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Netanyahu faces arrest in Spain over 2010 flotilla raid

Press TV | November 15, 2015

A judge in Spain has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seven other former and current Israeli officials over a 2010 fatal raid by the Tel Aviv regime forces on a Gaza-bound aid ship.

According to reports by Spanish media, the group could be arrested if they set foot on Spanish soil, the Jerusalem Post reported on Saturday.

On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos attacked the Turkish-flagged MV Mavi Marmara that was part of the Freedom Flotilla in the high seas in the Mediterranean Sea, killing nine Turkish citizens and injuring about 50 other people who were part of the team on the six-ship convoy. A 10th died after four years in a coma.

A UN panel that reviewed the case later denounced the Israeli attack on the vessel as “excessive and unreasonable.”

Former Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Ya’alon and Ehud Barak, the former minister of military affairs, former interior minister, Eli Yishai, and former minister of intelligence, Dan Meridor, are among those implicated in the case.

Together with Netanyahu, the officials form the so-called Forum of Seven, which is an ad-hoc committee of ministers that made important decisions on security issues.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, has denounced the judge’s order, with its spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon saying, “We consider it to be a provocation. We are working with the Spanish authorities to get it canceled. We hope it will be over soon.”

Last month, the family of one of the victims of the raid, who is an American-Turkish citizen, filed a lawsuit against Barak for the raid.

The flotilla was attempting to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, carrying aid to the Palestinians in the impoverished enclave.

Gaza has been blockaded since June 2007, which has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The attack sparked international outcry and plunged relations between Tel Aviv and Ankara into an all-time low at the time.

November 15, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

War Chief Yaalon: Israel Not Responsible for Lives of Iranian Nuclear Scientists

Al-Manar | August 8, 2015

ya3lounIsraeli ‘Defense’ Minister Moshe Yaalon made a less-than-veiled threat that covert assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists could resume.

In an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel, Yaalon said that the Zionist entity is not responsible for the lives of Iranian nuclear scientists.

As the world moves closer to ratifying a nuclear deal Israel would do anything necessary in order to assure Tehran does not get atomic weapons, including taking military action, Yaalon said in the interview published on Friday.

“Ultimately it is very clear, one way or another, Iran’s military nuclear program must be stopped,” Ya’alon said, according to a retranslation from an interview published in the German daily.

“We will act in any way and are not willing to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. We prefer that this be done by means of sanctions, but in the end, Israel should be able to defend itself,” the defense minister said.

He added that he was “not responsible for the lives of Iranian scientists,” according to Der Spiegel, which will publish the full interview on Saturday.

Ya’alon further stated that Tel Aviv was considering carrying out airstrikes on Iranian military facilities, the German paper reported.

Five Iranian nuclear scientists were killed in the last decade, in bomb attacks blamed on the Zionist regime.

August 8, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Israel prepares world opinion for high civilian casualties in any future war with Hezbollah

MEMO | January 30, 2014

Israel accused Hezbollah on Wednesday of setting up military bases inside residential buildings and threatened that it would target these bases in any future conflict, even if civilians are killed.

According to Israeli officials, Iran and Syria have supplied more sophisticated missiles to Hezbollah, which defended Lebanon against the technologically superior Israeli military in July 2006.

Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported that: “The unusually explicit threat by air force chief Major General Amir Eshel appeared to be part of an effort by Israeli officials to prepare world opinion for high civilian casualties in any new confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

The newspaper noted that last year Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon showed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon an Israeli map of alleged military sites for Hezbollah in villages in southern Lebanon, further suggesting that Israel is threatening a high civilian death toll in any future war.

According to Agence France Presse, during the July 2006 war 1,287 Lebanese died, nearly all civilians, and 4,054 were wounded when Israeli forces intentionally inflicted severe damages to civilian infrastructure, especially in southern Lebanon and in the capital city of Beirut.

Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, has called the Israeli threats to strike residential and civilian areas in his country “a flagrant violation of human rights principles.”

He added that the Israeli position is “an attempt to spread a sense of instability among the Lebanese citizens, the thing which the enemy wants, as Israel is happy about the turbulence that is taking place in the Arab region.”

January 31, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Palestinians schools must adopt Israeli narrative of the conflict

MEMO | January 7, 2014

Israel is to tell the Palestinian Authority to change the history syllabus used in its schools as a condition ahead of negotiating final status issues. According to a specialist in Israeli studies, Saleh Al-Na’ami, Israel’s defence minister has said that Palestinian schools must teach the Israeli narrative of events before and since 1948, when what Palestinians call the Nakba (Catastrophe) of the creation of the state of Israel took place.

“They [the PA] need to cancel the Palestinian narrative of the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” Moshe Ya’alon is alleged to have said.

Haaretz reported that the weekly ministerial meeting on Sunday included a discussion about such a change in the Palestinian school syllabus. Ya’alon is also reported to be insisting on an end to Palestinians using speeches in mosques to “incite” the population against the Israeli occupation.

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January 7, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

European legislators threatened with arrest by Israeli authorities

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | December 31, 2013

Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon declared, on Tuesday, that former British International Development Secretary Clare Short and three other European legislators would be arrested if they try to come to Israel, due to their involvement in a European-Palestinian organization calling for an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza.

Clare Short (image from wikimedia)

Clare Short (image from wikimedia)

The Israeli government, last week, outlawed the organization, Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR), which allows the Israeli government to seize its assets and arrest any members of the organization.

Clare Short is a member of the Board of Directors of the non-profit group, and is a British Parliament member with the Labour Party, as well as a former Cabinet member in the British government. In response to Ya’alon’s declaration, she said, “Given Israel’s track record, the Defence Minister’s action is not surprising, but it is yet more evidence that Israel’s claim to be a democracy is eroding very fast.”

The CEPR states that its aim is “to promote dialogue and understanding between European, Palestinian and Arab parliamentarians and policy-makers. It seeks a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on justice and the restoration of Palestinian rights, in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law.”

Although Israel has declared the organization to be a threat to its national security, it has yet to provide evidence of the group’s involvement in any terrorist activity. In his statement, Ya’alon referred vaguely to the group’s opposition to the Israeli siege on Gaza as the reason for its being declared illegal.

January 1, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | 1 Comment

Tel Aviv: “Axis of Evil” Cannot Be Allowed to Win in Syria

By Yahya Dbouk | Al-Akhbar | August 16, 2013

It is perhaps one of those rare times that Israel openly clarifies its position regarding the Syrian crisis, and from the mouths of high-ranking officials: the Resistance cannot be allowed to win.

Tel Aviv is increasingly worried about the developments taking place in Syria. They want the West to be more involved, particularly as Washington seems less certain about how far it should go in supporting the opposition there.

This prompted Israel’s minister of war Moshe Yaalon to make his concerns known to his visitor from Washington, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, for all the media to hear: “The axis of evil, which extends from Tehran to Damascus and Beirut, cannot be allowed to win in the ongoing war in Syria.”

After explaining that the most important thing happening in the region is the change sweeping through many Arab countries, he asked Dempsey to consider Iran’s role and the threat it poses to Israel’s security.

“The lack of stability in the region,” Yaalon insisted, “is due to many reasons, at the top of which is the Iranian regime and its involvement in all the crises taking place in the Middle East.”

According to Israel Defense magazine, the minister said that he believed the Syrian crisis would continue for a long time and would not end even if Bashar al-Assad falls, noting that “there are bloody accounts to be settled between the Alawis and Sunnis, in addition to other minorities engaged in the fighting.”
Yaalon repeated statements he had made after the Syrian opposition’s defeat in Qusayr, that Syria is going through a period in which the state is breaking up, suggesting that the Assad regime, contrary to what recent developments suggest, is weakening.

“I don’t see a change [in the regime’s favor],” the minister maintained, “because in Syria there are many places where the opposition is hitting the regime hard, as in Aleppo and the Latakia area, in addition to the Golan. This suggests that the opposition controls more territory than before.”

In the same vein, a high-ranking Israeli official criticized the US administration’s policy, and the weakness it has shown in handling a number of files in the region. On the occasion of Dempsey’s visit to Israel, the official told Yedioth Ahronot that Washington’s hesitation “will only increase Russia’s influence in the area.”

“Israel is very worried about America’s position regarding the region,” the same source added. “The Russians are taking advantage of America’s weakness, and they are waging their battles like a superpower, therefore proving to the countries of the region and President Assad that they can be relied on, while the Americans abandon their allies and partners.”

Of more concern to the source is that the US’ weak stand extend to its confrontation with Iran, asking Washington not to fall into the trap of the country’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, and “to squeeze Iran until it surrenders.”

The source explained that Israelis are generally comfortable with what is going on around them, despite the upheaval taking place in Egypt: “We can work with the Egyptians, Jordanians and other countries, for we have common interests with many parties in the region, and Israel is the one holding up the tent these days.”

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August 16, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gantz Claims Zionist Entity Can Invade Iran

Al-Manar | April 17, 2013

The Israeli military chief claimed the Zionist entity can invade the Islamic Republic of Iran on its own.

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Benny Gantz made the remarks in an interview on public radio in East al-QudsGantz (Jerusalem) on Tuesday, AFP reported.

“We have our plans and forecasts… If the time comes we’ll decide” on whether to take military action against Iran, he said.

Other Israeli officials made similar remarks, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister for Military Affairs Moshe Ya’alon.
Netanyahu said that US-engineered sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program might not be enough.

Ya’alon also said Iran’s nuclear energy program is the most dangerous threat to the world.

The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program with the Israeli regime repeatedly threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities based on the unsubstantiated allegation.

Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

April 17, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 9 Comments

WAR CRIMINAL BECOMES ISRAELI DEFENCE MINISTER

By Damian Lataan | March 15, 2013

Moshe Ya’alon, an ex-Israeli Chief of Staff and now Member of the Knesset, has been appointed Israel’s Minister of Defence in Netanyahu’s latest government coalition. Ya’alon replaces Ehud Barak.

Ya’alon was Chief of Staff of the IDF in July 2002 when Palestinian activist Salah Shehade was murdered in the Gaza Strip by a one tonne bomb dropped by an Israeli Air Force F-15 jet. Fourteen Palestinian civilians were also killed in the attack.

In 2005 a group of relatives of victims of the 1996 Israeli shelling of the Lebanese town of Qana, where some 106 civilians died, filed a suit demanding a jury trial against Ya’alon in Washington DC. Predictably, the case went no further. A year later in 2006 Ya’alon was visiting New Zealand on a fund-raising trip when an Auckland court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges relating to the Gaza Strip deaths. The warrant was over-ruled by New Zealand’s Attorney-General and Ya’alon was able to return to Israel. Then in October 2009 Ya’alon was forced to cancel a trip to the UK for fear of being arrested on war crime charges, again relating to the 2002 killings in the Gaza.

This man, who is pro-settlement, stridently anti-Iran, and fervently against the existence of any kind of Palestinian state, will be Israel’s next Defence Minister. This war criminal will probably be shaking President Obama’s hand when the President visits Israel next week.

No doubt more crimes will be planned when they meet.

March 15, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel hints it created Flame malware

Press TV – May 30, 2012

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon has strongly hinted that Israel was involved in creating the computer virus Flame — a new Stuxnet-like espionage malware — to sabotage Iran’s nuclear plans.

Speaking in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio on Tuesday, Ya’alon expressed support for the creation of the virus and similar tools, saying it “opens up all kinds of possibilities.”

He also noted that it is reasonable for anyone who sees Iran as a threat to take such steps, saying that “whoever sees the Iranian threat as a serious threat would be likely to take different steps, including these, in order to hurt them.”

Ya’alon made the remarks only hours after a Russian lab discovered the new virus.

The computer security firm Kaspersky Lab, one of the world’s top virus-hunting agencies, said the virus is being used as a cyber weapon to attack entities in several countries.

The Kaspersky Lab has also announced that the worm is the most malicious ever and is designed to gather intelligence, adding that it can turn on PC microphones to record conversations taking place near the computer, take screenshots, log instant messaging chats, gather data files, and remotely change settings on computers.

“The complexity and functionality of the newly discovered malicious program exceed those of all other cyber menaces known to date,” said the Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, adding that a government or a coalition of states must be behind it.

Stuxnet — discovered in 2010 — was also a computer worm. It targeted Siemens industrial software and equipment in several countries.

May 29, 2012 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment