Above is my latest appearance on Tzinor Layla (starting at around 2:30) in which I discuss the crash of the drone inside Israel two days ago.
I’ve spent the past day or so trying to make sense of the duelling stories of the crash. My Israeli source said that the unmanned aircraft was foreign, likely flown by Hezbollah with Iranian technical assistance from southern Lebanon. Shortly after I posted, the IAF released its version saying its own drone crashed while testing advanced sensors installed on its wing. Supposedly, the wing separated from the drone, and images of a severed wing were displayed in the media. Eyewitnesses were interviewed who claim to have seen the drone on fire before it crashed, though it’s not clear where they were physically located. Though the body of the drone was not pictured, it reportedly crashed into an air base (though the name wasn’t specified). My source claimed the booby trapped drone crashed and exploded at the top secret Sdot Micha missile base. The IAF claimed the drone crashed while making an approach to the Tel Nof base.
I have approached journalists in Lebanon and Iran to confirm or rebut the report. In Lebanon, a source close to Hezbollah poured cold water on the story. I am still attempting to find out if Iranian officials wish to comment it.
For those who reject my story, let’s examine the IAF story. They claim that Israel’s most advanced drone, testing highly sophisticated new sensor systems simply lost its wing due to equipment and human error. Either this is a colossal episode of incompetence or the story doesn’t hold water. They showed a wing in an orange orchard and nothing else. I could not see any damage to the wing indicating it had dropped off a drone in flight and crashed. They offered no military or drone experts to verify what was shown in the footage. I would wonder why military and police personnel at the site would allow photography and video filming of some of Israel’s most advanced new technology. Even if they couldn’t prevent such filming they could easily impose military censorship on reporting the story. They didn’t. This is contrary to the absolute secrecy Israel imposes on its military technology.
So continuing with this line of thought, if Israel did lose one of its most advanced drones it is a major setback in this program. As news reports make clear, this drone is one that can reach Iran and would be used for multiple critical aerial tasks during an Israeli air assault on Iran. The fact that it crashed on a test flight only a few miles from its base, when Israel is known to be preparing for a possible strike against Iran, is a major failure. So again, even if you discount my version of events, the IAF has not presented a credible version either. Anyone who seeks to discredit the Hezbollah angle of this story should present a credible alternative. I have heard none from the other side.
The usual suspects on the right and left have criticized the story I reported. None of them very carefully read, understood or reported what I actually wrote. Dimi Reider, who prides himself on being a careful, sober journalist argued erroneously that I claimed the drone flew 1,000 miles from Iran to Israel, when in fact I argued just the opposite, saying it likely could not fly that far and originated in southern Lebanon. Reider also believed I was being “played” by Israeli sources seeking war against Iran. In fact, my source opposes war against Iran. All of which proves that someone who prides himself on precision can be guilty of the same errors of which he accuses me.
Dapha Baram, writing at the world news agency GRN, pointed with pride to the reasons why her news agency could not publish my reports because they fall below its standards of “journalist ethics.” She failed to understand that my decision to report or not report a story has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with other factors including my physical distance from the story and sources I’m reporting, the vagaries of the Israeli national security state which intimidate the free flow of military information to journalists, and my role as an anti-war activist coinciding with my role as a blogger. In fact, the very reason why Israeli security issues are so thinly reported inside and outside Israel is that the system prevents mainstream journalists from doing this.
None of this means I can knowingly report stories that are false (nor would I ever do so). On the other hand, I am reporting stories that aren’t (and usually can’t be) corroborated by second or third independent sources. That in turn means that the mainstream media is too conservative and cautious to publish my original reporting. This may save them from reporting a story that turns out to be criticized or unsubstantiated; but it also causes them to lose out when I report major stories embarrassing to the Israeli military-intelligence community. That’s why you’ll never see Reider or GRN breaking the story of Anat Kamm, Dirar Abusisi, Ameer Makhoul, the Eilat terror attacks, or Shamai Leibowitz.
My critics fundamentally misunderstand what I do. My primary job isn’t to be an oracular James Reston or Walter Cronkite and only report what is scientifically, verifiably true and be right 100% of the time. My primary job is to be right as often as I can while staying true to the reasons I write this blog in the first place: to promote transparency in Israeli military-intelligence matters, Israeli democracy, and to oppose military adventurism. This is a tightrope act, one that is difficult to negotiate since there are so many unknowns, so much concealed information.
The goal of the national security state is to render its affairs as opaque as possible. It is to shut off information to journalists, bloggers and even its own citizens. That’s why it’s sometimes so damn hard to know if you got it right. But if anyone thinks I’m going to be deterred by the fact that every once in a while the I’s aren’t dotted or the T’s aren’t crossed or that even, God forbid, my source may get it wrong (which I do not concede in this instance), they’re sorely mistaken. I’ll accept the brickbats of Dimi Reider, Dapna Baram and others for the sake of the greater good of exposing the dangers a rampant Israel may pose to the region and the world.
Well written and hopefully puts to rest this episode.
You did a great job, consistently and persistently calling the IDF spokespeople’s bluff about Gazans being the attackers from across the Egypt border, thus exposing the pursuing IDF attack on Gazan targets as cheap diversion tactics. You win some, you lose some.
Better present the info you have – and let us employ our own intelligence and knowledge to evaluate its probable accuracy – than stay mum and keep us in the dark.
Thank you. And thank God someone understands what I do.
I think that many people understand what you do. Don’t be mislead by the know-it-all commenters who turn up whenever you stick out your neck. You are always honest about how much you know for sure and how much you surmise. As Yankel said, this makes it possible for your readers to use their own intelligence in making up their minds.
Thanks. Sorry if I haven’t offered enough credit to the readers who “get it.”. Sometimes the hasbara crowd sucks up all the oxygen in the room and in the conversation.
In the absence of your kind of reporting, we would have only official and mainstream media stories and would never have a chance of knowing what’s going on. Keep trying to see things straight.
Richard, as an Israeli , I would like to express my support and thanks for your utmost important job . The ultra militaristic society in which I live has turned me a pacifist.I share with you the same values ,fears and goals.
Yishar Koach !!!
If a Hezbollah drone entered Israel ‘under the radar’, how come know body in all of Israel looked up and saw it flying over the border or over the sea?
Eyewitnesses near the base saw it just before it crashed so I presume the crash occurred during daylight.
keep up the good work, richard. and a thick skin, and all that. your point about ‘certainty’, an unattainable mark set by many detractors, is spot on. if ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’ were the evidentiary standard, no reporting would ever be done on any national security matter. and only the irredeemably credulous would take the word of an IDF spokesperson as disproving your thesis.
The IDF and Israeli government propaganda sites such as Debkafile create a continuous din of disinformation and misinformation about every single act the Israeli government undertake. Then they pick which of the stories or level of lies they can get away with, and for how long, and run with that
Thanks for trying so hard to pierce their veils and get to the realities and truths behind their schemes
Keep up the great work and give them hell
“I’ll accept the brickbats of Dimi Reider, Dapna Baram and others for the sake of the greater good of exposing the dangers a rampant Israel may pose to the region and the world.”
The problem you have is that a true assertion of fact that cannot be substantiated is indistinguishable from a fabrication. That is also the IDF/IAF’s problem.
Your loved ones and blind/brain-ded admirers will believe anything you write just because you write it; the rest of the world is justifiably skeptical. Unless you are writing just for your family, it is this rest of the world that gives your blog any purpose or validity, and it has a lot of both.
It seems that you are arguing that the dictum “credibility is everything” is less true for you than it is for Walter Conkrite. (Perhaps, Dan Rather would be a more pertinent MSM point of reference.)
I would agree that bloggers’ credibility is not an issue only with respect to the entire blogosphere, which is huge and basically too stupid to assess credibility. If 50 readers quit coming here, 50 more will replace them in a week. Blog-readers are fungible, which is why you can blow them off like you do. But with respect to any one individual reader, your credibility is the only thing that keeps us coming back.
It is the same with the IDF — the vapid Zionists will believe anything the IDF says for no other reason that that they say it. A lot of what the IDF says is true, and not everything they do is evil, but their credibility-gap undermines all of their goals to the point that the world not only ceases to believe the IDF, it despises them. Nixon had a similar problem.
In the present case, neither the Hezbollah hypothesis nor the wing-fell-off hypothesis make a lot of sense, and neither are supported by any compelling “facts,” which is why this topic has generated so much heat.
All we know as of the moment is: there is some video of what appears to be a wing in a bunch of orange trees. We don’t know where it came from, what aircraft it came from, what type of aircraft it came from, how it got there, or what it means. There are no images of any aircraft or crash-sites to support the IDF. But neither are there any images of any explosions, or photos of damage from any explosions to support the booby-trap hypothesis.
The argument from ignorance to explain the lack of evidence supporting the booby-trap hypothesis runs something like this: the crashed drone cannot be photographed because it crashed into a missile base that is top secret; therefore the absence of photographic evidence proves that it crashed into the missile base because if it had crashed anywhere else it would have been photographed.
But having had the courage to stick your neck out on this, should your Hezbollah story turn out to be true, you will become a super-star in the blogosphere and MSM overnight. And well deserved.
How a drone could fly all the way from Lebanon to the middle of Israel without being spotted on radar?
Could Iran and/or Hezbollah and/or some similar party have taken control of an Israeli drone via electronic warfare and sent it (back?) to this secret base?
With all the disinformation promulgated by the corporate media (Saddam or Iran’s WMD; Soviet Migs “on the way” to Nicaragua [now there’s a blast from the past!]), it is far better to take the risk and report the story even if it turns out to be wrong. No one is perfect; I for one respect your efforts and appreciate the accurate, indeed startling info you provide each and every day. Keep it up!
When I first read your original report on this I thought “there’s no way that drone is from South Lebanon”.
However, I may have been right and I may have been wrong. I was only working on the facts you made available. And that’s the point, isn’t it, I was working on the facts that you had made available.
All to say that yes, you’re doing a great job and a lot of people understand your intent and your accomplishments. If you provoke others to divulge more information, or if you provoke your readers to reconsider, then you’re doing well.
In this case, you seem to have done both. Hang in there.
Richard, In case you haven’t noticed, the guys in Tzinor Lila are making fun of you. They don’t take you seriously anyway.
That’s not exactly what they said, now was it? They said that many of my stories have been proven correct and some not. And frankly, I don’t care much how they present me as long as they quote me and allow me to speak on my own behalf. When you get taken seriously enough to be on Tzinor Layla let us know.
No doubt, your appearance on Tzinor layla is a crowning achievement. I don’t think you boast it enough.
Let’s put it this way: my appearance on Tzinor Layla is a greater achievement by far than yr appearance here.
First clue was when I linked your article and I got e-ssaulted by an official (IDF) Hasbara commando to a degree I had not yet met lol