No need to plug these leaks

November 29, 2010 - 8:50 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, General, Israeliness, News, Politics, Technology 

Israeli officials were quivering in their chairs on Sunday in anticipation of WikiLeak’s release of the trove of diplomatic cables it had obtained. The weekend papers warned that there would be much embarrassment on both the Israeli side over revealed US government assessments of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and former PMs Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.

Netanyahu went so far to remind reporters on Sunday, before the documents were published on news websites around the world, that Israel was not expected to be the focus of the documents.

“Israel is not the center of international attention,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the southern border with Egypt. “Normally, there’s a gap between what is said publicly and what is said privately, but in this case, the gap is not large.”

It turned out that he was right. While the documents released Sunday night included some titillating tidbits about other public figures – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was referred to as “Hitler,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a “naked emperor,” the German chancellor was called Angela “Teflon” Merkel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “driven by paranoia,” Vladimir Putin was referred to as “Alpha Male,” while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is “afraid, hesitant,” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s full-time nurse is a “hot blond,” and Berlusconi loves “wild parties,” – the material pertaining to Israel is serious and to the point.

• Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who stepped down as head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence last week, said in a meeting in 2009 with US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) that Israel was not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the United States was on 9/11.

• Mossad director Meir Dagan told Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in 2007 that Israel and the United States need to do more to create regime change in Iran.

• Dagan also told Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the US president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in the summer of 2007 that IDF operations against Hamas in the West Bank were preventing the terrorist group from taking over the Fatah-controlled territory, according to a cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department.

• According to another cable sent from the embassy in Tel Aviv, Barak revealed to a congressional delegation in 2009 that Israel tried to coordinate Operation Cast Lead with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

According to an analysis by The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz, “while there were some comments made by Mossad director Meir Dagan regarding leaders in the Middle East – the emir of Qatar is “annoying,” and the king of Morocco is not interested in governing – that are slightly embarrassing, Israeli politicians were spared the more embarrassing analyses of their personalities that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi received.”

Not even a mention of Bibi’s comb over. And Katz also surmised that from an Israeli perspective, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the WikiLeaks documents may have helped Israel.

By presenting the Arab leaders as more extreme in their remarks than Israeli leaders, the cables show the dissonance in the region and the danger involved in allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear program.

So, our initial pre-embarassment over the release of the classified documents has turned into satisfaction. At least until the more damning ones come out.

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Miraculous space pulp

October 8, 2008 - 1:24 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, History and Culture, Technology 

A page written by Ilan Ramon in spaceCurators at the Israel Museum have worked in conjunction with Israel’s State Archives to sort through millions of archived documents and are now presenting a special exhibition entitled “Blue and White Pages: Documenting the History of Israel,” opening two days from now and closing February 7, 2009.

In celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary, most of the documents on display at the exhibit are available for viewing by the general public for the first time ever. Some of the highlights include the blood-stained copy of “A Song to Peace” lyrics found in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s pocket on the night of his assassination, Israel’s original Declaration of Independence and peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan.

But perhaps the piece de resistance is two pages restored from the remains of a journal kept by Ilan Ramon while in space. Israel’s first-ever astronaut, Ramon and his co-crew members died when the Columbia fell apart while attempting to land on earth on February 1, 2003. Remains of his diary, which fell several miles to the ground, were found two months later in a field in Palestine, Texas. Years of restoration by the Museum’s Paper Conservation Laboratory yielded 37 rescued pages, most of which are being kept private as per the requests of Ramon’s family.

The Jerusalem Post has this to add:

A little over two months after the shuttle explosion, NASA searchers found 37 pages from Ramon’s diary, wet and crumpled, in a field just outside the US town of Palestine, Texas. The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and then “was attacked by microorganisms and insects” in the field where it fell, said museum curator Yigal Zalmona.

“It’s almost a miracle that it survived it’s incredible,” Zalmona said. There is “no rational explanation” for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not, he said.

According to a statement released by the Museum’s spokespeople, the two pages on display “include Ramon’s description of the experience of life in space and a handwritten copy of the Kiddush, the Jewish blessing over wine, intended for use in live transmission while on board the Columbia spacecraft.” Read more

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