Ehud Olmert officially tenders his resignation as Prime Minister of Israel and Tzipi Livni is expected to take his place. The “Butcher of Lebanon” is no more.
Olmert told his Cabinet yesterday morning that he would resign and followed that with a visit to the official Jerusalem residence of President Shimon Peres — both formalities in a process that began in late July, when Olmert caved under the pressure of multiple corruption probes and announced he would step down after the Kadima primary election.
“This decision was not easy, it was not simple, and it was not taken in an offhanded way,” Olmert said before the start of yesterday’s Cabinet meeting. He pledged to help Livni, a longtime rival, form a new government.
“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented to me this evening his resignation as head of the government,” Peres said after the two met. Peres thanked him for his service. Olmert did not talk to reporters.
Continue reading ‘“Butcher of Lebanon” resigns in disgrace’
Here are just a few examples of the Israeli spy operations that have been detected in the US for several decades.
1947. Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as “hearsay”.
1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department’s internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.
1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.
1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché in Tel Aviv.
1954 “The Lavon Affair”. Israeli agents recruit Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.
1965 Israel apparently illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, “US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.”)
Continue reading ‘Israeli spying activities in the United States’
The Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, whose less-than-desirable face certainly requires a Beverly Hills nose surgery, is facing yet another corruption accusation, this time by State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss.
In a report released on Monday, Lindenstrauss had charged that Olmert used his influence when he was Minister of Labor, Industry and Trade to obtain NIS 7.67 million of government aid for an associate’s businesses between 2000 and 2005. Rahamim Ben-Shushan, an activist in the Likud party’s Central Committee, was given financial assistance from the ministry for four factories operated by his Marina Group.
Further investigation will be conducted and the circumstances surrounding the transactions will be investigated by the authorities concerned in order to discern as to whether Olmert had really abused his power during the time when he was in charge of the Ministry in question.
Tony Blair resigns and is made envoy to the Middle East. What makes you think he would succeed in Palestine when he had failed in Iraq?
Tony Blair, who stepped down today as the prime minister of Britain, has been appointed a new senior peace envoy for the Middle East, working on building the framework for a Palestinian state, officials said today.
The widely expected announcement was made at the United Nations in New York and at the State Department, on the same day that violence surged in the Gaza Strip with the killings of at least 13 Palestinians, 11 of them fighters, during Israeli military incursions.
Mr. Blair, who handed his office over to Gordon Brown in London, becomes a senior envoy for the “quartet,†diplomatic shorthand for the four leading outside forces working on peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
Haven’t we been saying this over and over again? Jeffrey Sachs blames the US for the Middle East conflict.
The leading American economist Jeffrey Sachs criticized the U.S. and Israel for the collapse of the Palestinian government and the current unrest in Gaza in an opinion article he published in The Jordan Times over the weekend.
U.S. and Israeli policies supporting one faction, Fatah, while deeply isolating the other, Hamas, have been in contradiction to the democratic process in the region that both nations ardently promote, said Sachs. While President Bush encouraged Palestinian democracy, he openly favored Fatah in the elections of January 2006. When Hamas won, the US and Israel immediately cut off funds to the newly elected government, including even Israel’s transfer of Palestine’s own customs revenues, which Israel collects as the occupying authority in control of the borders, said Sachs. Such policies set the course for a violent upset in the occupied territories.
Continue reading ‘Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. failed Palestine once again’