.חשיפה: מחר (ד’) בבוקר יוסר האיסור שהטילה הצנזורה הצבאית במשך 11 שנה על דיווחים בנושא תקיפת הכור הגרעיני הסורי
UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who noted two persuasive articles by Gareth Porter about this incident. They argue that Israel Mossad chief, Meir Dagan fooled the Americans into believing the Syrian site was a nuclear reactor, when in all likelihood it was an abandoned missle storage/launch site. This was possibly even a case in which Bush administration hawks, in collaboration with pro-Israel bureaucrat-scientists at the IAEA, wanted to believe the Israeli claims for their own purposes.
If Porter is correct, this would give the Israeli censor more than enough motivation to suppress domestic investigative reporting, which might have exposed the fraud.
***
Yes, it’s hard to believe but…for the past eleven years, no Israeli newspaper has been able to refer directly to the IAF’s attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor in the desert of eastern Syria, Deir ez-Zor. It was code-named Operation Orchard; or in another variant, Operation Arizona. Of course, every Israeli knows about the attack. But only based on foreign reports. No Israeli reporter may do original reporting on the bombing. They may only quote foreign news reports.
For the life of me I can’t explain why this madness persists. Of what use is an eleven-year silence on this matter? Who does it protect? Does the military censor really believe that suppression of the story protected Israeli military secrets from being exposed? Or that original Israeli reporting might further jeopardize sensitive relations with Syria?
The next question is: why now? If the matter was censored for 11 years, what changed today to make lifting censorship permissible? Usually, my first urge would be to examine the benefit Bibi Netanyahu would derive from lifting the lid on Operation Arizona. But this was an operation performed under Ehud Olmert’s prime ministership. With Olmert just released from prison and denouncing Netanyahu’s rule, I strongly doubt the current PM wants to do anything that would redound favorably on Olmert. In fact, Olmert is publishing his memoir, In the First Person, on Wednesday (the same day censorship will be lifted). As there is little love lost between the two, and Netanyahu delights in sticking a shiv into his current, past and future rivals, the lifting of censorship will bring a raft of reporting on the attack. All this will dampen interest in Olmert’s book, which is reputed to settle scores with a number of his political enemies (and erstwhile friends). That will make the conniving Netanyahu happy. This adds further proof to the claim that censorship often has no real security purpose. Rather, it is often used to settle scores and score political points.
There may also be another motive: Donald Trump is rumored to be planning on killing the Iran nuclear deal, which comes up for renewal in May. Senator Bob Corker told a TV interviewer that he expected Trump to cancel the deal.
There will be tremendous resistance to this decision from Democrats and pragmatic Republicans, who realize Trump has already been rattling sabres over the North Korean nuclear threat. They don’t want to add another nuclear confrontation into the volatile mix that is the Trump presidency.
Netanyahu anticipates this will be a hard fight and he wants to give Trump all the ammunition he can. What better way to do that than trumpeting the Israeli success in destroying the Syrian nuclear program before it could even be born. In Bibi’s eyes, this offers a perfect lead-in to transforming the U.S. position toward Iran from Obama’s diplomatic approach to the harder, more aggressive one advocated by Israel. It’s no secret that Netanyahu and Barak, when they formed a ruling duopoly, planned to attack Iran. But they failed to get the needed approval of first, George Bush, and later, Obama.
Now, there will be little or nothing stopping Trump from planning (or at least threatening) such an attack either alone or together with the IAF. Such an assault would also have the enthusiastic backing of Israel and the entire Sunni Gulf State regimes (minus perhaps, Qatar).
Such an attack, were it to happen would be a disaster for the entire region and the U.S. Our western allies would be aghast, moving even further away from us. Iran, despite the losses it will suffer, will unleash the full force of whatever capability it can muster to punish us for our reckless aggression.
Syria: What Might Have Been
In the midst of all this unbearable saber-rattling, it’s worth looking back to a historical moment when relations between Syria and Israel could have taken a far different turn. To examine a vision of a peaceful relationship that might have been, had Israel’s then-leader embraced the bold vision his negotiators offered him. Israeli former general and negotiator, Uri Sagie, did an interview published in Maariv this week (Hebrew). In it, he discussed in detail the negotiations he led with Syria which came very close to successfully concluding hostilities and resolving territorial disputes which had festered for decades. What was missing was an Israeli leader with the guts to sign a deal and sell it to the nation. Ehud Barak, prime minister at the time, was not of such a caliber. Had he been, there would have not been any nuclear reactor to bomb. And who knows whether peace with Israel might have moderated other policies and grievances which led to the devastating civil war.
Sagie adds another crucial fact which has not been previously reported regarding these negotiations: when Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, approached the Iranians to ask their blessing to enter in negotiations with Israel, Iran responded positively. Regarding today’s situation, Sagie warns that an attack on Iran would be disastrous and that it would be far more productive to enter into talks with the Iranians in order to prove that Israel doesn’t wish to be the first to “pull the trigger.”
“Such an attack, were it to happen would be a disaster for the entire region”
ROFL.
In Syria, where Russia just attacked America, a spark could ignite World War 3.
Iraq is in disarray, and runs the risk of becoming an Iranian satellite.
Lebanon is being run by a non-State terrorist group.
Yemen is in a civil war. Kurdish independence seems like a dream.
Hamas and the PA can’t reconcile, and BOTH are losing their grip on power.
ISIS is fighting Egypt in the Sinai and is matastisizing elsewhere.
But if Israel acts to defend itself against the Iranian juggernaut, against nuclear proliferation,THAT would spell disaster for the region.
Please.
The disaster is already here, and Iranian expansionism and global warming is accelerating it.
@ Dr. John, with his PhD is Cynical Hasbara Studies earned from the hasbara network’s chief “academic institution,” the Interdisciplinary Center.
In Syria, the chances are equally likely Israel will light the spark that opens an worse regional contagion than at present. Once Russian mercenaries attacked a Syrian rebel position with some U.S. Special Forces troops, the U.S. attacked the mercenaries. This wasn’t even close to WWIII. It’s hardly likely Putin is going to start a world war over a bunch of Russian mercenaries.
In Iraq, Iran is facing great anger over its attack on a criticial Shiite movement, the Shirazi. THis has damaged Iran’s position inside Iraq.
Lebanon has a democratic government which is NOT run by Hezbollah.
Yemen is in the midst of a war fueled by your Saudi friends, who’ve killed 50,000 Yemeni civilians.
I’ll trust your analysis of Palestinian affairs as much as I’d trust your ability to brain surgery.
I’m not the only one saying an Iranian attack would be a disaster. Uri Sagie, an IDF general and former AMAN chief says that. You didn’t bother to read the Maariv article, did you? Or can you even read Hebrew? And he’s joined by the entire military and intelligence services. The one who believes in such an attack is Bibi (and Barak, though he’s irrelevant now). Oh, and YOU. So that clinches it. Let’s go to war. And you, like Slim Pickens, can ride the first missile down to its target in Iran as a true Israeli patriot.
You’ve violated a major comment rule. If you wish to make claims, you must support them with credible sources and arguments. You’ve offered unfounded personal opinion. WOrth about as much as a bucket of cold piss.
‘… And you, like Slim Pickens, can ride the first missile down to its target in Iran as a true Israeli patriot…’
Isn’t that for us Americans to do? Having an Israeli do it would make the whole exercise REALLY pointless.
…’Doctor John’ is an Israeli, isn’t he? He SOUNDS like an Israeli.
…incidentally, although in this instance I’m the one who used the term in the first place, I do not like the term ‘Israeli.’ It conjures up the improbable vision of Palestinian Muslims and Christians supporting all these policies. Can’t we just call a spade a spade (ahem) and grant that we’re discussing Israeli JEWS and what they want. You can bet no one asked the Israeli Muslims.
‘Zionists’ seems fairest to me — although since Richard regards himself as a ‘Zionist’ I’m open to discussion on this point. However, the longer it goes on, the more the use of the term ‘Israeli’ bugs me. After all, if we say ‘Americans,’ in a surprisingly high percentage of cases we’re describing the views of not merely white Americans, but also black Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc, etc. When we say ‘Israeli,’ we practically always mean ‘Israeli Jew’ — but almost never say so.
As far as am aware only the Israelis have said it was a nuclear reactor. Was it?
Greg, that is a crucial question, and the answer seems to be NO, it was NOT.
The Israelis and the CIA had claimed the alleged reactor was modeled on the type of reactor the North Koreans had installed at Yongbyon called a gas-cooled graphite-moderated (GCGM) reactor. But the IAEA’s top specialist on North Korean reactors, Egyptian national Yousry Abushady, knew that kind of reactor better than anyone else at the IAEA. He had designed a GCGM reactor for his doctoral student in nuclear engineering, had begun evaluating the Yongbyon reactor in 1993, and from 1999 to 2003 had headed the Safeguards Department unit responsible for North Korea. Abushady had traveled to North Korea 15 times and conducted extensive technical discussions with the North Korean nuclear engineers who had designed and operated the Yongbyon reactor. And the evidence he saw in the video convinced him that no such reactor could have been under construction at al-Kibar.
He lists 13 points proving it could not have been the alleged North Korean reactor. When Abudhsady met with IAEA Deputy Director for Safeguards, Olli Heinonen, to discuss his analysis of the CIA’s case in May 2008, Abushady asked to be included on the team for the anticipated inspection of the al-Kibar site because of his unique knowledge of that type reactor. But Heinonen refused his request, citing an unwritten IAEA rule that inspectors are not allowed to carry out inspections in their countries of origin. Abushady objected, pointing out that he is Egyptian, not Syrian, to which Heinonen responded, “But you are an Arab and a Muslim!” according to Abushady.
What is also interesting is that the Syrians let the Israelis carry out the bombing. When a nearby air defence station was informed of the approaching enemy planes, the officer in charge was told “you are to do nothing.” In the wake of the Israel’s disastrous 2006 invasion of Southern Lebanon, the Israelis were searching intensively for Hezbollah missiles and rockets that could reach Israel and they believed many of those Hezbollah weapons were being stored in Syria. If the Syrians wished to draw the attention of the Israelis away from actual missile storage sites, the Syrians would have had good reason to want to convince the Israelis that this was one of their major storage sites.
Sources
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/18/israels-ploy-selling-a-syrian-nuke-strike/
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/19/how-syrian-nuke-evidence-was-faked/
@Paranam Kid: I’m reviewing Gareth Porter’s reporting and plan to update the post accordingly.
Richard, another debunk, written by Ted Snider, has just been published on ConsortiumNews. It deals with a few other points that the reports of Gareth Porter don’t deal with. There is some overlap too.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/04/what-did-israel-bomb-in-the-syrian-desert-in-2007/
“tremendous resistance…from Democrats” – paragraph 6. I doubt it. When it comes to foreign intervention, the higher-ups stick together.
Regarding the ineffectiveness — from a mechanical standpoint — of the Israeli gag orders.
If matters are as Richard says (w.r.t. gags), then surely any Israeli (or other) with inside information can email it to Richard who can then publish it in the USA and thereafter ANY Israeli can re-publish a copy of such outside-Israel-published material inside Israel. It would take a few days, only, not years. (Of course, if publishing on internet does not qualify as republishable, then it all becomes a bit harder.)
So any gag order, in light of the broad permission to republish outside stuff, seems especially ineffective.
@ pabelmont: There are times when journalists use my reporting as the proximate source for reporting stories they want to report. But often, despite my reporting they won’t report a story. I suppose it may have to do with the level of pushback they get from authorities. Interestingly, there are almost no Israeli journalists who will pass any stories to me. Either they’re jealous about maintaining their own control of stories & information; or they’re worried that associating with me in any fashion could jeopardize them professionally.
There have been a number of times when I believe my own reporting forced the censor to ease up on suppression of stories or information.
‘So any gag order, in light of the broad permission to republish outside stuff, seems especially ineffective.’
That’s assuming you don’t want to end your career. Ever notice how a disproportionate number of those taking up arms against the Evil Empire are either retired, tenured, make their money as a plumber, or are too young to realize that they too can be destroyed?
There’s a reason for that. You don’t want to cross Israel if she can hurt you.
‘UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who noted two persuasive articles by Gareth Porter about this incident. They argue that Israel Mossad chief, Meir Dagan fooled the Americans into believing the Syrian site was a nuclear reactor, when in all likelihood it was an abandoned missle storage/launch site. This was possibly even a case in which Bush administration hawks, in collaboration with pro-Israel bureaucrat-scientists at the IAEA, wanted to believe the Israeli claims for their own purposes…’
I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Who’d a thought?
Those wascally wabbits. Even as of 2007, I was still so gullible that it never occurred to me that the Israelis-con-Neocons could have simply made it all up.
‘@ Dr. John, with his PhD is Cynical Hasbara Studies earned from the hasbara network’s chief “academic institution,” the Interdisciplinary Center…’
Well, you do have to admit he’s better than some of the appalling idiots the Zionists trot out.
His arguments aren’t too impressive, but look at the material he has to work with. Could you do better?
Intellectually, sometimes I’m feeling like I’m playing with a stacked deck. I mean, I win every engagement more or less to my satisfaction — but I’m cheating. I’ve got truth on my side. Being in the right is all well and good, but it’s kind of dull, really. If it weren’t for the detail that all this is happening in the real world, I might take up Hasbara myself.
So much more challenging.
[comment deleted: that’s gonna earn you banning. Try that again & you’re outa here.]