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The arrest of 84-year old Ben-Ami Kadish by the FBI for espionage allegedly committed in the early 1980’s has been in the news for several days.

Kadish, a dual citizen of Israel and the US, is said to have served in the British and US military in WWII and in the Hagana during the War of Independence.

He was working for the US Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey as a mechanical engineer between 1979-1985, when he is accused of having copied secret documents for Israeli intelligence. Supposedly this included information on nuclear weapons, modified F-15 fighters sold to Saudi Arabia, and the Patriot missile defense system.

According to prosecutors, he could face life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

Naturally the connection to the Jonathan Pollard case has been raised. Both offenses were said to have been committed at about the same time, and both Pollard and Kadish seem to have been ‘idealists’:

A criminal complaint said Kadish confessed to FBI agents on Sunday that he had given the Israeli [agent] between 50 and 100 classified documents and accepted no cash in return, only small gifts and occasional dinners for him and his family.

Kadish admitted to the charges in court, saying that he wanted to help Israel. — Jerusalem Post

The most interesting question raised by all this is “why has Kadish only been arrested now?” After all, the alleged crimes took place more than 23 years ago. If the FBI recently obtained new information, where did it come from?

Debka suggests that the information is not new:

The material put before the court indicates that the federal authorities and CIA had long been aware that the Connecticut-born military engineer was passing classified documents to the Israeli science attaché at the New York consulate before his retirement at least 18 years ago.

If this is so, then why arrest Kadish now? Several possibilities come to mind:

The connection with Jonathan Pollard. Efforts are being made to free Pollard before President Bush leaves office, and another spy scandal would do serious damage. We know that there are those in the US government and CIA very strongly committed to keeping Pollard imprisoned for life.

Pollard’s fate (he is in his 23rd year of a life sentence, imposed when the Government reneged on a plea bargain) indicates that there is special treatment reserved for Jewish spies for Israel. No one else has ever received such a sentence for spying for an ally in peacetime, and even those who spied for enemies almost always got lighter sentences (Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen are exceptions).

A desire to damage the US-Israel relationship. The trial of AIPAC staffers Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman for giving national security information to Israel is about to begin. The Government’s case is remarkably weak and one can argue that the defendants were victims of entrapment. I’ve speculated that this case is part of an attempt on the part of anti-Israel elements to weaken AIPAC and Jewish influence in general, so as to make it easier to move US policy in a pro-Arab direction. The Kadish case supports the “dual loyalty” argument.

Further details will certainly come out in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Ben-Ami Kadish, Jonathan Pollard, espionage, Israel

News item:

The IDF says it will investigate the killing of a cameraman for the Reuters news agency in Gaza.

Fadel Shana was killed while filming an Israeli tank in Gaza on Wednesday, a day of heavy fighting. His final footage shows the tank firing a shell in his direction. Palestinian medics say five others were killed in the incident, including four teenagers.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch says its investigation suggests soldiers fired either recklessly or targeted Shana. — Jerusalem Post

The event is being promoted as a deliberate killing of a non-combatant whose vehicle was marked “TV”, etc.

One thing that is never explained when these accusations are made is exactly how Israel would benefit if it were so. Of course there’s no need to, since the devilish nature of the IDF and indeed all Israelis is taken for granted.

I wasn’t there, of course, but neither was HRW. The whole story raises many questions about what actually happened and why. You can see photos and the original Reuters video, as well as read about likely scenarios here, at Snapped Shot.

My guess is that it will turn out, upon full investigation, that the reporter was ’embedded’ with a Hamas rocket launching team, in which case he should have known quite well what the risks were.

What is important is that the IDF is responding to the accusations. They have learned that it is necessary to dig out the truth in these cases, rather than to let them go unanswered to become part of the great mass of Palestinian lies and libels of the al-Dura variety.

Technorati Tags: IDF, Fadel Shana, Gaza

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The Construction and Housing Ministry on Friday advertised two tenders for leasing plots of land in the West Bank settlements of Elkana and Ariel in order to build 100 new housing units…

The Peace Now organization issued a response saying that “the government is destroying the chance to arrive at an agreement with the Palestinians and is turning Annapolis [the 2007 Annapolis peace initiative] into an irrelevant joke.”

The Palestinian position is that Israel must go back to 1967 borders. They also insist on a right of return, and other things which are impossible. There cannot be a peace agreement on their terms that will leave Israel standing.

Israel’s position is that there is nothing permanent about the 1967 borders — which are after all cease-fire lines from 1949 — and that a final agreement could include Israel keeping the larger settlement blocs while compensating the Palestinian state with land elsewhere. Israel believes that any final agreement would keep Ariel and Elkana, as well as some neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, etc.

Some have even suggested a ‘swap’ where Israel transfers areas with large Arab populations to ‘Palestine’ and keeps some settlements. Naturally, the Israeli Arabs living in these areas hate the idea. It’s quite OK for them to be Palestinian nationalists while they get the benefits of living in Israel, but they aren’t prepared to give these up. And of course the more Arabs that live in Israel, the greater the pressure to turn it into a binational state.

These ideas could be pursued if the goal of both sides were a Jewish and a Palestinian state living side by side, but it isn’t.

The Palestinians believe that the territories and indeed the state of Israel are all lands that were stolen from them. In their view, Israel is responsible for everything. The Abbas government has agreed to settle for 1967 borders as a temporary step, but only on conditions which will result in a Jewish state of Israel being untenable. A real compromise which could lead to two peaceful states is not desirable to them; what they want is progress toward getting ‘their’ land back.

The position of the US is ambivalent. Although President Bush said, in a letter to PM Ariel Sharon in 2004, that

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,

nevertheless, the State Department continues to insist that any construction within the boundaries of existing ‘settlements’ (including East Jerusalem) “violates the Road Map”. And although the same letter contained the following remark,

It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, as part of any final status agreement, will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than Israel,

there has been no US insistence that the Palestinian demand for a right of return be taken off the table.

Peace Now, after all of these years and all of the lies and murder from Arafat and his heirs, still refuses to believe that the PLO doesn’t have the same goals that they do.

The Annapolis meeting was an irrelevant joke from the start, or worse — because rather than force the Palestinians to be realistic, all it did was institutionalize the impossible US project to fight Hamas with Fatah.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Peace Now

Hamas’ Mahmoud al-Zahar, in the Washington Post:

While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza… [blah, blah, recitation of Israeli ‘crimes’]

Last week’s attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war…

OK, Israel is “chok[ing] off fuel supplies to Gaza”, so you attack the only place that fuel from Israel enters Gaza?

And today,

Only a week after the lethal terror attack at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, and after complaining of fuel shortages, terror groups are again targeting Israelis supplying fuel to the Gaza Strip.

Thursday afternoon, Palestinians opened fire at trucks transporting fuel to the Strip at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal. No injuries or damages were reported in the latest attack. — YNet

Tell us again about how Israel is responsible for the shortage, please.

But not only are the Gazans fuel-less, they are also hungry, says Jimmy Carter:

Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza were being “starved to death” and received fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa. — YNet

How does Carter know this, since Israel did not allow him to enter Gaza? Simple, Mahmoud al-Zahar told him!

Carter’s talks in Cairo were with former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar and former Interior Minister Saeed Seyam, who did not speak to reporters. Hamas officials have touted the meetings as a recognition of their legitimacy after their 2006 election victory.

As I suggested last week, Carter’s visit is already being used to lend legitimacy to Hamas.

Looks like a coordinated campaign to me, with the Washington Post and Carter leading the charge.

Technorati Tags: Hamas, al-Zahar, Carter, Washington Post

News item:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed that plans to present two female Palestinian terrorists with a medal of honor have been withdrawn…

The Al Kuds Mark of Honor, the PLO’s highest medal, was meant be awarded in a ceremony in Ramallah Thursday to two female terrorists who helped kill Israelis. The terrorists’ families were slated to receive the honors in their stead.

The two female terrorists were Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas affiliate serving a life sentence for driving the suicide bomber who exploded himself in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, killing at least half a dozen people, and Amra Muna, who seduced Ophir Rahum over the Internet and then lured him to Ramallah where he was murdered.

Conferring the Al Kuds Mark of Honor is decided at the discretion of the PA president, and he alone has the final say when choosing the Palestinians to be honored with the medal. — Jerusalem Post

This is almost…unintelligible.

Did Abbas not know who he was recommending for “the PLO’s highest medal”? Did he think the Israelis wouldn’t notice? Did he think they would notice but not care?

Does he think that murdering Israeli civilians is the highest act that a Palestinian can perform?

Why does Israel continue with the charade that there is a possibility of peace with the PLO? How long will it take to grasp that a fundamental mistake that was made at Oslo when the terrorist murderers of the PLO/Fatah were chosen to represent the Palestinians?

After all the historical experience with those who want to destroy the Jewish people and the Jewish state, how can we have forgotten what an enemy is and how we must deal with one? Has this concept been invalidated in the postmodern world?

Mahmoud Abbas (courtesy CoxandForkum.com)

Technorati Tags: Israel, Abbas, PLO