempts were made to move the protestors across the street before eight were detained for “rioting and failure to obey police orders.” Earlier this week police raided the offices of New Profile and Target 21, two websites that promote the dodging of the IDF’s mandatory draft. A total of 23 feminist organizations were angered by the move, and an enraged letter on the matter was sent to the Interior Ministry. Dorit Abramowitz, an activist for the organizations, explained that the large-scale feminist uprising was due to a violation of freedom of speech laws:

In any democracy there must be an opposition, but as we understand it, once an organization says something that differs from the government’s opinion they start to probe their files. We see this as a dictatorial move.

‘perennialists’ – jewish and other

I have been increasingly pestered in the comments by so-called ‘perennialists’, both Jewish and non-Jewish, all of whom appear to be labouring under the misconception that they are able to regulate the membership of an infinitely exclusive and infinitely desirable-to-join global “élite.” I just want to say that this “élite” exists only in their own dishonest political fantasies, and that the difference between the Jewish and non-Jewish versions of this fantasy are increasingly marginal — even Evola made substantial concessions in his post-WW2 books, none of which I have ever recommended, to the supposed ‘perennial’ elements in Jewish tradition, concessions which I fear were prompted more by political expediency than by genuine mystical insight.

a good defense of ahmadinejad’s speech

(The official full text of Ahmadinejad’s speech is here. – RB)

Nima Shirazi – Durban II: Alethophobic Boogaloo
Palestine Think Tank, Apr 28 2009

“There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.” – Dorothy Thompson

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opening speech at the 2009 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, dubbed Durban II, addressed numerous inconvenient and uncomfortable truths regarding both the UN Security Council and the history of the State of Israel. Predictably, in response to the public airing of such truths, Ahmadinejad was immediately met with sharp and revealing opposition and self-righteous indignation by the representatives of many European countries – echoed, if not led, by the US and Israeli governments – and has been lambasted and demonized in the Western media.

Such a response is unsurprising. Ahmadinejad is no stranger to manufactured controversy. And, as usual, a simple look at his actual words reveals statements of fact that cannot be refuted. Ahmadinejad’s statements prompted an instantaneous and virulent reaction and criticism from the world’s most imperial and hegemonic powers. He was immediately presented as a hatemonger and racist for speaking truth to such powers. The speed and ferocity of those with the power to divert attention away from the meaning of Ahmadinejad’s actual speech in favor of personal attacks on the Iranian president himself betray the true motives behind such scapegoating.

Speaking at United Nations headquarters in Geneva on Monday morning, Ahmadinejad accused Western powers in the 1930’s and 40’s of fomenting warfare and implementing economic and military policies that have proven destructive to much of the rest of the world ever since. He said:

Those in authority at the time set off two world wars, killing hundreds of millions of people and causing mass destruction in Africa and Asia, in addition to Europe. Those who won considered that the world was with them, and set up laws that were oppressive and trampling.

Is this controversial or offensive? Perhaps, if one knows nothing of modern history, Western imperialism, aggressive globalization or neo-liberal economic policy. Anyone familiar with American foreign policy over the past sixty years, especially in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin and South America would not be surprised by such banal statements. Ahmadinejad then turned his attention to the unjust and inequitable hierarchy of nation states that formed the basis of the United Nations itself. He said:

The Security Council set up after World War II, let’s analyze it. The veto vote — is that equality? Is that justice? Is that equality amongst human beings?” Or rather is it arrogance and humiliation? The Security Council must be the most important body for decision-making in order to promote peace. If a law is based on force, how can we secure peace and justice? The seeking of power and arrogance means racism, injustice and occupation.

Who would disagree with these remarks, other than those who seek to maintain their control over issues of global security and justice, diverting attention from the war crimes committed by allied states and condemning resistance to colonialism and military occupation in the same breath? The UN Security Council, established as the most powerful element of the United Nations — wielding far more influence and authority than the General Assembly — has long been the best friend to imperialism, during and after the Cold War. The United States has used its Security Council veto to bully other members into submission and acquiescence, allowing for the illegal invasions and ongoing occupations of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Most recently, the Security Council adopted resolutions enabling Israel to bomb blockaded ghettos and impoverished refugee camps with impunity, as well as protecting Israeli war criminals, who have the blood of 1,400 Palestinians freshly on their hands, from any condemnation or responsibility. Later in his speech, Ahmadinejad addressed the creation of the State of Israel by the United Nations in 1948, after the post-WWI British Mandate. He said:

As was the case after World War II, armies occupied other territories and people were transferred from territories. In reality, under the pretext of compensating for the evil done in the name of xenophobia, they in fact set up the most violent xenophobes, in Palestine. The Security Council made it possible for that illegitimate government to be set up. For 60 years, this government was supported by the world. Many Western countries say they are fighting racism; but in fact support it with occupation, bombings and crimes such as those committed in Gaza. These countries support the criminals.

Any informed reader of these statements would find little with which to quibble or disagree. The well-known studies of Israeli historians such as Benny Morris, Tom Segev, Ilan Pappé, and Avi Shlaim attest to the injustice sanctioned by the British and American governments, affirmed by the United Nations, and carried out by Zionist terrorist militias such as Irgun, Haganah, Palmach and Lehi. The waves of illegal Jewish immigration from Europe and Russia to Palestine are well documented and not a debatable issue. Ahmadinejad stated the obvious by telling the gathering of UN delegates,

Following World War Two they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering … and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the Occupied Palestine. And in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.

The age-old axiom of Palestine being a “land without a people for a people without a land” has been discredited so many times that even mentioning it here seems redundant and obvious. It is no myth that over 750,000 Palestinians, the indigenous people of the region whose ancestors had lived and worked on the land for centuries, were driven from their homes through violence and fear following the implementation of Plan Dalet and the horror of Deir Yassin. It is not a matter of opinion that the State of Israel was originally created on 56% of Palestine, despite Jewish residents representing only 32% of the population and owning only 7% of the land at the time. It is historical fact. By July 1949, after a year of aggressive expansionism, the borders of Israel encompassed 78% of Palestine. Eighteen years later, Israel seized control of the remaining 22%, which it has brutally occupied ever since. The dispossessed, disenfranchised, and dehumanized Palestinians penned up in the Occupied Territories suffer from apartheid in the West Bank, and starvation, accented with psychopathic massacres, in Gaza.

Ahmadinejad knows all of this. He also knows that the Zionist enterprise to establish an ethnocentric state in Palestine had little to no support in Europe, the United States, or even in the world’s Jewish community prior to the Holocaust. The fact that Israel is the product of post-WWII guilt by Western world powers and that the atrocities committed against the European Jews during the war are constantly used to justify the creation of the state of Israel are not controversial statements. Why, then, did 23 European delegates to the Durban II conference stage a walk-out during Ahmadinejad’s speech as soon as he mentioned the use of the Holocaust as a pretext for the creation of Israel? The French Ambassador Jean-Baptiste Mattei revealed the delegates’ refusal to even listen to criticism regarding Zionism and the Jewish state, as if any dissent is off-limits, when he told AP, “As soon as he started to address the question of the Jewish people and Israel, we had no reason to stay in the room.”

Why is Ahmadinejad condemned as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier when it is perfectly clear that he condemns the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews as “evil done in the name of xenophobia” and “the dire consequences of racism in Europe”? Is Ahmadinejad wrong to question the establishment of an exclusively Jewish state on Palestinian land in response to the genocidal acts of Hitler’s Germany? Should it not be pointed out that a “Jewish” state, by definition, is racist and exclusionist, lest the nobility of Zionism be in doubt? Why would addressing the creation and ongoing support of an ethnocentric government that engages in selective democracy, institutionalized militarism, immoral occupation, illegal colonization, and systematic ethnic cleansing be deemed counter-productive at a conference devoted to opposing racism, discrimination, xenophobia, and intolerance?

“The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces,” Ahmadinejad said, clearly demarcating the distinction between the 19th century colonial ideology of Jewish nationalism and the Jewish religion. Nevertheless, British ambassador Peter Gooderham called these remarks “anti-Semitic.” Because Ahmadinejad called for an “end to Zionism,” countless news agencies erroneously report that he seeks the “destruction of Israel.” His speech was called “offensive, inflammatory, utterly unacceptable” and “reprehensible” by dedicated Zionist and British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. French President Nicolas Sarkozy called it “an intolerable call to racist hate,” while the US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff described the speech as “vile and hateful.” The Vatican called it “extremist and unacceptable” and the President of the European Jewish Congress, Dr. Moshe Kanto, condemned it as “revisionist history and lies.”

Perhaps Ahmadinejad’s speech let too many cats out of what many hope are hermetically sealed bags. The cowardice displayed by the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Poland by boycotting the conference from the outset, as well as the embarrassing walk-out by 23 attending delegations, proves that the Western world would rather demonize a fearless truth-teller who refuses to be muzzled, than recognize the racism and injustice enabled by its own support and silence. There was no annihilationist or violent rhetoric in Ahmadinejad’s speech, despite what one might read in the mainstream press. Opposing Zionism is not a threat of military action, but rather a call for political reform.

Dorothy Thompson, the German-American journalist and anti-Nazi activist, once wrote, “Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.” In his bold and uncompromising Durban II address, President Ahmadinejad, long cast by the West as the Iranian bogeyman, has done his part to illuminate the truths about Zionism and the hypocrisy of its supporters. The boycotts, protests, “spontaneous” walk-outs, and other forms of pro-imperial theatre that are already defining the Durban II conference prove one thing: alethophobia, the fear of the truth, is alive and well in the West.

more of that old school telegraph shit

UK and Europe heading for rift over regulation
Louise Armitstead, Daily Telegraph, Apr 30 2009

The European Commission has been accused of launching a “blatant attack” on London’s financial services industry with proposals to regulate hedge funds and private equity firms. The directive looks set to open a deep divide between the UK, where over 80% of the alternative investment industry is based, and the rest of Europe. The proposals include radical new rules ranging from fund raising to capital requirements. The directive is particularly tough on non-European fund operators. It stipulates that only funds domiciled in Europe can be marketed in the EU. An estimated 90% of hedge funds are domiciled off-shore while the industry is also dominated by US players. Antonio Borges, chairman of the Hedge Fund Standards Board, said:

This is a blatant attack on the UK and US financial systems by continental countries that neither have a tradition of alternative investments nor a proper understanding of them. With the European elections coming up this is clearly political.

John Whittaker, partner at Simmons & Simmons said:

This is a deeply protectionist directive and damaging for the UK which attracts the international players.

But in Europe the directive was criticised for not going far enough. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a Danish MEP and president of the Party of European Socialists who led the parliamentary pressure for the new rules, said the commission had come forward with regulation that was “so light, it’s flyweight”. He said:

Private equity can pop the champagne today but they may not be celebrating for long as we will not accept such an ineffective regulation.

Charlie McCreevy, EU commissioner, said the directive was necessary to address the concerns following the financial crisis. He said:

There is now a global consensus – as expressed by the G20 leaders – over the need for closer regulatory engagement with this sector. In particular, it is essential that regulators have the information and tools necessary to conduct effective macro-prudential oversight.

The directive proposes imposing “demanding regulatory standards” on all managers with funds over the value of €100m (£89m). The regulations will also extend to “all major sources of risks in the alternative investment value chain” including “key service providers … depositaries and administrators”. The directive says they will be “subject to robust regulatory standards”. The funds will also have to demonstrate standards of governance. Florence Lombard, executive director of the Alternative Investment Management Association, said:

This directive is not a proportionate regulatory response to any of the identified causes of the current crisis.

She said that all of the major reports concluded that neither hedge funds nor private equity caused the crisis. John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI, said:

It is of deep concern to us, just a week after Alistair Darling said that we must have a business-led recovery, to push away the richest and most exciting investment professionals from this country towards others that want them more (you’d think hot money was hot sex – RB).

fisk’s syria complex on display again

Is this the price of America’s new friendship with Syria?
Robert Fisk, Independent, Apr 30 2009

They’re out. The four top men blamed for the murder of the Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri in the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre four years ago have been freed from their drab prison at Roumieh north of Beirut, amid a flurry of gunfire and fireworks. In Damascus – their home from home if you believe what Mr Hariri’s men tell you – they must be drinking champagne. Once more the UN donkey, clip-clopping on to the world stage after the murder of Mr Hariri, has been proved a mule. Judge Daniel Fransen, of the UN tribunal, declared in the Hague yesterday that the Big Four – how well we know their names in Lebanon – should go free: The Lebanese General Security commander Major-General Jamel Sayed, the former Internal Security director general Major-General Ali Haj, the ex-intelligence director general Raymond Aza and the former Presidential Guards commander Brigadier General Mustafa Hamdan. There was much kissing and ululating among the relatives outside the north Beirut prison when Mr Fransen declared – quite correctly in law, it has to be added – that there was, after a four year investigation, “insufficient evidence” to continue the detention of the men. If this “evidence” existed (and the UN examined millions of phone calls recorded by British intelligence on Mount Troudos in Cyprus), then it failed to prevent the decision yesterday (ergo, it didn’t exist, and all the following insinuations are irrelevant – RB).

Barack Obama’s new friendship with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must be going great guns. Guns, unfortunately, may be the issue of the day, since Lebanon’s national elections start on 7 June, when the growing Shiite-Muslim opposition, along with a weird Christian ex-General’s party, threaten to collapse the Hariri-led bloc that has led the Lebanese government for four years, albeit with a year-old veto on cabinet decisions by Hizbollah. And here lies the problem. In five weeks’ time, Hizbollah, the most loyal and the most security-conscious guerrilla movement in the Middle East – a new arrest in Lebanon of three alleged “spies” in the organisation attests to this – wants to depose the narrow majority of seats held by Mr Hariri’s son, Saad, and his supporters (including the world’s greatest nihilist, Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader). Well, we shall see. So who killed Rafiq Hariri? Until yesterday, the Lebanese, whose protests after the massacre forced the Syrian army out of Lebanon, thought they knew. And who was it who wanted, as President of the United States, to open a new door to the Syrians? President Obama. And who was it who stood next to Rafiq Hariri’s son, Saad, in Beirut, three days ago, to assure him of US support? Why, Mr Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, of course.

ferrero-waldner isolated in EU

Israel warns EU to stop criticizing Netanyahu government
Barak Ravid, Haaretz, Apr 30 2009

A Foreign Ministry official has been warning European countries that unless they curtail criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Israel will block the European Union from participating in the diplomatic process with the Palestinians. The main target of the offensive is EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who recently called for a freeze in upgrading ties with Israel over its peace process policies. Several days ago, the deputy director for Europe at the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, began calling European ambassadors in Israel regarding the attitude toward the new government. The first conversations were with France’s Jean-Michel Casa, Britain’s Tom Phillips and the Charge d’Affaires of the German embassy. Barak sharply protested the criticism by European ministers and senior EU officials about Israel’s government. Barak singled out Ferrero-Waldner in his rebuke and said her statements were troubling in their form, style and timing. He also noted that the European Union had not made an official decision on freezing the upgrading of ties, and therefore it was unclear what gave Ferrero-Waldner the authority to make her statements. Barak concluded by “warning” that Europe’s influence in the area would be undermined by such behavior. Barak told the diplomats:

For some weeks now, we have been telling everyone in Europe that Israel’s government needs time to reformulate policies, and not to begin a war in the press. We want the European Union to be a partner, but it is important to hold a mature and discreet dialogue and not to resort to public declarations. A public confrontation was created that required Prime Minister Netanyahu, and even opposition head Tzipi Livni, to intervene. We have noted that the large European countries have respected our request and are granting the government time, but it is important that Europe be uniform in this matter. Israel is asking Europe to lower the tone and conduct a discreet dialog. However, if these declarations continue, Europe will not be able to be part of the diplomatic process, and both sides will lose.

In a telegram to the Israeli missions in Europe, Barak briefed the Israeli diplomats on his conversations and noted that the sole ambassador in Israel who backed Ferrero-Waldner was the French. He was quoted as saying that her statements reflect the European public’s feelings. A political source in Jerusalem noted that Ferrero-Waldner was sharply criticized by European officials, and one European foreign minister said in a private conversation that she “is causing damage to European foreign policy in her attacks on Israel.”

the ‘parallel mossad’ that seems to run the USA

from Jeffrey Steinberg, EIR, May 1 2009 (.pdf)

[...] Senior U.S. intelligence sources have told {EIR} that the leak of the NSA intercept of the Jane Harman conversation with the targeted Israeli operative comes in the context of the pending trial of the two “former” AIPAC employees, Rosen and Weissman, who are accused of passing classified documents to Israeli Embassy officials, from confessed Israeli spy and former Air Force reservist and Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin. According to one of these sources, the leak of the NSA transcript, which was accurately reported by Stein in {CQ}, came from within the Justice Department.

While there are complicating aspects of the Rosen-Weissman case, beginning with the fact that the Bush Justice Department failed to indict AIPAC as an organization on the same espionage charges, there is no question that Israel was engaged–again–in espionage targeting U.S. defense secrets, and that the role and identities of the Israeli spy-handlers is known and proven.

On May 26, 2005, Larry Franklin was indicted on charges of passing classified material to Israel. In a superseding indictment, filed on Aug. 4, 2005, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were also indicted, along with Franklin. While not naming names, the indictment identified at least three Israelis, who were co-conspirators with the AIPAC duo and Franklin, in obtaining classified material from the Pentagon, on the Bush Administration’s internal deliberations on how to deal with threats from Iran.

And here is where the U.S.-Israel rift comes directly into play.

The three Israelis targeted in the Franklin/AIPAC probe were: Uzi Arad, Naor Gilon, and Eran Lerman. All three are intimately tied to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Indeed, two of the three now hold top national security and foreign policy posts in the Netanyahu government.

Uzi Arad is the chief national security advisor to the Prime Minister, and Gilon is now the chief of staff to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The third implicated Israeli, Eran Lerman, is the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Israel/Middle East Office in Jerusalem. He took that post in 2001, prior to his being implicated in the Franklin-Rosen-Weissman spy operation, and immediately following his retirement as a Colonel in the Israeli Defense Force’s Directorate of Military Intelligence Research and Production Division. Lerman, a London School of Economics graduate, is frequently published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a Likud think tank headed by Dr. Dore Gold, Bibi’s former Ambassador to the United Nations.

Between 2002-2005, Naor Gilon was the political counsellor at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and he was the immediate contact point with Franklin, Rosen and Weissman. At the time of his direct involvement in the espionage case, Gilon’s embassy boss was Ambassador Danny Ayalon, who is now deputy foreign minister, and a member of Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party. Gilon, according to the indictments, had at least 15 meetings with Larry Franklin between 2003-2004. He first met Franklin back in 1997, when Franklin was posted, briefly, at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv as an Air Force Reserve officer. Franklin was sent home, after he repeatedly violated embassy rules by holding unauthorized and unreported meetings with Israeli government officials.

When Netanyahu was Prime Minister back in 1996, Foreign Minister Lieberman, still with Likud, was his chief of staff. According to well-informed Israeli sources, Lieberman’s departure from Likud to form the Yisrael Beitenu Party, was done with the connivance of Netanyahu, who had difficulties handling the Russian emigré and Russian Mafiya apparatus, which forms the base of Lieberman’s new party. Lieberman, a one-time bouncer at a Moldovan bar, is the poster-boy for that Russian emigré apparatus.

Contrary to media accounts, the far more significant player in the Franklin spy affair was Uzi Arad, now Bibi’s top national security aide. Arad, a career Mossad officer, “retired” from government service in 1999. The following year, he founded the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, and launched their annual global security conference, modeled on Davos and the Wehrkunde conferences in Munich.

Larry Franklin attended at least one of the Herzliya conferences hosted by Arad, in 2003. On Feb. 13, 2004, Gilon called Franklin at the Pentagon, and asked him to meet with Arad. The following week, Arad met Franklin at the Pentagon cafeteria.

When the FBI interrogated Arad about his ties to Franklin, he claimed that they were merely sharing “academic papers.” However, up until April 2009, Arad was barred from entering the United States; and that decision was reversed only to allow him to visit Washington as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s national security representative.

In fact, the still-ongoing U.S. probe into Israeli espionage in the United States is, in part, focused on the question of whether there is a “parallel Mossad,” made up of “ex” Israeli spooks, now in think tanks and other private sector institutions, conducting key espionage programs at “arms length” from the official intelligence services. Hardly a senior Israeli official is willing to run the risk of another “Pollard Affair,” in which an official Israeli intelligence agency, the scientific espionage unit, Lekem, was caught running American Naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard. That Lekem operation was headed by former top Mossad official Rafi Eytan. Both Arad and Lerman were protégés of “Dirty Rafi,” and they certainly know the price that Israel has paid–to this day–for their Pollard escapade.

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Israel recently, and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Israeli leader delivered an unambiguous and undiplomatic message, by having Uzi Arad participate in the meeting. When Clinton suggested that a smaller meeting was appropriate, and that each side should send one person out of the room, offering the prime minister the opportunity to correct the obvious {faux pas}, Netanyahu obliged–by dismissing Dan Meridor. Arad stayed in the room, and Secretary Clinton remained tight-lipped throughout.