Opinion Editorials, August 2011

Hackers, Worms, and Israel-USA Collusion Versus Gaza-Palestine and Human Rights

By Eileen Fleming

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, August 29, 2011

Hackers, Worms, and Israel-USA Collusion Versus Gaza-Palestine and Human Rights On Sunday, an Egyptian hacker published a picture of Egyptian soldiers raising the Egyptian flag in Sinai on October 6, 1973, on the website of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Egyptian hackers also managed to hack into the official Israeli Radio webpage to protest the death of the five Egyptian soldiers killed by the Israeli army. [1]

On August 19th, the conservative Jerusalem Postreported: “Israel's strikes on the Gaza Strip in response to terror attacks that killed 8 Israelis on Thursday are part of efforts by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to thwart the Palestinians bid for UN statehood recognition Senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath claimed in a statement.” [2]

Officials of Israel’s Kadima party, headed by Tzipi Livni and the head of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Shaul Mofaz are pushing for another large-scale military offensive, including a ground invasion, against the Gaza Strip. [3]

Last week’s deadly three-pronged attack by unidentified gunmen on Israeli soldiers and civilians near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat has not yet been linked to any group in Gaza, and both Hamas and the PRC have denied responsibility for the attacks.

Responsibility is defined by Webster’s as a“state or fact of having a duty to deal with something. The state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.”

This reporter and Citizen of CONSCIENCE for House of Representatives 2012 states the fact that America’s“special relationship” with Israel is not in the best interests of Americans!

I also comprehend that we the people have a“duty to deal” with that!

Case in Point:

In mid-July, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed at a news conference that the Pentagon considers the commercial Internet to be “another operational theater of war”—and that StratCom [United States Strategic Command] and Cyber Command must be ready to take on more offensive roles in combating cyber assaults. [4]

Every hack attack “makes the case for even greater government encroachment on our civil liberties. Every new intrusion builds the case for government waging offensive forms of cyber-warfare to pre-emptively defend our national security. And StratCom now serves as the command center for conducting this 21st-century brand of war.” [IBID]

In January 2012, The New York Timesreported on the USA-Israeli Nuclear collaboration called The Stuxnet Worm.

The Stuxnet Worm is a “fringe benefit of a program launched by Israel with the help of U.S. cyber-forces to cripple Iran’s nuclear capabilities with a computer worm—a rogue program similar to a virus. The ‘Stuxnet’ worm was designed to interrupt the operation of centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, but now has been confirmed to have spread to other Iranian nuclear facilities, including Bushehr.” [IBID]

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Israel’s clandestine WMD facility in the Negev, known as the “Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own. Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnetcomputer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program…Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.

“How and when Israel obtained this kind of first-generation centrifuge remains unclear, whether from Europe, or the Khan network, or by other means. But nuclear experts agree that Dimona came to hold row upon row of spinning centrifuges. Another clue involves the United States….[an] expert added that Israel worked in collaboration with the United States in targeting Iran, but that Washington was eager for ‘plausible deniability.’” [5]

There is no ‘plausible’ way to deny US and Israeli Nuclear Deceptionsor what Mordechai Vanunu exposed in 1986 about Israel's Dimona Nuclear Weapons Factory

The Stuxnet’s designers “are believed to be computer experts in Israel’s ‘Unit 8200’ signals-intelligence agency [who] failed to consider how it might spread to other facilities with dangerous results.” [6]

Americans should intelligently consider the“dangerous results” of the 81 Members of Congress who took an AIPAC-funded junket to Israel during the summer recess.

According to the House Ethics Rules, Congress is prohibited from participating in any multiple-day trip that is planned, organized, requested, or arranged by a lobbyist.

Americans should also intelligently consider the “dangerous results” of the “special relationship” with Israel and Congress’s collusion in Operation Cast Lead: Israel’s 22-day attack on the people of Gaza, which was enabled by US-supplied weapons and foreign policy.

We the people of the US who pay taxes provide over $3 billion annually to Israel although Israel has consistently misused U.S. weapons in violation of America's Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts. America is the worlds largest arms supplier to Israel and under a Bush negotiated deal with Israel that Obama signed onto, we the people who pay taxes in America will also provide another $30 billion in military aid to Israel over the next decade. During the 22 days of Israeli assault on Gaza, "Washington provided F-16 fighter planes, Apache helicopters, tactical missiles, and a wide array of munitions, including white phosphorus and DIME. The weapons required for the Israeli assault was decided upon in June 2008, and the transfer of 1,000 bunker-buster GPS-guided Small Diameter Guided Bomb Units 39 (GBU-39) were approved by Congress in September. The GBU 39 bombs were delivered to Israel in November (prior to any claims of Hamas cease fire violation!) for use in the initial air raids on Gaza. [7] In a 71-page report released March 25, 2009, by Human Rights Watch, Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes.

In November 2006, Father Manuel of the Latin Church and school in Gaza warned the world: "Gaza cannot sleep! The people are suffering unbelievably. They are hungry, thirsty, have no electricity or clean water. They are suffering constant bombardments and sonic booms from low flying aircraft…Many children have been violently thrown from their beds at night from the sonic booms. Many arms and legs have been broken. These planes fly low over Gaza and then reach the speed of sound. This shakes the ground and creates shock waves like an earthquake that causes people to be thrown from their bed. I myself weigh 120 kilos and was almost thrown from my bed due to the shock wave produced by a low flying jet that made a sonic boom…These actions are War Crimes!"

While hard working American tax payers face economic hardships, 81 members of Congress neglected listening to their constituents during this summers recess to take a lobbyist-funded trip designed to pressure them into sending even more tax-payer-funded weapons to the Israeli military which will be used to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians.

We the people should also be cognizant that The Stuxnet Worm is a software smart-bomb, and the worm always turns:

To whom do lions cast their gentle looks? Not to the beast that would usurp their den. The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood. –Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3.

The Pentagon strategy released July 13 @

http://www.defense.gov/news/d20110714cyber.pdf

1. http://www.imemc.org/article/61866?print_page=true

2. http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=234494

3. http://www.imemc.org/article/61869

4. http://nebraskansforpeace.org/stratcomthecyberwarrior

5.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=all

6. http://nebraskansforpeace.org/stratcomthecyberwarrior

7. http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/9-us-arms-used-for-war-crimes-in-gaza/

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editor@aljazeerah.info & editor@ccun.org