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The specter of Iran hovered over the start of Israel’s annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazis in the Holocaust of World War II, as Israeli leaders warned of an Iranian nuclear program they believe is aimed at weapons production.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained bitterly about international reaction to what he called Iran’s drive toward nuclear bombs and its intention to destroy Israel, but he did not hint at a possible Israeli response.

"We encounter in the best case a limp reaction, and even that is fading," Netanyahu said Sunday. "We do not hear the necessary rejection, no harsh denunciation, no outcry."

Netanyahu spoke at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel‘s official Holocaust memorial authority, before hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others. A military honor guard stood at one side of the podium and a girls’ choir on the other.

"If we have learned anything from the Holocaust," Netanyahu said, "it is that we must not be silent or be deterred in the face of evil."

In his address at the ceremony, President Shimon Peres recalled visiting the village in Poland where he was born. "Of all the Jewish homes and synagogues, not a single beam remains," he said.

Turning to the present, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate urged the world to confront threats of genocide, singling out Iran’s nuclear program. Israel dismisses Iranian claims that it is not making nuclear bombs.

Peres said, "Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those capable of mass destruction, with voices encouraging that destruction — that is the most perilous combination to world peace."

The day is one of the most solemn on Israel’s calendar. Restaurants, cafes and places of entertainment closed down across Israel Sunday evening at the start of the annual remembrance day. Local TV channels scrapped their light entertainment and substituted documentaries about the Holocaust and other similarly serious programming. Radio networks aired interviews with survivors and panel discussions about the significance of the genocide and lessons for the future.

At midmorning Monday, air raid sirens are set to wail across the country, marking two minutes of silence in memory of the victims.

Yad Vashem picked "Voices of the Survivors" as the theme for this year’s commemoration. About 220,000 survivors live in Israel, all of them aging, some of them destitute and alone. In a statement on its Web site, Yad Vashem said, "The voice of the survivors is the link that binds the painful and tormented history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to the future, to hope and to rebirth."

On Monday, Holocaust memorial day ceremonies include gatherings around the country, starting in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, where people read the names of victims of the Holocaust. The project, called "Every Person Has a Name," is meant to break down the number of 6 million into stories of individuals, families and communities wiped out during the war.

A study released hours before the opening ceremony found that anti-Semitic incidents doubled worldwide last year compared with 2008. The Tel Aviv University report concluded that Muslim groups and radical leftists used Israel’s bruising 22-day invasion to stop rocket attacks from Gaza, starting in late December 2008, as a wedge to expand their anti-Jewish agenda.

Researchers counted 1,129 incidents, more than double the toll of the year before and the highest in two decades of studies. Researchers said they found an "orchestrated and concerted attempt to delegitimize the Jewish people and Jewish state in Europe."

The report by the Steven Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism charged that radical leftists and Muslim groups channeled Israel’s invasion of Gaza into a campaign of anti-Semitism.

He said agents had little trouble passing themselves off as Australians as few people in the Middle East have much knowledge about the country.
"Consider the fact that Australians speak English and it’s an easy cover to take, very few people know very much about Australia," he said.

"You can tell whatever stories you want. It doesn’t take much of an accent to be an Australian or New Zealander, or an Englishman for that matter.

"And I know people had been under Australian cover not once (but) quite a few times. So why not use it (again)?"
Australia summoned the Israeli ambassador and warned that the countries’ friendly ties were at risk after Dubai police named three Australian passport-holders in a list of new suspects in the murder of Mahmud al-Mabhuh.

Britain, Ireland, France and Germany expressed similar outrage after people holding documents from their countries were also linked to the January 20 killing in a luxury Dubai hotel.

Israel has previously dismissed claims from Ostrovsky, who is now an author and has detailed various accusations against the country in his books.
He said Mossad prefers to use "false flag" passports as Israeli papers frequently invoke suspicion in the Middle East.
"They need passports because you can’t go around with an Israeli passport, not even a forged one, and get away or get involved with people from the Arab world," he said.

"So most of these (Mossad) operations are carried out on what’s called false flag, which means you pretend to be of another country which is less belligerent to those countries that you’re trying to recruit from."
Ostrovsky said Mossad had a "very, very expensive research department" dedicated to manufacturing the fake documents which simulates different types of paper and ink.

"If they create a passport at a top level for use of that nature… I don’t think anybody will be able to find the difference," he said, adding there was no chance any of the people named as suspects were Mossad agents.
"Except for James Bond, who actually pronounces or announces his arrival at the scene by saying, ‘I’m Bond, James Bond’, most people who work in the intelligence field don’t present themselves by their real name," he said.

The Australian newspaper said Ali Kazak, a former Palestinian representative to Australia, had warned in 2004 that a Mossad agent in Sydney had obtained 25 false Australian passports.
In March 2004, two suspected Mossad agents were arrested in New Zealand and later convicted for fraudulently trying to obtain passports from the country, prompting diplomatic sanctions.

Known assassinations by israel.

A new law in Israel makes it a crime to commemorate what Palestinians call the "Nakba", the "catastrophe" of their dispossession by the creation of the Zionist state in 1948. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has passed "The Nakba Draft Law" after just one reading. Penalties will be imposed on anyone showing signs of sadness and mourning within the (undefined) borders of Israel on 15 May; Palestinians remember on that day the creation of the refugee crisis that remains after 62 years.

Hebrew radio reported this week that the law is intended to stop people mourning on what is Israeli Independence Day; commemorative acts are, it is claimed, tantamount to "denying the Jewish character of Israel [and] insulting the symbols of the state". The radio noted that the fines might amount up to three times the expenditure of commemorative programmes.

According to one commentator, it is ironic that this law has been passed at a time when Israel is complaining about attempts to "de-legitimise" the Zionist state. Here is an example of Israel’s own "de-legitimisation" of the Palestinians, their land and their culture, he said.

Iran and Qatar have signed a defensive agreement, which would see the two sides jointly taking on "elements behind regional insecurity."

The agreement was inked by visiting Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi and Chief of the General Staff of Qatar’s Armed Forces Hamad Bin Ali Al-Attiya in Doha on Wednesday.

General Vahidi and Al-Attiya stressed the necessity for the expansion of defense cooperation between the two countries referring to the cultural, religious and age-old relations between Iran and Qatar.

Articles of the agreement include "the exchange of technical and expert delegations, the expansion of cooperation in personnel training and joint campaigns against terrorism and elements behind regional insecurity," Fars News Agency reported.

According to General Vahidi, Iran and Qatar have considerable potentials for bilateral cooperation.

The Iranian defense minister, heading a high-ranking delegation, paid a two-day visit to Qatar on Wednesday.

• Zionist NeoCON Jew Ledeen brags about "Creative Destruction" of Iraq, Iran, and Syria

• The Ledeen Doctrine

  The Jewish neocon Michael Ledeen, in his recent book, The War Against The Terror Masters, goes right for the jugular. He shows not hesitation in manifesting the venom of his Jewish arrogance and the Jewish neocon agenda to create a Jewish New World Order:

  — First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. We will remain engaged. We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution.

  We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.

  Creative destruction is our middle name both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law.

  Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. We must destroy them to advance our historic mission. —

• Watch Now!

The son of one of Hamas’s founding members was a spy in the service of Israel for more than a decade, helping to prevent dozens of Islamist suicide bombers from finding their targets, it emerged yesterday.

Codenamed the “Green Prince” by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of the Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, supplied key intelligence almost daily from 1996. He tracked down suicide bombers and their handlers from his father’s organisation, the Haaretz newspaper said.

Information supplied by him led to the arrests of some of the most- wanted men by Israeli forces, including Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader tipped as a potential president, who was convicted of masterminding terrorist attacks, along with one of Hamas’s top bombmakers, Abdullah Barghouti, who is no relation of the jailed Fatah chief.

Mr Yousef, 32, a convert to Christianity who now lives in California, has revealed the intrigues of his years as a spy in a new book called Son of Hamas, much to the concern of Shin Bet, whose operations will be revealed in detail. While the revelations may give a boost to Israel’s intelligence service, whose external counterpart, Mossad, is still grappling with the diplomatic fallout of last month’s Hamas assassination in Dubai, there will be concern that the account may give too many insights into the murky world of espionage.

Mr Yousef’s work will be far more damaging to Hamas, whose brutality he denounced. Dubai police have suggested that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the top Hamas militant found dead in a hotel room in the emirate on January 20, may have been betrayed by an insider from the Islamist movement.

Mr Yousef had harsh words for the movement that his father helped to form, and which now rules the Gaza Strip after a bloody takeover in the summer of 2007. “Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis,” he said. “That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels, only a ceasefire, and no one knows that better than I. The Hamas leadership is responsible for the killing of Palestinians, not Israelis.”

Hamas issued a muted reaction to the report, with Mahmoud al-Ramahi, a West Bank official, saying that it was designed to “sow confusion in the minds of Palestinians” and make them believe the movement was riddled with high-level moles. Mr Yousef’s former Israeli handler, identified only as Captain Loai, praised the resolve of his agent, whose codename derived from the colour of Islam and Hamas’s banner and from his exalted position within an organisation that regularly kills those suspected of collaborating with the Jewish state.

“So many people owe him their life and don’t even know it,” he said. “The amazing thing is that none of his actions were done for money. He did things he believed in. He wanted to save lives. His grasp of intelligence matters was just as good as ours — the ideas, the insights. One insight of his was worth 1,000 hours of thought by top experts.”

Mr Yousef, whose father is still in an Israeli jail cell, from where he was elected as an MP in 2006, went as far as tracking down would-be kamikazes himself in the streets of the West Bank during the second intifada (uprising), which erupted a decade ago and left thousands of Palestinians and Israelis dead. On one occasion he followed a bomber from Manara Square in the centre of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem.

“We didn’t know his name or what he looked like — only that he was in his 20s and would be wearing a red shirt,” said the former handler. “We sent the Green Prince to the square and with his acute sense, he located the target within minutes. He saw who picked him up, followed the car and made it possible for us to arrest the suicide bomber and the man who was supposed to give him the belt. So another attack was thwarted, though no one knows about it. No one opens champagne bottles or bursts into song and dance. This was an almost daily thing for the Prince. He displayed courage, had sharp antennae and an ability to cope with danger.”

Mr Yousef, who converted from Islam to Christianity a decade ago — in itself a dangerous act — was arrested by the Israelis in 1996. Within a year he had been recruited by Shin Bet, was released, and began working as an informant.

Speaking by telephone from California, Mr Yousef told Haaretz he worried that the Israeli Government might release some of the prisoners he helped to put behind bars in exchange for Gilad Schalit, a young Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas from the Gaza border more than three years ago.

“I wish I were in Gaza now,” he said. “I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s special forces in order to liberate Gilad Schalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Schalit. That must not be done.”

The dangerous game

• In 1954 Egypt cracked an Israeli spy cell of nine Egyptian Jews who had firebombed sites frequented by Westerners. The agents hoped Egyptian extremists would be blamed, embarrassing Cairo into halting plans to nationalise Suez

• Isser Harel headed Mossad in the 1950s when it tracked down fugitive ex-Nazi leaders including Adolf Eichmann, right. In Operation Eichmann, a team of eleven tracked their quarry for two years before kidnapping him. The drugged Eichmann was taken to Israel on the same aircraft that was carrying the Israeli Foreign Minister

• Eli Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew, became an Israeli spy in the 1960s and was sent to Syria in the guise of a wealthy Arab. He infiltrated the Syrian defence establishment and toured military installations in the Golan Heights. In 1965 he was caught and executed but his work was said to have helped Israel to victory in the Six Day War of 1967

TEL NOF AIR FORCE BASE, Israel (AP) – Israel’s air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and could fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range.

The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel’s military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads.

At the fleet’s inauguration ceremony at a sprawling air base in central Israel, the drone dwarfed an F-15 fighter jet parked beside it. The unmanned plane resembles its predecessor, the Heron, but can fly higher, reaching an altitude of more than 40,000 feet (12,000 meters), and remain in the air longer.

"With the inauguration of the Heron TP, we are realizing the air force’s dream," said Brig. Gen. Amikam Norkin, commander of the base that will operate the drones. "The Heron TP is a technological and operational breakthrough."

The commander of Israel’s air force, Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, said the aircraft "has the potential to be able to conduct new missions down the line as they become relevant."

Israel’s military refused to say how large the new fleet is or whether the planes were designed for use against Iran, but stressed it was versatile and could adapt to new missions. The plane’s maker, state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, has said it is capable of reaching the Persian Gulf, which would put Iran within its range.

Israeli defense officials said the Heron TP could be a useful tool against Iran. It could provide surveillance, jam enemy communications and connect ground control and manned air force planes.

The officials requested anonymity because they were discussing sensitive military technology.

Israel considers Iran a strategic threat because of its nuclear program, long-range missiles and repeated references by its leaders to the Jewish state’s destruction.

Israel has hinted at the possibility of a military strike against Iran if world pressure does not halt Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel and the U.S. believe Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons; Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

In past conflicts, various types and sizes of unmanned planes have been used in missions like long-range surveillance and attacking enemy targets with guided missiles in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, where anti-aircraft systems are rudimentary.

They have proven much less successful in conflicts where the opponents possessed better anti-aircraft weapons.

During NATO’s aerial onslaught against Serbia in 1999, for example, Serbian quickly forces shot down 42 U.S. drones, drastically reducing the effectiveness of the bombing campaign.

"We are aware of the dangers such an aircraft can meet in the battlefield, and we do whatever we can to protect it," said air force Lt. Col. Eyal.

Eyal, whose last name was not disclosed in line with military guidelines, would not comment on how the plane could protect itself from anti-aircraft systems.

Israeli defense analyst Shlomo Brom, a retired general and security expert at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, called the new drone a breakthrough.

"Its staying power and the height it can reach means it is able to cover ground continuously and it is able to cover large territory," he said.

Israel’s military was the first to make widespread use of drones in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, according to Mark Daly, an expert on unmanned aircraft at Jane’s defense publications in London.

Israeli companies are considered world leaders in drone technology and now export unmanned aircraft to a number of armies, including U.S.-led forces that have used them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Heron TP has been in development for about a decade, but the aircraft first saw action during Israel’s offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip just over a year ago.

Drones were seen as crucial to the Gaza onslaught by giving soldiers eyes in the air, keeping watch over rooftops and alleyways in congested urban areas _ notifying troops of threats or obstacles in their path.

Palestinian witnesses have long claimed that Israeli drones fire missiles in Gaza, both before and during the Israeli offensive. Israel has never confirmed that its unmanned aircraft are capable of firing missiles.

The military says the huge new drone will give an added element to Israel’s ability to control its borders.

The ZOA had particularly harsh words against UCI Chancellor Michael Drake. Dr. Drake, who is Afro-American, has a demonstrated history of fairness towards all students but the ZOA is demanding he treat Palestinians and Muslim students in a manner tantamount to “crucifixion.”

The ZOA particularly hates UCI’s Muslim Student Union (MSU) because the student organization has sponsored a series of events on campus that have exposed the war crimes committed by the Israeli Zionist regime against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The ZOA is also angry at the MSU because they helped Viva Palestina USA last year by sponsoring Member of the British Parliament George Galloway as a speaker on campus. MP George Galloway was in the USA rallying for support of Viva Palestina which provides humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza.

The MSU helped after Israel launched a brutal 22 day military attack on Gaza called "Operation Cast Lead" which killed over 1,400 civilians, of which several hundred were Palestinian children. The IDF used tons of outlawed phosphorus bombs which left many children blind.

The ZOA finally declared war on UCI after a group of Muslim students strongly protested the visit of the Israeli Michael Oren to the university campus, an alleged war criminal.

Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the USA, was on a national tour to attempt to discredit a United Nations report that accuses Israel of war crimes, known as The Goldstone Report, prepared by another Zionist, the highly respectd Richard Goldstone.

Oren is also pushing for the USA to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Israel, in the opinion of these Muslim students and millions of other Americans, has a parasitic relationship with the USA. It is a fact that Israel’s existence depends on billions of dollars in economic and military aid yearly from US taxpayers. The Goldstone Report confirms that military aid from US taxpayers is utilized to commit heinous war crimes.

American taxpayer money is also the biggest contributor to Israel’s maintaining their illegitimate occupation of Palestine.

National Jewish organizations like the ZOA and the AIPAC are constantly lobbying for aid from the US federal government, but it appears that their loyalties are entirely for Zionist Israel.

The group La Voz de Aztlan stated, "There are many American citizens that are actually very happy with the ZOA press release. UCI will be a better and more peaceful place without them. Perhaps now there will be more Latinos and other minorities admitted to the university. Now if they would only return the money they have taken from US taxpayers and some of it funded to the University of California, perhaps the 32% hike on student fees can be reversed."

Zionist Organization Calls for Jewish Boycott of UC Irvine – Salem-News.Com

On campus, is heckling free speech? Or just rude? – USATODAY.com

PNN – Palestine News Network – Zionist Organization Calls for Jewish Boycott of UC Irvine