So That's How Peres Knew

That Shimon Peres had sent a letter to Menachem Begin advising him not to launch a preemptive airstrike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor I had known.

To be truthful, I had not known how Peres found out.

I do not know if any of the several books written about the matter reveal the identity of the person who told Peres but in yesterday's Israel Hayom carries a comment by Dan Margalit who quotes another report published this past week.

According to Margalit:

Raful, Commander-in-Chief Rafael Eitan, had convened a forum of previous heads of staff in 1981 to inform them of what was about to happen.  A member of Chaim Bar-Lev's staff, and Bar-Lev by then was a Member of Knesset and candidate to be Minister of Defense, learned about it and he told Shimon Peres.

In sending his letter to warn Begin not to attack, he caused the operation to be delayed as the concern was that if peres knows, many others do as well.

^

It's Iran, Stupid

Forget Israel. The US needs to take down Iran for its own security:

From this: Leaked Reports Detail Iran’s Aid for Iraqi Militias

On Dec. 22, 2006, American military officials in Baghdad issued a secret warning: The Shiite militia commander who had orchestrated the kidnapping of officials from Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education was now hatching plans to take American soldiers hostage.

What made the warning especially worrying were intelligence reports saying that the Iraqi militant, Azhar al-Dulaimi, had been trained by the Middle East’s masters of the dark arts of paramilitary operations: the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran and Hezbollah, its Lebanese ally.

“Dulaymi reportedly obtained his training from Hizballah operatives near Qum, Iran, who were under the supervision of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) officers in July 2006,” the report noted, using alternative spellings of the principals involved.

...Scores of documents made public by WikiLeaks, which has disclosed classified information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, provide a ground-level look — at least as seen by American units in the field and the United States’ military intelligence — at the shadow war between the United States and Iraqi militias backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

...Iraqi militants went to Iran to be trained as snipers and in the use of explosives, the field reports assert, and Iran’s Quds Force collaborated with Iraqi extremists to encourage the assassination of Iraqi officials.

The reports make it clear that the lethal contest between Iranian-backed militias and American forces continued after President Obama sought to open a diplomatic dialogue with Iran’s leaders and reaffirmed the agreement between the United States and Iraq to withdraw American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

...According to the reports, Iran’s role has been political as well as military. A Nov. 27, 2005, report, issued before Iraq’s December 2005 parliamentary elections, cautioned that Iranian-backed militia members in the Iraqi government were gaining power and giving Iran influence over Iraqi politics.

“Iran is gaining control of Iraq at many levels of the Iraqi government,” the report warned.

...The reports suggest that Iranian-sponsored assassinations of Iraqi officials became a serious worry.

A case in point is a report that was issued on March 27, 2007. Iranian intelligence agents within the Badr Corps and Jaish al-Mahdi, two Shiite militias, “have recently been influencing attacks on ministry officials in Iraq,” the report said.
...A Shiite militant from the Jaish al-Mahdi militia, also known as the Mahdi Army, was planning to carry out a mortar attack on the Green Zone in Baghdad, using rockets and mortar shells shipped by the Quds Force, according to a report on Dec. 1, 2006. On Nov. 28, the report noted, the Mahdi Army commander, Ali al-Sa’idi, “met Iranian officials reported to be IRGC officers at the border to pick up three shipments of rockets.”

...An intelligence analysis of a Dec. 31, 2009, attack on the Green Zone using 107-millimeter rockets concluded that it was carried out by the Baghdad branch of Kataib Hezbollah, a militant Shiite group that American intelligence has long believed is supported by Iran. According to the December report, a technical expert from Kataib Hezbollah met before the attack with a “weapons facilitator” who “reportedly traveled to Iran, possibility to facilitate the attacks on 31 Dec.” Read the Document »

That same month, American Special Operations forces and a specially trained Iraqi police unit mounted a raid that snared an Iraqi militant near Basra who had been trained in Iran.

...According to the Dec. 22, 2006, report, a militia commander, Hasan Salim, devised a plan to capture American soldiers in Baghdad and hold them hostage in Sadr City to deter American raids there.

To carry out the plan, Mr. Salim turned to Mr. Dulaimi, a Sunni who converted to the Shiite branch of the faith while studying in the holy Shiite city of Najaf in 1995. Mr. Dulaimi, the report noted, was picked for the operation because he “allegedly trained in Iran on how to conduct precision, military style kidnappings.”

...At 7:10 p.m., several sport utility vehicles of the type typically used by the American-led coalition blocked the entrance to the headquarters compound. Twenty minutes later, an “unknown number of personnel, wearing American uniforms and carrying American weapons attacked the PJCC,” the report said.

The attackers managed to kidnap four American soldiers, dragging them into an S.U.V., which was pursued by police officers from an Iraqi SWAT unit. Calculating that they were trapped, the militants shot the handcuffed hostages and fled. Three of the American soldiers who had been abducted died at the scene. The fourth later died of his wounds, the report said, and a fifth American soldier was killed in the initial attack on the compound.

Summing up the episode, the American commander of a police training team noted in the report that that the adversary appeared to be particularly well trained. “PTT leader on ground stated insurgents were professionals and appeared to have a well planned operation,” the report said.

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Christians In Iraq - Four Dead

Belatedly:

Four Iraqi Christians were murdered within two days by unknown assailants, according to a Christian persecution watchdog group.

Shabah Aziz Suliman was reportedly killed in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Apr. 1, and Nimrud Khuder Moshi, Glawiz Nissan and Hanaa Issaq were murdered thereafter in Dora, a historical Christian neighborhood of Baghdad.

"The killing of four innocent people within the last two days has put a renewed fear in our hearts," said Julian Taimoorazy, president of Iraqi Christian Relief Council, in an interview with International Christian Concern. "What is important is to keep these continuous atrocities in the media and on the policy makers' radars. What we need is a more safe and secure Iraq for all of Iraqi's especially for the Christians who have faced ethno-religious cleansing."

Since 2003, some 750 Christians have been killed in Iraq, according to Archbishop Louis Sako, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Kirkuk. Dozens of churches have also been bombed.

..."The suffering of Iraqi Christians has been beyond description and is not yet over. More than ever, the Iraqi Christians need our prayer and support," said Jonathan Racho, ICC's regional manager for Africa and the Middle East.

"The latest martyrdom of our brothers should serve to awaken churches in the Western countries to come to the aid of their Iraqi brothers and sisters," he said. "We call upon Iraqi officials and the allied forces in Iraq to avert further attacks against Iraqi Christians. It is simply unacceptable to watch the extinction of the Christian community from Iraq."

I'm Mixed Up Or, A Matter of Arab Logic

With a "Kippah tip" (that's the kosher lingo for Hat-tip) to Charles of LGF - here - I was directed to this statement, stemming from the trial of the Iraqi show thrower:

defense attorney Dhia al-Saadi moved that the charges be dismissed, saying al-Zeidi's act was "an expression of freedom" and not a crime.

"It was an act of throwing a shoe, not a rocket," he told
the court. "It was meant as an insult to the occupation."

Let me see, if I am inferring correctly, firing off a rocket is a crime and even if there is "occupation", it is preferable to throw shows, not fire off rockets, mortars and missiles.

So, why doesn't the Arab world, or at least Iraq, condemn the Hamas in Gaza?

Or do I not grasp Arab logic well?

Now Look What We (Supposedly) Have Done

NYTimes's Eric Owles reports:

Pro-Gaza demonstrations in Iraq are giving Shiite and Sunni sects a common target for their anger and adding to the rising fears of instability in the Middle East. It’s a sharp turnaround from the aftermath of the U.S. invasion when Palestinians were the focus of Shiite death squads here.

Palestinians, many of whom are Sunnis, were once protected in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. Going back to 1948, Iraqis have provided shelter for Palestinians fleeing conflicts. Once Shiites came to power the Palestinian enclaves were heavily targeted. Many were killed and many more attempted to flee the country.

Just for the record:

Eric, Iraqis didn't just provide shelter for Arabs of "Palestine", they fought on its behalf, sending its soldiers hundreds of miles west to kill Jews.

Here's a quick summary:

Technically, Baghdad has been in a continious state of war with Israel since 1948. It sent armies to fight Israel in 1948 and 1967, and to back up Syria's defence of Damascus in the October 1973 war. Saddam Hussein was widely revered in Arab nations for his anti-Israel stance and has supported several Palestinian guerilla and militant organisations, and during the last Palestinian intifada, Hussein subsidized families of Palestinian suicide bombers and other activists. Military action was taken by Israel when they bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, fearing that Saddam would use it to develop nuclear weapons.

There were even Iraqis in Deir Yassin amongst the civilian population.

Why are New York Times' writers so, well, insufficient?

Islamic Deshabille

From this story

The woman who couldn't even step outside her house in Fallujah without wearing a veil began pole-dancing — topless — under the strobe lights. None of the customers who buy her drinks and throw dollars onto the stage know that the performing Venus is Iraqi.