Egozi’s Fury – Israel’s own NSA
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The letter is serious in itself, but the moment of truth will come when those who signed it will be called for reserve duty. If they refuse to show up, the military police must apprehend them and deliver them to trial. Then we will see the sort of heroes they truly are in military prison. We will see how their conscientious objection will last then.
Some 43 veterans of IDF unit 8200, Israel’s own NSA-equivalent intelligence service, signed a letter they sent to Prime Minister Netanyahu, to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Gantz and Intelligence Corps Chief Major General Aviv Kochavi. In their letter, the veterans declare they shall refuse to take part in any activities directed against Palestinians. Among the co-signers is one reserve major and two reserve captains, as well as numerous other professional reservist intelligence personnel, including officers and NCOs.
In their letter, the co-signers explain that “there is this perception that service in the Intelligence Corps entails no moral dilemmas and merely serves to diminish the violence and the injuries towards innocent victims. Nevertheless, in the course of our own respective military service, we have learnt that intelligence has become an inseparable part of Israel’s control of the territories”. The co-signers claim, inter alia, that there is no oversight when intelligence monitoring and gathering methods are concerned, and no control over the use of the data collected vis-à-vis the Palestinians.
The fact that Unit 8200 is an elite outfit should not prevent a stern treatment of these conscientious objectors, the same way as ones from infantry units would have been dealt with.
Such refusal to serve deserves a hard line. I mean a really tough response. A few years in military prison should sort them out. I would like to know how the general staff is going to handle this shameful behavior.
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Human rights organizations, more concerned with the rights of the Palestinians in the territories than with the well-being of IDF border patrol soldiers, claimed over the weekend that Israeli Police and IDF have introduced harder rubber bullets, which, so they claim, have already cost one Palestinian youth his life.
So here it is: a rock is harder than any rubber. These human rights organizations do not say a word when stones, rocks and Molotov cocktails are thrown at soldiers and policemen. So will you please just shut up or come to defend those policemen and soldiers by yourselves.
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Iran should summon ISIS leaders and give them medals in honor of this Ayatollah or another. Why? Oh, this is simply terrible. The coalition US President Obama is establishing ahead of the war against ISIS has brought a rare form of cooperation to the highly divisive Middle East. This might turn attention away from the truly major danger, which is Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran is but a short distance from achieving nuclear capability. It only suspended its progress pending the intermediate agreement with the world powers at the end of last year in Geneva.
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Partial intelligence, complete with holes. Nothing has changed since the days leading up to the terrorist attack of September 11 2001.
This weekend, the CIA published an updated assessment of ISIS forces, and says they now number 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria – three times their estimated number thus far. This assessment is based on intelligence reports from May through August.
With all their espionage satellites and other means, the US has no idea what is going on in the Iraqi desert, nor in other countries in the Middle East.
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Knesset Internal Affairs Committee Chair MK Miri Regev called Jerusalem Police Commissioner Yossi Pariente “a coward” during a conversation they were engaged in concerning the disruptions to public order in East Jerusalem.
This statement is both factually wrong and unfortunate. This police officer is doing his job in line with the guidelines of the political leadership, which is cowardly and indecisive – not the police.
These disturbances in East Jerusalem have been raging for weeks now, and the police is not doing enough to calm things down. Those who throw stones and Molotov cocktails must be dealt with harshly, but the fault lies with Israel’s indecisive government and not with the Police.
i-HLS Editor-in-Chief
