[All notes below by Tom Gross]

WIKILEAKS STORY REVEALS ISRAEL TOOK GREAT CARE TO AVOID CIVILIANS CASUALTIES

Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that at the very end of its news story on WikiLeaks’s release last weekend of documents detailing tens of thousands of casualties during the Iraq war, The New York Times revealed that for most of the last century, the average civilian-to-combatant wartime fatality ratio has been 10:1.

The Times reported (hat tip: Evelyn Gordon): “Civilians have borne the brunt of modern warfare, with 10 civilians dying for every soldier in wars fought since the mid-20th century, compared with 9 soldiers killed for every civilian in World War I, according to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross.”

Whereas in other modern wars, civilians account for 90 percent of casualties, by contrast in last year’s Israel-Hamas war in Gaza less than half of Palestinian fatalities – 39 percent – were noncombatants – and that number would have been even lower had Hamas not stored weapons in civilian institutions and fired rockets from private Palestinian homes which it commandeered.

“DISPROPORTIONATE” FORCE?

But although the IDF has managed to avoid killing civilians to a greater extent than almost any other army in conflict – often putting the lives of its own soldiers at great risk in doing so – Israel is obsessively singled out for enquiries into “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” by the UN and its accomplices such as Judge Richard Goldstone and Professor Richard Falk.

(Incidentally, even the most extreme anti-Israeli organizations, whose figures about the number of dead civilians in Gaza are almost always highly exaggerated, don’t claim that 90 percent of all casualties were civilians.)

Meanwhile, European governments (many of whom have combat troops in Afghanistan) and others continue hypocritically to single out Israel for using “disproportionate” force.

In a just world, the UN would open up an investigation into all 42 countries with combat troops in Afghanistan (and all the other dozens of conflicts around the world), and WikiLeaks would concentrate on revealing human rights violations and government cover-ups in countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

(I should point out that the civilians killed in Iraq after 2003 were, for the most part, killed by Iraqi, Iranian, and other jihadis, not by Americans; and that the number of Iraqi civilians killed each year since the American invasion/liberation, is lower than the numbers killed on average each year during Saddam’s rule.)

 

CAN’T WRITE ABOUT DEATHS IN IRAQ WITHOUT MENTIONING RACHEL CORRIE?

Even among the particularly hostile standards of the British media towards Israel, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a lead columnist for the British paper The Independent, is notorious for her level of prejudice.

In the latest such example, she even drags Israel into her article about the WikiLeaks revelations concerning the actions of Western troops in Iraq. She gives a false description of Rachel Corrie’s death in order to condemn Israel – as though this is in some way relevant to the actions of British and other troops in Iraq.

Alibhai-Brown has a long track record of attacking Israel, as I have noted many times in the past. For example, in this piece in 2002 she called Israel an “ethnic killing machine” and said the Israeli Prime Minister should be “tried for crimes against humanity”.

 

POOR GEORGE ORWELL

Last week, another columnist for The Independent, Johann Hari, writing about Afghanistan (in a piece titled “Obama’s robot wars endanger us all”) also uses his piece as an excuse to slander Israel, suggesting the Jewish state has somehow collaborated with President Obama in his drone attacks on militants in Pakistan.

Hari, who won “Newspaper Journalist of the Year” award from Amnesty International, and has also been invited to write for The New York Times and Le Monde, has, however, toned down his language about Israel from the time when he said the Jewish state “smelled of shit,” which he did on Holocaust Memorial Day in 2008. (For more details on that, please see this dispatch)

Hari has been accused by many experts of consistently misrepresenting the truth about Israel. For example, leading Israeli historian (and subscriber to this email list) Benny Morris has said Hari is guilty of “peddling numerous historical errors.”

Hari has also received the highly prestigious Orwell Prize for political writing. Poor George Orwell.

Orwell’s press card portrait, taken in 1933

 

ISRAEL URGES UN NOT TO BUILD PALESTINIAN SCHOOL NEXT TO HAMAS ARMS BASE

Israel’s Defense Ministry is pleading with the UN agency UNRWA not to build a new school for Palestinian children next to a Hamas military installation in southern Gaza.

In recent weeks, the Israeli defense ministry, which coordinates materiel entering Gaza from Israel, has approved 70 international projects – including the renovation of a sewage treatment plant, the construction of 151 housing units and eight new schools. (Gaza needs new schools because it has one of the highest birth rates in the world, combined with a low infant mortality rate due to the excellent health facilities Israel helped build there before the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.)

Whereas the Israeli Defense Ministry says it fully supports plans by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency to build new schools, it says that to build a school adjacent to a Hamas military installation would be “shocking and highly irresponsible.”

“Israel attaches great importance to the UNRWA education system in Gaza and will continue to cooperate and assist as much as possible in helping UNRWA,” one senior Israeli official said. “But we will not help Hamas use schools and turn the people of Gaza into human shields.”

 

DID YOUR LOCAL PAPER RUN THESE AP PHOTOS OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN BADLY INJURED BY HAMAS?

In the past, Hamas has cynically placed its bomb laboratories next to schools in the knowledge that Israel will then be extremely reluctant to target them, even during wartime. As a consequence of this, children are regularly maimed when Hamas explosives accidentally explode while the Islamist group is preparing bombs and missiles.

In the latest of several such incidents, last week in the southern Gazan town of Rafah five children and two women were injured according to AP (and 17 children according to Palestinian media) after a device in a Hamas weapons laboratory adjacent to a school accidentally exploded.

Here are some shocking pictures of the children injured in that blast taken by the Associated Press. Most media in the world subscribe to the Associated Press. Did your local paper run these photos (and related editorials), or were they too busy condemning Israel for the most minor infringements, both real and imagined?

Brave Palestinian human right groups have condemned Hamas, but where are the UN, EU and major Western human rights groups?

On August 2 this year another Hamas “work accident” severely injured 58 Palestinians, including 14 children and 9 women, completely destroyed seven houses and damaged another 30. I don’t recall much coverage of that on the BBC or other major Western media though.

 

NIGERIA INTERCEPTS ARMS SHIPMENT BOUND FOR HAMAS

Custom officials in the Nigerian capital Lagos have seized 13 containers reportedly holding weapons bound for Hamas. Nigerian officials said the containers held rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives, all of which were camouflaged as construction material to enter Gaza as part of an aid convoy. 107mm rockets and 60mm mortar rounds were among the cache.

 

STATISTICS OF THE DAY

STATISTIC OF THE DAY (1)

It took Viva Palestina, the latest aid convoy spearheaded by former British parliamentarian George Galloway, whose goods were allowed to enter Gaza by land last week, four weeks to deliver 500 tons of aid to Gaza.

In those same four weeks Israel has transported 75,000 tons of aid into Gaza.

***

STATISTIC OF THE DAY (2)

In spite of the fact that Gaza is much wealthier than Haiti, Gaza has been pledged 7.5 times more U.S. aid per capita than Haiti.

Collectively, U.S. government programs provided just over $700 million in aid, nearly $200 million less than to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The toll of dead and injured in Haiti in the last two years is vastly greater than that of Gaza.

***

STATISTIC OF THE DAY (3)

According to the UNDP Human Index Rankings (which measures income, human well-being, literacy, life expectancy and so on), Palestine has a much higher ranking in its “Medium Human Development” group than countries like Indonesia, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, India, Pakistan, Nigeria and so on.

Palestinian Life Expectancy at 73.3 years is the same as European Union member Hungary.

Above: A Gaza water fun park, before it was closed last month by Hamas. There had been reports of mixed male-female bathing.

 

PALESTINIAN OPINION POLL: 49% STILL SUPPORT KILLING CIVILIANS INSIDE ISRAEL

An extensive new poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) with the support of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung has revealed that there is still considerable support among Palestinians for killing Israeli civilians inside Israel.

49% said they supported the murder of Israeli civilians inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel, whereas 49.2% opposed this and 1.8% said they had no opinion.

However, were a new intifada to break out, only 16.6% said they would actively help or participate in it.

Another interesting question was:

“From among the countries in the region and the world, which one do you view as the most supportive of the Palestinians and their just rights?”

Turkey 24.5 %
Egypt 17 %
Syria 8 %
Iran 6.9 %
Saudi Arabia 6.5 %
Lebanon 3.6 %
Jordan 2.9 %
Venezuela 2.5 %
Qatar 1.9 %
Iraq 1.3 %
France 1.1 %
Others 6.8 %
No Opinion/Don’t know 0.7 %
No one 16.5 %

The survey results were released on October 24, 2010, and can be read in full here.

The poll was conducted in the West Bank and Gaza between September 30 and October 2. 1,270 adults were interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. The margin of error is 3%.

 

POLL OF EAST JERUSALEM PALESTINIANS: PLURALITY PREFER ISRAELI CITIZENSHIP OVER PALESTINIAN ONE

In another poll – specifically of East Jerusalem Palestinians – also carried out this month by the PSR, when asked about the preference of the majority of residents in their neighborhoods, 44% said they are likely to prefer Israeli citizenship and only 41% said they are likely to prefer Palestinian citizenship.

This seems to be for economic reasons and for reasons of freedom of expression allowed in a democracy such as Israel.

For example, 85% of Palestinians said they were “satisfied with the electrical supply” Israel provides to their neighborhood and 9% said they were “dissatisfied”.

83% said they were “satisfied” with the health care Israel provides to them, and 7% said they were “dissatisfied”.

The PSR said “Interviews were conducted face to face with a random sample of 1,000 adult Palestinians over the age of 18 in 50 residential locations throughout all occupied East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods.”

The full results are here.

A vast majority of those surveyed were also strongly critical of “delays during travel due to the erection of the West Bank wall” and “delays and restrictions at checkpoints”. Perhaps surprisingly, “Israeli settlers” were quite far down the list of their concerns, considerably lower than “corruption in the Palestinian Authority”.

***

In another poll of Palestinians this month, this time by the Near East Consulting (NEC), 61% of Palestinians said they identified themselves as Muslims first, 20% Palestinians first, 15% as “human being first,” and 3% as “Arabs first.”

The NEC said: “The survey was carried out between the October 2 and 5 on a random sample of 900 Palestinians over the age of 18 from both sexes, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem.”

***

I attach one article below.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

A NUGGET OF WISDOM FROM ABBAS

From a news report in Ha’aretz:

Abbas clarified that the PA would exhibit flexibility regarding the nature of the negotiations, but added that they would not negotiate on issues the Palestinian people consider principal matters.

“If we showed flexibility on these issues the peace agreement would have been signed a long time ago,” Abbas said.

 

PLASMA TVS AND CAFÉ LATTES

This dispatch is a follow-up to several recent dispatches on Gaza, including The media backtracks on Gaza (Aug. 31, 2010).

In that dispatch I pointed out that Time magazine had just written: “Gaza’s residents will concede that there is no hunger crisis in the Strip. Residents do love the beach, and the store shelves are stocked. But if you’re focused on starvation, they say, you’re probably missing the point.”

But in 2008, Time wrote: “Please spare a thought for the starving Palestinians of Gaza. There are 1.5 million of them.”

In that, and in previous dispatches, I pointed out that several mainstream publications, including The Guardian and major broadcast networks such as CNN, were now backtracking on years of misleading coverage about the economic situation in both Gaza and the West Bank. (Senior staff at CNN and Time have recently subscribed to this list.)

Previously, many in the Western media had misled the public (and policymakers) into thinking the Palestinians lived in the kind of poverty found elsewhere in the Middle East – places Western media aren’t interested in covering, such as war-torn (and American and Saudi-bombed) Yemen, where the number of people living in poverty is vastly greater than that in the West Bank and Gaza.

Now (having changed its tune on Gaza) I am glad to report that Time magazine (using a different correspondent) has also run a lengthy report on the increasingly prosperous West Bank economy.

The information in the Time article (which I attach in full further down this dispatch) will be familiar to readers of this website, but news to readers of Time, which runs a photo of the Nablus shopping mall similar to ones that appeared last year in these dispatches, and also one of the “five-story shopping mall selling luxury items like plasma TVs, opened just outside Jenin.”

 

SPINNING, PILATES, SAUNAS AND SMOOTHIE BARS

Time reports on the “multistory villas fronted by ornamental porticos and columns rising on Ramallah’s hilltops along with glass and marble office buildings,” the “new car dealerships selling everything from BMWs to Hyundais,” and notes that the IMF says the West Bank has one of the highest growth rates in the world.

It informs readers that the “Oxygen Gym on the fifth floor of a Ramallah office center is state of the art: it boasts the latest equipment, classes in spinning, kickboxing and Pilates, a sauna and even a smoothie bar.”

Time writes that “even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his support” for this progress. But America’s leading news magazine doesn’t mention that it was in fact Israeli politicians from both Likud and Kadima, notably Ariel Sharon, who did his utmost to persuade George W. Bush to encourage the Palestinian Authority to appoint Salam Fayyad (who is not a member of the ruling Fatah party) to the position of Palestinian Prime Minister. And it is Israeli politicians (including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert), who have been instrumental in helping to create conditions for the current West Bank economic growth.

 

“GAZA IS THE WORLD’S MOST MISREPRESENTED LOCATION”

I also attach a lengthy article below by Peter Hitchens, lead columnist for The Mail on Sunday, one of Britain’s best-selling newspapers, who traveled to Gaza to write his report. Peter Hitchens is among the founding subscribers to this email list over a decade ago, and his editors at the Mail also subscribe to it.

While also making various criticisms of Israeli policy (many of which I share with him) Hitchens makes these observations from Gaza, which he calls “the world’s most misrepresented location”:

“It is lunchtime in the world’s biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.

“Perhaps it is callous of me to be so self-indulgent, but I think I at least deserve the coffee. I would be having a stiff drink instead, if only the ultra-Islamic regime hadn’t banned alcohol with a harsh and heavy hand…

“In Gaza, there is no way out and morality patrols sweep through restaurants in search of illicit beer and women smoking in public or otherwise affronting the 14th Century values of Hamas.

“So I won’t give the name of the rather pleasant establishment where young women, Islamic butterflies mocking the fanatics’ strict dress code with bright make-up and colourful silken hijabs, chattered as they inhaled apple-scented smoke from their water-pipes.

“Their menfolk, nearby, watched football on huge, flat-screen televisions. Nor will I say where I saw the Gazan young gathering for beach barbecues beneath palm-leaf umbrellas.

 

“THEN THERE IS THE USE OF THE WORD ‘SIEGE’”

Hitchens continues: “Then there is the use of the word ‘siege’. Can anyone think of a siege in human history, from Syracuse to Leningrad, where the shops of the besieged city have been full of Snickers bars and Chinese motorbikes, and where European Union and other foreign aid projects pour streams of cash (often yours) into the pockets of thousands? Once again, the word conceals more than it reveals.”

“Siege? Not exactly. What about Gaza’s ‘refugee camps’. The expression is misleading. Most of those who live in them are not refugees, but the children and grandchildren of those who fled Israel in the war of 1948.

“All the other refugees from that era – in India and Pakistan, the Germans driven from Poland and the Czech lands, not to mention the Jews expelled from the Arab world – were long ago resettled.

“Unbelievably, these people are still stuck in insanitary townships, hostages in a vast struggle kept going by politicians who claim to care about them. These places are not much different from the poorer urban districts of Cairo, about which nobody, in the Arab world or the West, has much to say.”

 

THE PLIGHT OF PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS

Hitchens, who also went to the West Bank, writes on the plight of the Palestinian Christian population, saying:

“More than once I heard them say: ‘Life was better for us under Israeli rule.’ … I have also decided not to name another leading Christian Arab who told me of how his efforts to maintain Christian culture in the West Bank had met with official thuggery and intimidation.

“My guide and host reckons there are 30,000 Christians in the three neighbouring municipalities of Bethlehem, Beit-Sahour and Beit-Jala. Soon there will be far fewer.

“He has found out that 2,000 emigrated between 2001 and 2004, a process which has not stopped. What is most infuriating about this is that many Christians in Britain are fed propaganda blaming this on the Israelis.”

 

THE BARRIER

On Israel’s security barrier, Hitchens writes:

“And in this part of the world, political correctness does not exist. Picture yourself on a comfortable sofa in an apartment in a West Bank town. Nearby runs the infamous, absurd, barrier dividing the Arab world from Israel.

“Think about this wall. I acknowledge that it is hateful and oppressive – dividing men from their land, and (in one case) cutting across the playground of a high school. But I have concluded that it is a civilised response to the suicide bombing that led to its being built.”

 

OUTSIDERS, PLEASE STOP INTERFERING

Hitchens ends his piece by echoing a point I have made repeatedly in these dispatches:

“If outside politicians, more interested in their reputations than in the lives of Arabs and Israelis, would only stop their search for a final settlement, might it be that people – left to their own devices – might find a way of living together, a way that was imperfect, but which no longer involved human beings being dissolved into hunks of flying flesh by high explosive?”

 

HAMAS IS INCREASINGLY UNPOPULAR IN GAZA

Louisa Waugh of the Scottish newspaper The Herald reports from Gaza on October 10 (in summary):

Shops in the centre of Gaza city are now stocked with Israeli goods, including many major brands. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since it took over the Strip in June 2007, recently opened Gaza’s first shopping mall, where a few gleaming shops sell traditional clothes and plastic toys.

But there is another undercurrent pervading Gazan street life; an atmosphere of tension and unease about the increasingly unpopular Hamas regime.

Many Gazans claim Hamas is becoming more radical and oppressive. Thousands of Gazans who used to work for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza were subsequently sacked by Hamas, and are still effectively blacklisted from any professional jobs there.

Hamas is also pursuing a more rigorous Islamic agenda, raiding venues where mixed parties are suspected.

“What do I think of Hamas – they are good!” one waiter tells me cheerfully. He looks over his shoulder, leans forward and says: “If one of them hears me saying anything about Hamas, then I will be arrested you know. We have become frightened of them.”

Only about 5 percent of Gazans can now travel outside the strip, crossing into Egypt or Israel.

 

AMONG THOSE ON THE NEXT “AID” FLOTILLA…

Sources tell me that among those planning to sail on the next “humanitarian aid” flotilla to Gaza is Bouguerra Soltani (also spelled Abu Jerra Soltani), a senior figure in the Algerian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

At a press conference last year, he said: “I will be the first to lead the battalion of young Algerian jihadis if we find the way to jihad in Gaza… We will meet the leaders of Hamas and tell them of our gratitude for their fighting, our support and our solidarity.”

In 2004, Soltani signed a jihadi declaration calling for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and support for al Qaeda detainees, who, he said, had been treated to “savage crimes implemented at… the hands of the Zio-American pact … against humanity in general.”

ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND OTHER ABUSES

Soltani is wanted by the authorities in Switzerland for torture.

On October 12, 2009, a Swiss human rights group submitted a criminal complaint to the investigating judge in Fribourg, charging Soltani with organizing torture sessions against Arab political opponents, including Nouar Abdelmalek, who (according to the complaint) suffered multiple instances of torture between 2001 and 2005 and has now been granted asylum in France.

The complaint in the Swiss court reads:

“On the same day, Mr. SOLTANI, went to the room where Mr. ABDELMALEK was detained in order to personally direct a torture session which lasted for about 2 hours. During that session, the victim was subjected to waterboarding, to several electric shocks on the stomach, feet and hands, his ankles were twisted as if to break them and a screwdriver was even introduced into a recent wound on his right foot.”

(More here.)

***

Another “peace activist” said to be on the next Gaza flotilla is Sinn Fein councilor Toiréasa Ferris, who when interviewed on America’s CBS television, refused to condemn the murder of a man (Jerry McCabe) by the IRA in 1996.

(Her father, Martin Ferris, is a convicted IRA terrorist, who served ten years in prison from 1984-1994 for attempting to import weapons into Northern Ireland.)

It is people like this who are trying to force open Gaza’s sea borders so that goods can flow in without inspection, that Israel is concerned about.

 

STUDY SHOWS FIFTH OF UK CHILDREN LIVE IN “SEVERE POVERTY”

A fifth of young children in the UK live in “severe poverty”, a major report published last week revealed. The government-sponsored Millennium Cohort Study, using researchers from London University’s Institute of Education, tracked 14,000 children in Britain.

The study also showed that almost three-quarters of children whose parents are of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin live in poverty.

The number of children living in poverty is likely to rise, said Professor Heather Joshi, the study’s director.

I mention this because the study was released in the same week that it was reported that the cash-strapped British government is considering giving yet more money to the population of Gaza.

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

EXTRA NOTE

“RACHEL CORRIE STUDIES”

I am glad to report that after years of “Rachel Corrie Studies” being taught to university undergrads and high schoolers in America and elsewhere, my article The Forgotten Rachels is finally appearing on class curricula as a way of providing some counter balance to “the cult of Rachel Corrie”.

For example, here as part of 10th grade homework (for 16 year olds) this fall.

A MIXED BUNCH

I attach articles from recent days concerning a variety of Middle East-related topics. You may want to read or glance at some or all of these. (The headlines in capitals are mine, not those of the authors.)

-- Tom Gross

AVOID SUBWAYS, TRAINS, AIRPLANES, BOATS – AND APPLE COMPUTER SHOPS?

The government that cried wolf
By Anne Applebaum
Slate magazine
Oct. 4, 2010

“The State Department alerts U.S. citizens to the potential for terrorist attacks in Europe. . . . Terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests. U.S. citizens are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services. U.S. citizens should take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling.”

– State Department travel alert, Oct. 3

Speaking as an American who lives in Europe, I feel it is incumbent upon me to describe what people like me do when we hear warnings like this one issued on Sunday: We do nothing.

We do nothing, first and foremost, because there is nothing that we can do. Unless the State Department gets specific – e.g., “don’t go to the Eiffel Tower tomorrow” – information at that level of generality is meaningless. Unless we are talking about weapons of mass destruction, the chances of being hit by a car while crossing the street are still greater than the chances of being on that one plane or one subway car that comes under attack. Besides, nobody living or working in a large European city (or even a small one) can indefinitely avoid coming within close proximity of “official and private” structures affiliated with U.S. interests – a Hilton hotel, an Apple computer shop – not to mention subways, trains, airplanes, boats and all other forms of public transportation.

Second, we do nothing because if the language is that vague, then nobody is really sure why the warning has been issued in the first place. Obviously, if the American government knew who the terrorists were and what they were going to attack, it would arrest them and stop them. If it can’t do any better than mentioning “tourist infrastructure” and public transportation, it doesn’t really know anything at all.

In which case, why are they telling us about it? Since the warning made breakfast television on Sunday morning, speculation has been rife. So far I have heard at least one full-blown conspiracy theory: Some believe the U.S. government has issued this statement to frighten Europeans into greater intelligence cooperation, and in particular to persuade the European Union to agree to a new system of airline passenger data exchange.

Other rumors say that the CIA believes al-Qaeda, or some al-Qaeda knockoff group, is planning simultaneous attacks on hotels in major European cities, something like the 2008 attacks on the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. This information, according to the rumor, is supposed to have come from an interrogation carried out last summer.

Yet even if U.S. intelligence agencies possess information as solid as that – and, I repeat, I have absolutely no evidence that they do – there is still no point in the State Department telling us to remain alert when standing next to any American object, because even if we do it today, we won’t tomorrow.

This sort of thing has happened before. In 2004, the employees of the IMF and World Bank in Washington arrived at work to find themselves the subject of sudden media interest: Maps and detailed plans of their offices had been found on a laptop in Afghanistan, and a warning had been issued as a result. But, of course, it wasn’t realistic to maintain a vigilant watch of indefinite length on a building used by hundreds of people every day, many of them suspiciously foreign-looking. And, of course, the advice was quickly forgotten, and everyone went back to work.

In truth, the only people who can profit from such a warning are the officials who issue it. If something does happen, they are covered: They warned us, they told us in advance, they won’t be criticized or forced to resign. And if nothing happens, then we’ll all forget about it anyway.

Except that we don’t forget about it. Over time, these kinds of enigmatic warnings do al-Qaeda’s work for it, scaring people without cause. Without so much as lifting a finger, Osama bin Laden disrupts our sense of security and well-being. At the same time, such warnings put the U.S. government in the position of the boy who cried wolf. The more often general warnings are issued, the less likely we are to heed them. We are perhaps unsettled or unnerved, but we don’t know what to do. So we do nothing – and wish that we’d been told nothing as well.

 

ECONOMIC CONCENTRATION HURTS ISRAEL’S VIABILITY AND PEACE PROSPECTS

Breaking Israel’s monopolies
By Daniel Doron
Wall Street Journal Europe
October 8, 2010

While the world focuses on yet another putative “peace process,” Israel’s internal struggle to break up its concentrated economy receives scant attention. The Bank of Israel’s annual report on the economy published in April included a study showing that “some twenty business groups, nearly all of family nature and structured in a pronounced pyramid form, continue to control a large proportion of public firms (some 25% of firms listed for trading) and about half of market share.” These business groups, the bank warned, show “higher levels of financial leverage – and therefore also of risk,” than stand-alone companies.

Reforming this unproductive economic structure, inherited from the socialists that ruled the country for decades, will have a great impact on Israel’s capacity to initiate peace through economic development. As events in Europe and elsewhere have shown, prosperity can mitigate conflicts and facilitate their resolution. Before the first intifada in 1987, an informal economic peace process had done wonders to reconcile Jews and Arabs.

Given the Israeli economy’s remarkable resilience, some may question the urgency for unraveling these conglomerates. Since a 2005 financial reform liberated Israel from some of its statist rigidities, it has grown by almost 5% annually, despite the world financial crisis. The country boasts more than 3,000 start-ups, more than in all of Europe and almost as many as in the U.S.

But this growth may not be sustainable as long as Israel’s economy remains dominated by about 20 politically connected families that own so much of the country’s traded assets, which they acquired from the government and labor unions in a privatization process with credit provided by the nationalized banks. These cross-sectoral, multi-layered conglomerates have evolved into monopolies that inhibit competition, efficiency, and growth, and choke Israel’s hapless consumers. Israeli citizens – overtaxed and underpaid, and shouldering three years of service in the regular army and a month to 45 days yearly in reserve duty – must also pay monopoly rents of between 20% and 30% on everything they consume, as researchers at Israel’s ministry of finance calculated. All that makes Israelis poorer.

These vertically integrated groups have cross-holdings in both industrial and service companies, and in financial firms. The result is a misallocation of credit to companies owned by these tycoons. Consider that until the 2005 financial market reform, 70% of credit was granted to just 1% of lenders. Meanwhile, Israel’s small and medium-sized businesses – the chief engines of Israel’s economic growth – have been squeezed. Particularly in Israel’s “periphery,” the Negev and the Galilee, smaller firms suffer from a permanent credit crunch.

The largest of these pyramid-style conglomerates is also one of the most powerful and complex. Through his IDB Holdings, Nochi Dankner controls 60 companies through several layers of ownership. Among these companies are Israel’s cement and paper monopolies (Nesher and Hadera Paper), one of Israel’s two largest insurance companies (Clal Insurance), its largest grocery retail chain (Shufersal), its largest cellular-phone operator (Cellcom), one of its largest real-estate groups (PBC), a leading internet company (013 Netvision) – you get the idea. Mr. Dankner controls all these companies, with consolidated assets of $35 billion, through an equity position of around $300 million, or less than 1% of those assets.

Faced with similar pyramidal groups, economists in the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s convinced the U.S. Congress that this sort of economic concentration causes moral hazard, problems of corporate governance, tax avoidance, and excessive political influence. The U.S. government’s response – effective or not – was to tax intercorporate dividends, exempt the liquidations of controlled subsidiaries from capital gains taxes, and to restrict the ability of business groups to file consolidated returns. Later, in 1957, Congress passed the Bank Holding Company Act to prevent investment companies from controlling banks.

Too big to fail but big enough to dominate, Israel’s large, multi-layered conglomerates have acquired huge political clout, enabling them to obtain monopoly privileges and other benefits worth billions of shekels from the government. And that’s even before considering the fact that as the country’s biggest employer and buyer in the Israeli economy, the government naturally tends to favor big business.

This clout also enables the conglomerates to erect a thicket of entry barriers and keep their would-be competitors out. This lack of rivalry, combined with so-called “progressive” labor laws, have contributed to low per-capita productivity (about half that of the U.S.) and in the dismally low wages of Israeli workers.

Despite his understandable focus on foreign challenges, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with his Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, has publicly expressed his determination to address this complex problem. Mr. Netanyahu did not flinch from fierce media attacks demanding that he should focus instead on issues like poverty; as if it were not clear that poverty is in large part a result of consumer exploitation by the monopolies.

Reason demands that Israel’s reformers will proceed with their reforms without delay. But reason does not always influence political developments, not even in Israel. Let us hope for the sake of Israel’s future viability, and for the sake of peace, that this time it does.

(Daniel Doron is a subscriber to this list.)

 

A workman puts the finishing touches on a billboard of the Iranian president in a stadium in Southern Lebanon.

WIPING THE ZIONIST ENTITY OFF THE MAP, ONE ROCK AT A TIME

Ahmadinejad to throw rocks at Israeli border
Jerusalem Post staff
September 29, 2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to throw a rock at Israel to demonstrate his hatred on his planned trip to Lebanon, London-based paper Al-Quds al Arabi reported on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad plans to meet with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, as well as other Lebanese officials, on October 13. During the two-day visit, the Iranian president will participate in events near the Israeli border.

One event is the inauguration of a garden in southern Lebanon, during which Ahmadinejad plans to throw the rock, Al-Quds reported.

Another event is the establishment of an Iranian center in the village of Maron A-Ras, where IDF soldiers fought in the Second Lebanon War.

Ahmadinejad is expected to discuss Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in a speech in Bint-Jbil, another battle site. Hizbullah operatives are reportedly providing security for the Iranian president on his trip to Lebanon.

 

AL-AQSA II – WITH AN IRANIAN FLAG

Lebanon: The next Iranian base?
By Samara Greenberg
Jewish Policy Center
October 5, 2010

Laborers in Lebanon will soon complete the construction of a mosque resembling the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem only a few hundred meters from the border with Israel in the village of Maroun al-Ras. The mosque, constructed in honor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit on October 13-14, will look exactly like its Jerusalem prototype with the exception of one difference: An Iranian flag will perch its top as a tribute to its sponsor.

The mosque will also include a boardwalk and a lookout point from which Ahmadinejad plans to throw a symbolic stone at Israel during his visit. The president will also inaugurate the mosque, and participate in other events near the Israeli border commemorating the Second Lebanon War. Ahmadinejad plans to meet with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, as well as other Lebanese officials. Hezbollah operatives will reportedly provide security.

Ahmadinejad’s visit is receiving a significant backlash, even stirring controversy among Beirut’s political circles. “The message is that Iran is at the border with Israel,” Fares Souaid, coordinator of the Western-backed March 14 Alliance, told AFP. “Ahmadinejad through this visit is saying that Beirut is under Iranian influence and that Lebanon is an Iranian base on the Mediterranean,” he said. Unsurprisingly, Israel, for its part, asked Lebanon to cancel the visit, as Ahmadinejad’s presence would undermine regional stability and the Middle East peace talks.

The Iranian president’s new mosque in, and visit to, Lebanon should serve as a wakeup call. The regime in Tehran is clearly and openly expressing that it has direct influence over the politically weak country that still struggles to contain the independent militias left-over from its civil war that roam the streets - including Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah.

For the sake of stability within Lebanon and all sovereign nations, every country and international organization – both from the West and the Arab world – should denounce Ahmadinejad’s visit to, and meddling inside, Lebanon. Indeed, the president’s visit is providing the international community with an opportunity to stand up for state sovereignty. It is an opportunity that should not be missed.

 

AYATOLLAHS IN SPACE

Iran to send man into space by 2022
Fars News Agency (Iran)
October 6, 2010

TEHRAN (FNA) - Iran has prepared the necessary technological grounds to send man into space by 2022, Deputy Head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA) for Technology Mohammad Mardani said on Wednesday.

“Iran will send man into the space in the next 12 years,” Mardani said on the sidelines of a ceremony to inaugurate an exhibition named ‘Man and Space’ here in Tehran.

He further stressed the need for the development of Iran’s space technology and know-how due to its direct ties with the other political, social, security and defense arenas.

Mardani also announced that Iranian scientists are currently working on the designs of 10 to 15 more Iran-made satellites.

“We have plans for the next 15 years and now we are designing and building a satellite for the 36,000km orbit which will provide service in telecommunication, radio and TV fields,” Mardani added.

Iran has recently taken wide strides in aerospace. The country sent the first biocapsule of living creatures into space in February, using its home-made Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) carrier.

Omid (hope) was Iran’s first research satellite that was designed for gathering information and testing equipment. After orbiting for three months, Omid successfully completed its mission without any problems. It completed more than 700 orbits over seven weeks and reentered the earth’s atmosphere on April 25, 2009.

After launching Omid, Tehran unveiled three new satellites called Tolou, Mesbah II and Navid, respectively. Iran has also unveiled its latest achievements in designing and producing satellite carriers very recently.

Also, Iran has recently unveiled a new generation of home-made satellites and a new satellite carrier called Simorgh (Phoenix).

Iran is one of the 24 founding members of the United Nations’ Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS), which was set up in 1959.

 

DO THE PALESTINIANS WANT THEIR OWN STATE ALONGSIDE A JEWISH STATE?

Netanyahu offers settlement freeze in return for recognition as Jewish state, Palestinians say no
By Ha’aretz Service, Reuters and AP
Ha’aretz
October 11, 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered Monday to halt settlement construction if the Palestinians were to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, but the Palestinian leadership was prompt to reject the proposal.

“If the Palestinian leadership will say unequivocally to its people that it recognizes Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, I will be ready to convene my government and request a further suspension,” Netanyahu said while speaking at the opening of the third session of the 18th Knesset.

“Just as the Palestinians expect us to recognize their state, we expect reciprocal treatment,” said Netanyahu.

“This is not a condition but a trust-building step, which would create wide-ranging trust among the Israeli people, who have lost trust in the Palestinian will for peace over the last 10 years.”

However, Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said a return to U.S.-backed peace talks required a freeze on settlement building by Israel.

“The issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the matter,” Rdainah said.

Netanyahu stressed that Israel is willing to make concessions, and that a peace deal and a Palestinian state could be achieved if the Palestinians would be willing to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland.

 

OBAMA THE GENEROUS

U.S. giving away too much, too early in Mideast peace talks, some say
By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times
October 7, 2010

Only a month into a new round of peace talks, the Obama administration is drawing criticism from allies and veteran diplomats that it is giving away too much just to keep negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians from collapsing.

Administration officials have offered an assortment of inducements to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend a freeze on Jewish construction in the West Bank for two months. Palestinian officials have threatened to break off the talks, perhaps as early as this week, unless Israel extends the freeze that expired Sept. 26.

The U.S. has been wooing Netanyahu for weeks with offers including a squadron of F-35 fighters, support for a long-term Israeli troop presence in a new Palestinian state, and a pledge to veto any anti-Israel resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. also is offering access to its satellites that could offer early warning of attacks.

To the Palestinians, the White House is pledging support for their position on the exact location of borders for a future state in exchange for a promise to continue negotiating even if Israel refuses to extend the construction moratorium.

While the Obama administration was expected to eventually dole out incentives to keep the negotiations alive, diplomats and other observers say they are surprised that it has offered so much, so early, for such a small victory – a commitment by both sides to keep talking.

“From the left to the right, people are saying that the administration is looking desperate,” said Robert Danin, a former U.S. official and adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an envoy to the region for the U.N., U.S., European Union and Russia.

The U.S. offers have made waves in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Some Israeli lawmakers have urged Netanyahu to hold out for even more. Others believe the U.S. pledges are so generous that Israel can’t rely on Obama to make good on them.

“Bizarre Bazaar – Haggling over the Price,” was the headline this week in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

The Palestinian leadership has been shocked by the U.S. pledge to support a long-term Israeli security presence in the Jordan Valley, on the eastern edge of a future Palestinian state.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was “pale and incredulous” when he announced the offer to his team, according to one person close to him. Palestinians were expecting that any agreement on an Israeli security presence in the Jordan Valley would be negotiated well down the line in the horse-trading before the final deal.

The White House’s willingness to pay a steep price so early in the game reflects the huge stakes for the administration. Obama has said repeatedly that peace in the Middle East is vital to U.S. national security.

“This has become all about American credibility, and that’s why there’s such an effort to keep it going,” said one person close to the talks, who was unwilling to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Netanyahu, who wants to preserve good ties to the United States, appears to be leaning toward accepting the deal to extend the construction moratorium if he can garner enough support from some moderate Cabinet members.

But one Israeli official said the terms haven’t been finalized and that Netanyahu hasn’t made up his mind. “We’re not there yet,” he said.

Obama has vowed that the United States would help broker a peace deal, but also has emphasized that “we cannot want it more than the parties themselves.” Yet observers say the U.S. appears to be in precisely that position.

The U.S. “is projecting the image of wanting it too much, which is not a good place to be in any negotiation,” said Robert Malley, who was a chief Mideast peace negotiator for President Bill Clinton.

If Netanyahu accepts the deal, complaints about the U.S. approach are likely to subside. If he ends up snubbing Obama, an Arab diplomat said, “people in the region will say, ‘You mean you can’t even bring along the Israelis?’ “

 

GANG RAPE

Raped under UN auspices
By Claudia Rosett
New York Post
October 7, 2010

Can United Nations peace keeping deliver peace? It sure failed this summer in an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where armed groups went on a spree of gang rape just 20 miles up the road from a contingent of dozens of UN blue helmets. Despite warnings of trouble, it took three days – during which the raping of hundreds of women continued – before a UN patrol showed up.

It took more than a week before the head of the UN’s Congo peacekeeping mission, US diplomat Roger Meece, says he learned of the rapes. And it took almost three weeks before the UN special representative for ending sexual violence in conflict zones, Margot Wallstrom, says she heard about it – from media reports.

The United Nations then responded with a ritual mea culpa. First blaming Congo authorities, a UN assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, Atul Khare, said “Clearly we have also failed . . . We must do better.”

Dream on. The United Nations is forever promising to do better. Instead, what it mainly does is get bigger, especially in the peacekeeping department.

During the UN’s first 45 years, from 1945-1990, it launched a grand total of 18 peacekeeping missions. In the 20 years since, it has initiated more than twice that number. Over the last decade, the number of UN peacekeeping personnel in the field has soared ninefold, to 124,000, involved in 16 operations, and the UN’s annual peacekeeping budget has more than quadrupled, to almost $8 billion – of which the United States supplies 27 percent, or more than $2 billion.

The record is at best one of fitful peace, punctuated by UN scandals and failure to prevent atrocities or even war and genocide. Examples abound, from Somalia to Rwanda, Srebenica, Haiti and Darfur.

Too often, the United Nations serves as a fig leaf for politicians, including American ones, while obfuscating or even perpetuating conflicts. In Lebanon, for instance, the UN has had peacekeepers in place since 1978. Under their noses the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah stockpiled weapons for the 2006 summer war with Israel. Under the gaze of a now-expanded UN peacekeeping force, Hezbollah is reportedly rearming, with deadlier weapons.

The current round of UN peacekeeping in the Congo dates back to 1999. Since then, the UN has more than tripled the number of uniformed personnel in the field, and since 2003 it has spent more than $7.5 billion on this mission. Yet the assaults, rapes and conflicts among warring factions have continued. This week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon excused UN failures on grounds that “our resources are too limited.”

The real problem is that the opaque and diplomatically immune UN is far better at catering to itself than helping those it proposes – often unrealistically – to protect. UN peacekeeping is a gravy train for UN bureaucrats and for governments of many of the countries providing troops (the top five currently being Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nigeria and Egypt).

With its multibillion-dollar budget, peacekeeping has been one of the most corrupt arenas of UN activity, a locus of what UN internal investigators in 2006 labeled “a culture of impunity.”

In the field, including the Congo, that UN culture has led to a series of scandals since 2004 involving not just peacekeepers ignoring rape right down the road, but doing it themselves. Despite a policy of “zero tolerance,” the United Nations itself reports more than 200 confirmed cases of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers since the start of 2007, with findings on another 200 or so allegations still pending, including 35 alleged instances in the first half of this year.

A UN fact sheet euphemistically notes that such abuse “continues to be a major challenge for the peacekeeping family.”

This week, the United Nations announced that together with Congo government forces, its peacekeepers had captured the man suspected of orchestrating the gang rapes this summer. That’s good news, but too late for those who were assaulted while UN troops failed to respond. To keep pouring billions into UN peacekeeping fuels a vehicle with a record of too many failures.

Surely, for the tormented places of the world, it’s time the leaders of the 21st century came up with new coalitions and better ways to pursue and keep the peace.

(Claudia Rosett is a subscriber to this list.)

 

WORLD CLASS BANKER

Fischer wins best bank governor of the world award
By Zvi Lavi
Yediot Ahronot
October 11, 2010

Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer on Sunday won the best bank governor in the world award for 2010 in Washington DC.

Fischer received the award just a day after he was named best regional central bank governor for the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, he was also chosen as one of the seven outstanding central bank governors in the world two weeks ago.

He was chosen by Euromoney a leading international banking, finance and capital markets news publication. Fischer received the award based on the decision of the magazine’s editorial board, which has been giving out the award to the outstanding central bank governor for the last 30 years.

The selection process is a lengthy one and the magazine editors decide on the winner by secret ballot. The title of banker of the year was awarded to him by the chairman of the magazine during the closing ceremonies for the IMF’s convention, which was held at the Willard Intercontinental hotel in DC.

The magazine gave Fischer an honorable mention for his “success in finding the optimal balance between inflation and recession, and supporting the Israeli market’s economic recovery after the international financial crisis. Israel’s durability during and after the financial crisis, proves that Stanley Fischer deserves the honor he receives among the elite of the international financial community”.

The magazine editors also mentioned the “brave steps taken by Fischer in raising the interest rates in September 2009, where Israel was the first country to raise the rates after the crisis. It became evident that this was the right step to take, as it foresaw the future. Later interest increases were well timed and allowed Israel’s economy to grow at a handsome rate of 4.7% in the second quarter of 2010”.

The decision emphasizes that “interest rate increase were implemented while keeping a close reign on the inflation rate – at 1.8%”, and also refers to the governor’s involvement in the foreign currency market, with the massive daily dollar purchase that began on the eve of the crisis. The magazine added that “Fischer’s revolutionary policy, though controversial at the time, was the root of the Israeli foreign currency advantage while stimulating exports.

“Export stimulation was fundamental to the success of the Israeli economy, in spite of political and regional difficulties which Israel endures. Fischer’s policies promoted Israel’s acceptance into the OECD in May 2010” the magazine summed up.

 

THE MILKY WAY

Israeli study: Milk drinkers lose more weight
Israel 21C
October 4, 2010

A new weight loss study conducted in Israel has revealed that dieters who consume milk or milk products lose more weight on average than those who consume little to no milk products.

The two-year dietary intervention study, of 300 overweight men and women in middle age, was carried out by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). The researchers found that regardless of diet, dieters with the highest dairy calcium intake - equal to 12 oz. of milk or other dairy products, lost about 12 pounds (6kg) at the end of two years.

Dieters with the lowest dairy calcium intake - about half a glass of milk, only lost seven pounds on average.

The researchers, led by Dr. Danit Shahar, of BGU’s Center for Health and Nutrition, and the Faculty of Health sciences, also discovered that levels of vitamin D found in the blood, also affected the success of weight loss treatments. The results confirmed existing research showing that overweight participants have lower blood levels of the vitamin.

“It was known that over-weight people had lower levels of serum vitamin D but this is the first study that actually shows that serum Vitamin D increased among people who lost weight,” says Shahar. “This result lasted throughout the two years that the study was conducted, regardless of whether [participants] were on a low-carb, low fat or Mediterranean diet.”

Vitamin D increases calcium absorption in the bloodstream and in addition to sun exposure can be obtained from fortified milk, fatty fish and eggs. Americans generally consume less than the recommended daily requirement of Vitamin D which is found in four glasses of milk (400 international units).

The study, which was published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was part of the Dietary Intervention Randomized Control Trial (DIRECT) held at the Nuclear Research Center in Israel in collaboration with Harvard University, the University of Leipzig, Germany and the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Some 322 moderately obese people, aged 40 to 65, took part in the study evaluating low fat, Mediterranean or low-carb diets for two years.

In earlier findings, scientists discovered that low-fat diets aren’t the best way to lose weight, but that dieters are likely to lose more weight on a Mediterranean diet, or a low-carb diet.

The study was supported by the Israel Ministry of Health and the Israel Dairy Council, the Israel Chief Scientist Office, German Research Foundation and the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Research Foundation.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

WHY THE FUSS OVER CNN’S RICK SANCHEZ? BECAUSE WHAT HE SAID WAS A LIE

CNN host Rick Sanchez was fired last week for remarks he made about Jews.

Many commentators have rushed to his defense. For example, Andrew Sullivan asked “So why the fuss over Rick Sanchez?”

The answer is because what Sanchez said was a lie. As Brian Palmer at Slate wrote, the news networks are not run by Jews:

“If Sanchez was referring to people in the television news business, he’s wrong. Not one of the major television news operations – Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, or NBC News – is currently headed by a Jewish executive. (That includes Ken Jautz, the man who fired Sanchez.) The Internet is littered with rumors about various media moguls being Jewish, but few of those claims are backed by any evidence.”

Jeffrey Goldberg adds: “Rick Sanchez trafficked in a pernicious stereotype that has been used in the past, in various places, to justify violence and discrimination against Jews. But another question also arises: Even if all of the television news networks were indeed run by Jews, would this mean that they were run by ‘The Jews’, by a monochromatic Jewish collective? Does the Jewishness of any given television executive represent the most essential truth of his or her being, the element that consciously or subconsciously shapes an entire worldview, and thus, American journalism? Or is it even worse – are these irreducibly Jewish television executives part of an actual politically-motivated cabal known as the ‘pro-Israel lobby,’ the ostensible subject of the Andrew Sullivan blog post in which Rick Sanchez’s libel is mentioned in casual and dismissive terms?”

As this email list was the first to reveal at the time, CNN fired its senior editor for Middle East news Octavia Nasr in July after she published a Twitter message that said she respected a notoriously anti-Semitic Lebanese Shi’ite cleric.

 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, REWRITING HISTORY

New York’s prestigious Columbia University’s new Center for Palestine Studies (which officially opened on Thursday to a packed hall of students and professors) seems to exclude all Jewish history from the region. The only scholar listed with a Jewish studies background is Anidjar, whose work mostly focuses on Medieval Spain.

www.columbia.edu/cu/palestine/people/

Coming from Columbia University, this is of course predictable, but nonetheless it is highly disturbing as yet more impressionable young minds will no doubt be misled.

Organizers said that the center was created in honor of the notoriously unreliable former Columbia professor Edward Said. Its co-director is Rashid Khalidi, who previously acted as an informal advisor to Barack Obama.

“As a political science student, I’m really excited,” student Samira Khalifa told The Columbia Spectator. “There aren’t enough courses that have anything to do with Palestinian struggles.”

Critics said that with the opening of the center, Khalidi and others at Columbia had “dispensed with the myth of valuing free academic enquiry and turned the classroom into an extension of political struggle.”

Among those academics affiliated with the institute is one professor infamous for being a “9/11 truther” and for still telling students that Israel killed 1500 people in Jenin in 2002 (which is, of course, a complete lie).

 

ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS IN THE NETHERLANDS DOUBLE

Anti-Semitic attacks in the Netherlands nearly doubled last year compared to the year before, according to newly-released police figures. Police said that 209 incidents had been documented in 2009, accounting for about one tenth of all discriminatory incidents in the country despite the fact that the number of Jews is much smaller than the number of other minorities in the Netherlands. This represented a 48 percent rise in attacks against Jews and Jewish sites, including damage to graves of dead Jews and anti-Semitic graffiti on Holocaust monuments.

The Jewish community in the Netherlands numbers around 30,000, less than 0.3 per cent of the country’s population.

 

ON ADVICE OF A MUSLIM MP, POLICE PATROL AMSTERDAM DISGUISED AS RELIGIOUS JEWS

The acting mayor of the Dutch capital Amsterdam, Lodewijk Asscher, has deployed undercover police officers disguised as orthodox Jews on the streets in order to identify violent anti-Semites. “Jews in at least six Amsterdam neighborhoods often cannot cross the street wearing a skullcap without being insulted, spat at or even hit,” one Dutch newspaper reported. Secret television recordings by one broadcasting company showed young men shouting and making Nazi salutes and chasing a rabbi in the Dutch capital.

Amsterdam police already disguise officers as decoy prostitutes, gays and old people in operations to deter street muggings and attacks on homosexuals and in the city’s red light district.

The idea of using police officers in Jewish disguise was floated by a Muslim parliamentarian. Ahmed Marcouch, a Moroccan-born Social Democratic member of parliament who immigrated to the Netherlands at the age of ten, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz: “I say, send fake Jews to arrest the attackers. Everything must be done to keep the phenomenon of anti-Semitism from growing. It seems like these are small incidents, but this is serious.”

 

HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS, CEMETERIES DESECRATED IN SOUTHERN, CENTRAL AND EASTERN FRANCE

A monument to the victims of World War II in south-western France has been spray-painted with anti-Semitic graffiti. French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux expressed “horror and sadness” after the discovery of the slogans and Nazi symbols painted in bright red at a memorial to the deportation and resistance in Marmande, which bears the names of Nazi concentration camps.

This incident follows several other recent anti-Semitic attacks in France. For example, in July dozens of Jewish graves, including those of children, were smashed or overturned at the Jewish cemetery of Wolfisheim, near Strasbourg in eastern France. (In January, around 30 Jewish graves were also desecrated in the Strasbourg area, on the same day as the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.)

And anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas were daubed recently on the walls of the Etz Haim synagogue in Melun in central France, and on the windows and walls of a dozen kosher stores in Paris.

 

FRENCH RAILWAY COMPANY PROMISES TO COMPLY WITH U.S. BILL REVEALING HOLOCAUST ROLE

The state-owned French railway company SNCF may finally disclose details about the role it played transporting Jews to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. The announcement follows pressure from lawmakers in California’s state legislature, where a bill is in process that requires companies seeking state business to reveal any involvement in the Holocaust.

“It is our intention to fully comply with the bill,” said Peter Kelly, an attorney for SNCF, which is working on a bid to win a $45 billion contract to build California’s high-speed rail system.

California legislators said they were not seeking restitution for the relatives of Holocaust victims, but believed that taxpayers had a right to know how their money was spent and companies such as SNCF should “come clean about their central role in rounding up and transporting Jews for death.”

SNCF, as well as other instruments of the French state, have long been accused of covering up their role in the Holocaust.

A 75-year gag order issued by the French postwar government is in place to protect the names of French citizens involved in the round-up of Jews from being made public. A ruling last year by France’s Supreme Court confirmed that the first files from 1940 will become public in 2015, with the remaining documents becoming public over the following four years.

 

JEWISH TEACHER SUSPENDED IN FRANCE FOR TEACHING “TOO MUCH” ABOUT HOLOCAUST

In a case which is dividing France, a history teacher in the town of Nancy has been suspended for breaching “the principle of secularism and neutrality” after the French education ministry concluded that she was teaching “too much” about the Holocaust and had organized trips for her students to see former Nazi camps in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Catherine Pederzoli, 58, was investigated by officials at the education ministry, who released a report about the matter in July. The report accused the teacher of “lacking distance, neutrality and secularism” in teaching the Holocaust.

Pederzoli’s lawyer, Christine Tadic, said that the school authorities were leading a witch hunt against her. “Had the teacher been Christian, no one would have led a campaign against her this way,” she added.

Pederzoli is now getting a lot of support both inside and outside the Jewish community, and her case has become something of a cause célèbre. There is a demonstration in her favor today.

 

JEWISH DANCERS ATTACKED BY MUSLIM TEENAGERS AT A PERFORMANCE IN GERMANY

A group of Jewish dancers were attacked with rocks and stones by a group of teenagers during a performance at a street festival in Hanover, Germany over the summer. After one dancer suffered a leg injury, the group canceled its performance. Six German teenagers of Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian origin, were arrested. They also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs such as “Juden raus” [Jews out] during the attack.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the newspaper Die Welt that anti-Semitic feelings were widespread in both far-right and Muslim communities in Germany. Noting that one of those arrested was as young as 14, she said “It particularly saddens me that anti-Semitic views can already be seen with such vehemence among children and youths.”

 

ROMANIAN CENTRAL BANK UNDER FIRE OVER COMMEMORATIVE COIN

Romania’s National Bank has been strongly criticized after minting a silver coin which depicts the late patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Miron Cristea, who as prime minister stripped 37 percent of the Jewish population of its citizenship in 1939, paving the way for their murder in the Holocaust.

After a complaint from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the bank’s governor, Mugur Isarescu, agreed to review the coin. He added the coin may be scrapped if it is considered to be anti-Semitic, which is illegal in Romania.

Cristea led the church between 1925 and 1939, and was the country’s prime minister from 1938 to 1939. His government amended the citizenship law, stripping 225,000 Jews (over a third of Romania’s Jews at the time) of their citizenship. In a study published in 2004, an international commission of historians said that Cristea had “demonized the Jews” and called for their deportation. 270,000 Jews subsequently died during Marshal Ion Antonescu’s pro-Nazi regime in Romania.

The coin also sparked protest from Romania’s Jewish community. “I can’t understand how the patriarch managed to pass through the filter,” said Robert Schwartz, representative for Jews in the city of Cluj.

 

NEW ZEALAND RADIO PRESENTER SUSPENDED AFTER SAYING THAT “JEWS ARE EXPENDABLE”

A radio presenter in New Zealand has been suspended after saying that “Jews are expendable”. The “Breakfast show” DJ and television personality David Fane told a media event: “Would you roast an HIV person? You’d roast them because they’re expendable, like the Jews. Hitler had a right, you know.”

Fane’s words have caused outrage amongst members of the Jewish and gay communities in New Zealand. Stephen Goodman, president of the New Zealand Jewish Council, said: “While we wish to preserve the rights of freedom of speech, anti-Semitic comments like this go over the line.”

Fane apologized, saying: “There are many faces to bigotry and sadly I have added mine. I am deeply sorry.”

 

TOP PRIZE FOR “HITLER” AT AUSTRALIAN JUNIOR SCHOOL

The head teacher of an Australian school issued an apology after a child dressed as Adolf Hitler was awarded a prize for best costume.

At a fancy dress event at the Catholic primary school in Perth, a pupil arrived dressed as the Nazi leader. Staff judged the costume, complete with swastika, as worthy of first place in the competition.

After parents complained, the school sent out a letter describing the costume and prize as “inappropriate.” But the head teacher said it was not “sinister” as the children had been asked to dress as a well-known figure and “Hitler was a fairly famous person.”

(In 2005, Prince Harry, who is third in line to the British throne, was criticized for wearing a Nazi outfit to a party. Picture here.)

 

HOW LONG DID THIS TAKE?

The Czech Doctors’ Association says it has drafted an apology to Jewish doctors struck off its books during the so-called Second Republic – the short period between the end of democratic Czechoslovakia in September 1938 and the beginning of Nazi occupation in March 1939. Months before the Germans invaded, a number of Czech professional organizations started banning Jews from their ranks, motivated by a combination of Nazi propaganda and economic self-interest. In Czechoslovakia – as elsewhere in Europe – a disproportionately high number of doctors were Jewish.

Within days of the Munich agreement, the Czech Medical Chamber took the initiative to reduce the number of Jewish members. It was just one of several professional organizations that chose to emulate their colleagues in Germany – bodies representing lawyers, engineers, notaries also took similar measures. Czech Jewish leader Tomas Kraus (who is a subscriber to this email list) said “It’s never too late to apologize, especially now that the anti-Semitic moods that Europe experienced in the thirties more or less are coming back.”

The modern-day Czech Bar Association apologized last year for banning Jewish lawyers in 1938.

 

CZECH SINGER RECEIVES 3-YEAR PRISON TERM FOR PROMOTING NAZISM

An appeals court in the Czech Republic this week upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced a prominent member of the country’s neo-Nazi movement to three years in prison for anti-Semitic song lyrics.

Michal Moravec, lead singer of the band Imperium, was sentenced last year in the southern city of Ceske Budejovice for the promotion of neo-Nazism on the album “Triumph of the Will.” Moravec had appealed the verdict.

The album’s name is the same as a Nazi propaganda film shot by filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. The ruling by the country’s Supreme Court is final. Last year, Czech police detained former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in Prague on suspicion of supporting or denying the Holocaust. Duke arrived in Prague after being invited by local neo-Nazis to publicize the Czech translation of his 1998 memoir My Awakening, which claims that the systematic mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany never took place. Denying the Holocaust is a hate crime in the Czech Republic.

***

I attach one article below, by Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens (who is a subscriber to this email list, as are Andrew Sullivan and Jeffrey Goldberg who were quoted above).

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

POLISH GROUP TAKES LEGAL ACTION AGAINST DAVID IRVING FOR AUSCHWITZ TOURS

A human rights group in Poland is taking legal action against the British “historian” David Irving for minimizing the scale of Nazi atrocities after Irving last month began giving tours of the Warsaw Ghetto and of former Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Dariusz Gabrel of Open Republic Poland said “Material evidence clearly shows that Irving has broken the law. Poland, the country in which the Nazis committed many of their crimes against humanity, should be especially sensitive to Irving’s kind of crime.”

Irving arrived in Poland last month to lead his much criticized tour of Nazi sites, for which wealthy far-right sympathizers from across Europe are paying $2,650 each.

Irving was convicted of Holocaust denial in 2006 by a court in Austria and sentenced to three years in jail.

The Polish anti-racist group Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again) called on the Polish government to ban Irving from entering the country. The Polish Embassy in London said that Irving could not be barred from the country but said its secret service would closely monitor his movements.

On one tour last week, Irving tried to argue that Treblinka, where almost a million Jews were exterminated on arrival, was a place where inmates were merely held in barracks to perform manual work for the Third Reich.

 

BRITISH SECRET AGENTS CARRIED OUT BOMB ATTACKS AGAINST HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR SHIPS AFTER WWII

The British intelligence service MI6 used bombs and covert tactics to try to thwart Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees reaching pre-state Israel in the aftermath of World War II, according to a new book by Northern Irish historian Keith Jeffery on the history of MI6.

This is not some speculative spy story that can be denied by the authorities since Dr. Jeffrey’s book is, in their own words, “published with the permission of The Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.”

Jeffery says that the British undertook the effort – dubbed Operation Embarrass – in order to curry favor with oil-rich Arab states upset over Jewish migration to the Middle East. In 1947 and 1948, MI6 planted explosives to disable ships docked in Italian ports before they could transport Jewish men, women and children from Europe to Palestine, which was at the time under British control.

In addition to the direct physical sabotage, the British launched a disinformation and propaganda campaign against Jews to impede the establishment of their state. The British Foreign Office helped in these efforts, according to the archives cited by Jeffery.

MI6 even considered blowing up the Baltimore steamship President Warfield (which later became famous as the “Exodus” ship that “launched a nation”) while in port in France.

***

Please also see Andrew Roberts’ article on this subject further down in this dispatch. He notes that “The depth of the animosity that Establishment Britain, especially the Foreign Office, felt toward the Jews of Palestine clearly went even further than we had ever imagined, and even 70 years later is by no means extinguished.”

 

BRITAIN AND SPAIN, THE ONLY TWO OECD COUNTRIES TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL

The Israeli paper Ha’aretz and the pan-Arab network al-Jazeera report that the governments of Britain and Spain are the only two in the OECD to announce that they will not attend the OECD tourism conference, which this year takes place in Jerusalem

Their decision comes despite the fact that Israel’s tourism minister has made clear that OECD delegates will not be taken to East Jerusalem in the conference.

Other delegates (including those from countries with governments hostile to Israel, such as South Africa and Turkey) will participate. Apparently hostility to the Jewish state is even greater in the British and Spanish governments than it is in the Turkish one.

The Paris-based OECD is an intergovernmental body committed to democracy, market economics, and sustainable economic growth and world trade.

UPDATE:

The British embassy in Tel Aviv tells me that the story above, which was reported in Ha’aretz, al-Jazeera and elsewhere, is not true. The embassy says that while the U.K. is indeed not sending a delegate, the absence is not for political reasons and it didn’t send a delegate to an earlier meeting of the same group that took place in Paris. But it is sending a delegate to another OECD working group meeting in Jerusalem later in October.

 

GREEK JUDICIARY DENOUNCED FOR SIDING WITH NOTORIOUS ANTI-SEMITE

Three Greek human rights activists have gone on trial for speaking out against judges who acquitted a notorious anti-Semite and extreme-right politician in Greece.

American Jewish leaders called on the president of the European Parliament to send an official envoy to monitor their trial in Athens and criticized the Greek judiciary for acquitting the self-declared anti-Semite Konstantinos Plevris and for now trying to silence the critics of this decision.

“The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants” said: “Holocaust survivors are appalled that the Greek judiciary has initiated proceedings in which the victims are on trial while a vile hate monger stands as the accuser. Rarely have we seen such a grotesque perversion of justice. For the Greek courts to effectively act as an agent for a notorious Holocaust denier is a disgrace and an indictment of the Greek judicial system. Plevris has called Jews ‘subhuman’ and is an open admirer of the Nazis. We demand that Greece’s political and religious leaders speak out against this monstrous miscarriage of justice.”

Plevris, who is a lawyer, has repeatedly called for Jews to be killed so that “our [Greek] race can survive Zionism.” Plevris is an open admirer of National Socialism, and is author of a book titled “Jews: the whole truth”.

The trial of the Greek human rights activists who condemned Plevris opened on September 22 and has now been adjourned until December.

 

JEWISH PILGRIM STABBED TO DEATH NEAR RABBI’S TOMB IN UKRAINE

A young ultra-Orthodox Israeli was stabbed to death two weeks ago near the tomb of Rabbi Nachman, a place of traditional pilgrimage in Uman, Ukraine.

Shmuel Tobol, a 19-year old member of the Bratslav Hasidic community, who wear the distinctive dress of ultra-orthodox Jews, was set upon and stabbed to death by local Ukrainians. His brother was also injured.

Rabbi Nachman died of tuberculosis at age 38 in Uman surrounded by a small handful of followers; 200 years later, tens of thousands of religious Jews are influenced by his teachings and try to make a pilgrimage to his gravesite in Ukraine.

 

BOMB EXPLODES OUTSIDE SYNAGOGUE IN RUSSIA

A homemade bomb exploded recently outside a synagogue in the Russian town of Tver, 170 km northwest of Moscow. The device damaged the entrance hall of the synagogue and shattered windows in several apartments nearby. Thankfully no one was injured. The Russian news agency Interfax reports that Russian anti-terrorism police have joined crime experts to investigate the incident.

“The explosion was a culmination of repeated attacks on practicing Jews,” the Federation of Russian Jewish Communities said in a statement. “Before this, anti-Semitic slogans had appeared on the synagogue’s walls, anti-Semitic leaflets had been circulated in the city, and 140 gravestones at the Jewish part of the city cemetery were defaced last year.”

No one has been arrested.

 

LITHUANIAN JEWS OUTRAGED AS PIG’S HEAD PLACED AT ENTRANCE TO SYNAGOGUE

Jewish organizations representing the remainder of Lithuania’s once thriving Jewish community have expressed revulsion after a pig’s head was left at the entrance of a synagogue in the country’s second largest city, Kaunas.

Lithuania was once home to a 220,000-strong Jewish community, and Vilnius was known as the ‘Jerusalem of the North’. During the Holocaust, 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators and almost all of Vilnius’s 100 synagogues destroyed.

(Please see the related article below by Jonathan Freedland, who reported from Lithuania, where I also visited recently.)

 

BISHKEK POLICE INVESTIGATE ATTACK ON SYNAGOGUE

Police in the Kyrgyz capital have opened an investigation into an attack on the city synagogue. An explosive device detonated after it was thrown into the synagogue yard during Jewish New Year celebrations last month.

Nobody was reported hurt in the explosion, which caused minor damage to the synagogue. About 1,300 Jews remain in Kyrgyzstan, the majority of whom live in Bishkek. The rest have left for Israel and elsewhere.

 

There is also much anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Among recent dispatches on this, please see these cartoons concerning June’s Turkish flotilla to Gaza.

 

I attach two articles below related to items above, by historian Andrew Roberts and by Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. (Both are subscribers to this email list.)

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

BACK TO SQUARE ONE

In global hunt for hit men, tantalizing trail goes cold
By Chip Cummins and Alistair Macdonald (with assistance from Joshua Mitnick, Carolyn Henson, David Crawford, Evan Perez, Rachel Pannett and Lucy Craymer)
The Wall Street Journal
October 8, 2010

DUBAI – Soon after the January assassination of a top Palestinian official here, Dubai police stumbled onto what looked like a big break in the case.

They linked a white-haired man with glasses to several suspects caught on security cameras preparing for the murder. Most of the suspects in the case had carried forged passports, but this man had a real British one. It identified him as 62-year-old Christopher Lockwood.

The assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January 2010 in a Dubai hotel evoked mixed reactions around the world. But after a few early leads, the Dubai police have found the trail has gone cold.

A cellphone linked to him had recently been switched on in France. U.K. authorities found his London address. They also discovered that in 1994, he had changed his name from Yehuda Lustig. Mr. Lustig, they determined, was born in Scotland to a Jewish couple from what was then British-controlled Palestine.

The findings raised hopes of nabbing one of the orchestrators of the hit, possibly providing proof for accusations by Dubai police that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad was behind it.

But just as quickly, the trail went cold, a Wall Street Journal examination of the case shows.

British police staked out the London residence, but Mr. Lockwood never showed up, according to investigators. They didn’t find him in France, either. More troubling still, Mr. Lockwood’s prior identity looked to be a ruse: Mr. Lustig was reported killed in 1973 as a young Israeli soldier during the Yom Kippur War, according to official Israeli obituaries. That left investigators no closer to finding out who Mr. Lockwood really is.

“Christopher Lockwood” (Photo courtesy of Interpol)

It has been more than eight months since the murder of top Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found in a Dubai hotel room Jan. 20. Quick work by Dubai police and a diplomatic furor over the use of dozens of forged passports in the case fed early optimism that at least some of the 30-plus suspects would be found. But a string of apparent dead ends has frustrated international investigators, lengthening the odds that anyone will be caught or that definitive proof of Mossad involvement will emerge.

And despite an initial burst of tough talk from various governments, some international investigators are concerned that politics may be hampering cooperation from some governments that support Israel.

Time isn’t on the side of Dubai, one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. International investigators have been operating under the assumption that, if Israel is behind the crime, the suspects already may have made their way back to Israel, where they’ll be safe from extradition.

“The longer these investigations go on, the more enthusiasms dwindle and the more time for a security service to cover tracks and bury things,” says Nick Day, a former operative in the U.K.’s MI5 security service who isn’t involved in the probe.

Israel isn’t cooperating in the probe. It has said there’s no evidence linking Mossad to the murder of Mr. Mabhouh, one of the founders of the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian group that Washington, London and Israel designate as a terror organization. Spokesmen for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment for this article.

Early this year, Dubai’s police chief said he was “99%” sure of Mossad involvement. Still, investigators on the case, including those in the U.A.E., say they are working with an open mind. Early on, Dubai detained two Palestinians, raising the possibility that the killing was orchestrated by Palestinian rivals to Mr. Mabhouh. Since then, several allies of Israel have publicly blamed the country for forging many of the passports used by suspects in the case. That has reinforced the widespread suspicion of Israeli involvement.

Dubai investigators remain hopeful, but are coming to terms with the possibility that the probe could drag on for years. “They realize this might be a long process,” says one person familiar with the probe.

At a press conference in February announcing the first batch of suspects, Dubai’s police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, vowed to pursue the suspects “until the end of time.”

The lead on Mr. Lockwood isn’t the only one to fizzle.

Two suspects, traveling with forged passports, appeared to have fled to the U.S. shortly after the killing. Their passport details showed up in a U.S. border-control system that collects electronic manifests of international flights and screens them against passenger watch lists, according to people familiar with the probe and to investigation documents reviewed by the Journal. That suggested the suspects had boarded planes bound for the U.S. The information was passed to international investigators involved in the case, raising hopes of a capture.

But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has since said it doesn’t have records of the two suspects in its system.

Prosecutors in Cologne, Germany, sought an Israeli man on espionage charges related to the murder. The man was extradited from Poland on a lesser charge of document fraud. In August, a German court released him on bail. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said Dubai hadn’t provided enough evidence to justify holding him any longer.

The man flew to Israel within hours of his release. By leaving Germany, he revived the German arrest warrant on espionage charges, a prosecution spokesman said. But the warrant is unlikely to be enforced in Israel.

As for the two Palestinians detained in Dubai shortly after the killing, one had been caught on an airport security camera appearing to pass off an item to one of the suspects. But the men haven’t yet provided any meaningful leads, according to people familiar with the probe.

No other arrests have been made.

The U.A.E. was well-positioned to get investigative cooperation from foreign governments. It has emerged as a Western-leaning Arab powerhouse and important bulwark against Iran. It enjoys strong ties with the U.S. and many Western nations, and Washington has courted it in its global fight against terror financing.

The large-scale passport fraud, blamed on Israel, sparked widespread anger, especially in Europe, raising the prospect that governments would make the investigation a priority.

“This has gone beyond the pale,” says one European-based official familiar with the case. The forgeries, he says, raised the question: “Does Israel have to play by any rules, or does it always get a special exemption?”

But from the start, some international investigators and officials were concerned that politics might interfere. They wondered how much help would be forthcoming from countries with strong ties to Israel.

The U.S. and many Western nations have for decades quietly worked with Mossad and other Israeli agencies, benefiting from their intelligence gathering in the Middle East and beyond. The Dubai investigation gathered steam just as Washington was trying to repair relations with Israel, strained by policy clashes earlier in the year over how to restart Mideast peace talks, now under way between Israel and the Palestinians.

Two senior American officials acknowledge the case is unusually sensitive because of Washington’s close ties with Israel and U.S. efforts to improve counterterrorism cooperation with U.A.E. The U.S. is cooperating with Dubai by probing financial transactions of some suspects who used U.S.-issued cash cards.

U.A.E. officials have avoided explicit criticism of other nations. After the release of the suspect by Germany, for example, the U.A.E. issued a mild rebuke, saying it was “concerned” by the decision and had asked Berlin for clarification.

British authorities took an early interest. Of the 45 passports Dubai officials say were used by 33 suspects, 19 were forged or fraudulently issued British ones. That sparked anger in London. It wasn’t the first time relations with Israel were strained over allegedly forged passports. In 1982, an Israeli embassy diplomatic pouch with fake British passports was found in a German phone booth. In 1986, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher got an apology after British police found more Israeli-forged U.K. passports.

In late March, London publicly blamed Israel for the Dubai forgeries, but stopped short of accusing it of the killing itself. It expelled an Israeli official in protest. According to a person familiar with the case, U.K. authorities determined that the official worked for Mossad. Australia and Ireland also blamed Israel for forgeries and expelled diplomats. Israel’s foreign ministry said it regretted the expulsions, but didn’t admit wrongdoing.

Hours after the killing, Dubai officials realized they had a high-priority murder investigation on their hands. Initially, it appeared Mr. Mabhouh had died of natural causes. A bottle of blood-pressure medicine was found on the bedside table of his room in the business-class Al Bustan Rotana hotel, near the Dubai airport. There were no obvious signs of a struggle. A preliminary medical assessment at the scene suggested a sudden, natural death.

Mr. Mabhouh’s prominence triggered extra scrutiny. A special investigative unit examined the scene more closely. Things didn’t add up, say people familiar with the probe.

Investigators couldn’t find the shirt that the hotel’s security camera showed Mr. Mabhouh wearing the night of his death. Police looked under the bed and discovered several broken slats, suggesting Mr. Mabhouh had been thrown onto the bed or held down, police concluded.

Police spent about 10,000 hours poring over footage from some 1,500 security cameras around Dubai. Using face-recognition software, electronic-payment records, receipts and interviews with taxi drivers and hotel staff, they put together a list of suspects and publicized it.

In video footage made public by the police, some of the suspects were shown donning disguises, including wigs. At one point, two suspects carrying tennis rackets shared an elevator with Mr. Mabhouh.

A camera outside a hotel caught the reflection of a white minivan with tinted windows pulling up to the building’s entrance. Several suspects approached the vehicle, then pulled back abruptly, according to people familiar with the probe.

Dubai police believe the suspects mistook the vehicle for that of a colleague, then turned back after getting a good look. That suggested to police that an accomplice might be driving a similar vehicle. After sifting through auto-registration and electronic toll-road data, they came up with a make and model, then found a similar minivan. It was rented to Mr. Lockwood.

U.K. authorities determined that the passport Mr. Lockwood used to travel to the U.A.E. was genuine. Dubai asked Interpol to post an international “wanted” notice for him.

But apart from his London address, Mr. Lockwood left little in the way of a paper trail. U.K. investigators couldn’t find any public-health records or tax information about the man, according to people familiar with the probe. He never paid a TV-license fee, mandatory in Britain for anyone who owns a set.

Investigators found other intriguing clues: Two years ago, using a British address, Mr. Lockwood shipped a blue Mercedes van from Sharjah, another emirate in the U.A.E., to Iran, according to people familiar with the probe. Someone else shipped the van to Britain.

But that lead fizzled, too. The vehicle’s registration had lapsed, and the car hasn’t been located, according to a person familiar with the case.

Investigators now believe Mr. Lockwood operated in Europe and the Middle East for years, and that he served as a facilitator to Mr. Mabhouh’s assassins, according to people familiar with the probe.

Dubai officials determined that he had flitted in and out of their city-state, according to people familiar with the probe. But their information was also scarce: a few records showing he rented a car and used a credit card at restaurants. During his last stay, he lived at a short-term, furnished apartment.

Dubai officials believe he bought ferry tickets for two suspects in the murder. Both traveled from Dubai to Iran in Aug. 2009, after what Dubai police believe was a related operation to plot the Mabhouh murder.

The deceased Israeli soldier Yehuda Lustig (Photo courtesy of the Israeli Ministry of Defense)

When investigators discovered that Mr. Lockwood was once known as Mr. Lustig, the plot appeared to thicken. Mr. Lustig’s birth certificate indicated he was born in Glasgow on Feb. 23, 1948. Mr. Lustig’s father was a veterinary student who had married in Palestine, then under British control.

Investigators figured he probably changed his name from Lustig to avoid suspicion while traveling in the Middle East, according to people familiar with the probe.

But Mr. Lustig’s military service history – described in six Israeli memorials, including an official obituary posted on the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s website – indicates the man of that name died in combat in a barrage of rocket fire in the Sinai Peninsula.

That clouded the picture – and suggests that an unknown person fraudulently used the dead soldier’s identity to obtain a British passport. Investigators appear to be back at square one in figuring out who that is.