Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] Sweden's biggest domestic problem remains crime, both organized and street. In recent months, this larger story has taken on additional, worrying ramifications.
Criminals are increasingly recruiting children and teenagers to participate in their crimes. As a result, the number of underage murderers in Sweden is growing every month.
It is no secret that the lion's share of Swedish crime is ethnic, fueled by the migrant communities that have settled in the country.
Mostly Syrians, Kurds, and Iraqis, a very few native Swedish biker gangs affiliated with Hells Angels and such. This mostly is not mentioned, the Swedes being accustomed to being polite.
And now Sweden's current moderate right-wing government is doing something unthinkable for its liberal predecessors: it is trying to push the newcomers out of the country. True, it is using carrots rather than sticks.
NOT AFRAID OF PUNISHMENT
The current situation in Sweden is deplorable. According to official figures, the local organized crime scene numbers around 30,000 people, and the criminal underworld is clearly becoming younger.
"In just ten years, this Scandinavian country has gone from being one of the safest on the continent to topping the European rankings for deadly shootings.
Deeply rooted criminal gangs (mainly run by second-generation immigrants) are no longer just killing each other, but increasingly innocent bystanders. Many of the perpetrators are teenagers under the age of 14," writes the British newspaper Financial Times.
Indeed, ethnic gangs in Sweden are happy to recruit minors to use as hitmen.
Teenagers often lack fear of possible responsibility, since where an adult can get a life sentence, a minor gets off with a few years in a correctional boarding school.
The Financial Times gives a telling example, one of many: "In October, several people were convicted of two powerful explosions in a fashionable Stockholm district. A 25-year-old was given a five-year prison sentence, while two 17-year-olds were sent to correctional facilities for ten months."
In previous years, the Swedish press, as well as Swedish government agencies, infected with the ideology of "tolerance", tried to avoid a direct parallel between the growth of the migrant community and the growth of crime. In the media and in official documents, all criminals are called "Swedes", without specifying their ethnicity. And formally, everything seems to be so: after all, people from Asia and Africa who received a Swedish passport are now also Swedes, if we understand this not as nationality but citizenship.
But it is impossible to ignore the obvious forever – and now the head of the Swedish police, Petra Lund, has admitted : “We brought too many people here, and now most agree that we have failed to integrate them.” According to Lund, there have already been 186 shootings in Sweden this year, in which 31 people have died, and the perpetrators are becoming younger and younger.
RAIDS ON NEIGHBORS
Gangs staffed by “also Swedes” are growing so rapidly that Sweden itself is no longer enough for them.
The gangs wage fierce wars among themselves for territory: in fact, the main area of application of the “soldiers” (as juvenile criminals are called) is the killing of representatives of competing criminal communities.
But there is another way of expansion - active development of neighboring countries. Recently, gangs from Sweden have been active in Denmark and Norway. And now the Norwegian and Danish press is telling about the "art" of these "guests", predicting: soon all this will be here too.
Thus, the Norwegian portal Aftenposten describes a shootout that broke out in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. Bandits opened fire from military automatic weapons right at the exit of a local metro station. Four people were injured, two of whom, including a 15-year-old boy, died.
Malmö University criminologist Manne Gerell complained: "Young people are increasingly becoming targets. We have 15-year-olds shooting with machine guns and 15-year-olds being shot with machine guns."
Gerell said that adult gangsters recruit children because minors receive more lenient sentences. "They want to be cool and make good money. And they get what they want when they carry out murder orders," the expert noted.
Deputy Chief of Police of the Kingdom of Denmark Peter Svarrer says that local criminals are hiring Swedish "soldiers" via the Internet. "You can get, for example, $100,000 for killing a person in Denmark," says Svarrer. He is considering how to stop the "cross-border cooperation" between Swedish and Danish criminals.
The police are being spurred on by Danish politicians who are demanding an urgent crackdown on the "Swedes" who cross the strait to commit crimes.
Svarrer sees a possible solution in organizing educational work and conveying to the "soldiers" that they will not get off as easily as in Sweden. "In Denmark, a child can get the same punishment as an adult," warns a high-ranking police officer.
Another problem is that about six hundred influential criminals who run things in Sweden are not physically in the country - and Swedish police cannot get to them.
EVERY THIRD
Lund notes that even against the backdrop of the rest of Europe, where the crime situation is generally far from ideal, Sweden has managed to stand out for the worse. The police chief sees the root of the evil in the fact that the country has been flooded with people who adhere to the customs inherent in “clan communities” and do not trust the Swedish authorities.
"We may never return to the calm Sweden that was before," says Petra Lund.
Sweden's 2022 parliamentary elections have brought a moderate right-wing coalition to power, supported by a majority of voters due to its promises to bring order to the migration sphere and stop the influx of immigrants from third world countries allowed by their left-liberal predecessors.
The situation required immediate intervention, because, according to the latest data, already 29% of children aged seven to sixteen in Swedish schools speak at home not Swedish, but Arabic, Somali, Kurdish, Bosnian, etc.
The government has begun to tighten the conditions for entry and stay in the country – and this is already bearing fruit. According to Statistics Sweden, 44,100 people emigrated from the country in the first half of 2024.
The indignant liberal press is longingly recalling the times ten years ago, when then Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called on Swedes to “open their hearts” to refugees. Now, the Migration Ministry is presenting as a positive the fact that “the number of asylum applications is approaching a historically low level, and the number of residence permits issued continues to decline.”
DEPARTURE FEE
The authorities are currently preparing a law that will legally oblige public sector employees to report people without documents. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain refugee status in Sweden. The migrants themselves are beginning to feel a change in attitude towards themselves and are gradually moving to other EU countries, where they feel more at ease.
"Statistics show that Sweden is seeing a net outflow of immigrants for the first time in decades," Annika Sandlund, the UNHCR representative for the Nordic and Baltic countries, told The Guardian recently.
Sandlund, who holds liberal views, warned: "This may not be such a good thing for the country. Immigrants play an important role in the workforce, given Sweden's ageing population."
Tobias Hübinett, a senior lecturer in intercultural studies at Karlstad University, says that a “historic event” is taking place before our eyes: in 2024, the number of people leaving Sweden exceeded the number of people arriving. Hübinett is also a liberal and also complains about the state allegedly losing valuable foreign specialists.
“The prospect of tighter restrictions has made Sweden unattractive, especially among highly educated people from countries like Somalia, Iraq and Syria,” says the lecturer, calling the situation nothing less than a “disaster.” Terje Holmgren, head of a refugee aid organization, bitterly echoes his sentiments : “Compared to Sweden ten years ago, it is now much more acceptable to be openly hostile to asylum seekers.”
But the government continues to push its line, supported by the majority of Swedes who are tired of constant news of shootings, explosions, robberies and rapes. Now the authorities are looking for new ways to show the newcomers that they need to adapt to the realities of their adopted country.
Thus, the Minister for Gender Equality and Labor, Paulina Brandberg, proposed a legislative ban on girls wearing the hijab. This proposal caused unrest in the Muslim community in Sweden. Outraged Muslims staged a demonstration in the square of the Stockholm district of Rickenby, where many migrants live, with both men and women taking part.
Speakers shouted into the microphone: "Sweden needs Muslims more than Muslims need it!"
Next year, the Swedish government intends to go even further and radically increase the allowance for voluntary consent to leave the country. Currently, an adult can receive a maximum of 10,000 kronor for this, but soon this amount will increase to 350,000 Swedish kronor (almost 3 million rubles) per person. In total, the authorities are ready to allocate an impressive budget of 1.4 billion kronor for this.
True, the result may not be so impressive - experts predict that no more than seven hundred people will want to take advantage of this offer annually. The fact is that it does not apply to those migrants who have already received Swedish citizenship; Ukrainians; those who have enough of their own funds to pay for their return to their homeland; those who have debts in Sweden.
However, Migration Minister Johan Forschell counters critics of the government's plan: "If we do nothing at all, it will be a big risk." According to Forschell, something must be done.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/20/2024 5:41 Comments ||
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#3
"German food critic and author Wolfgang Fassbender wrote that "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before".[24]"
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Hungary has followed the Netherlands in demanding a crisis opt-out of the EU's mandatory migration rules to try and reduce the number of refugees coming in.
Budapest has also pledged to defy EU rulings on its hardline border policies after judges said in June the country had breached refugee rights.
'Drastic action is needed to stem illegal migration,' Janos Boka, Hungary's European affairs minister, said today.
'The Hungarian government will join the Netherlands in asking for an opt-out from EU asylum and migration rules, if a treaty amendment allows it.'
Hungary and the Netherlands are expected to use any amendment to the EU's treaty to be able to opt-out of the asylum and refugee policies.
The requests come amid a deepening political crisis over the EU's common refugee system and the Schengen borderless travel zone.
Today, the Netherlands become the first EU country to demand an exemption from the increasingly unpopular rules.
The Dutch government, dominated by Geert Wilders' far-Right party, said the move was justified so it can provide 'housing, health care and education' to its citizens.
'I have just informed the European Commission that I want a migration opt-out within Europe for the Netherlands,' Dutch migration minister Marjolein Faber wrote in a letter to Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs.
'We need to be in charge of our own asylum policy again.'
However, the European Commission has already criticised the plans, saying 'you cannot evade EU legislation'.
It comes as the new Dutch government, which came to power in November, is planning to declare an 'asylum crisis' to pave the way for tougher measures.
This would include a freeze on asylum applications and powers to forcibly deport people who do not have a right to be in the Netherlands.
Under the proposal, refugees would also only be able bring in family members if they have had residence status for two years, have housing and a 'stable income'.
Currently asylum seekers receive a permit to stay for an indefinite period after five years.
Earlier this month, Germany announced it would bring in controls on all its land borders to deal with the 'continuing burden' of migration and 'Islamist terrorism'.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser told the EU that the country had no choice but to enforce proper border controls to cope with unauthorised entries.
The policy marked a U-turn from her stance just last month when she refused to extend strict controls first introduced last year on Germany's borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
These rules have already seen more than 30,000 people turned back at the borders since mid-October last year.
Concerns about immigration have been pushed to the forefront of German politics, heightened by a series of attacks carried out by Islamists, most recently in Solingen.
The German government has also been facing increased pressure to respond to migration as support for right-wing party, the AfD has rapidly gathered pace.
And at the end of last month Germany's police union announced that Schengen was making Germany's security crisis even worse and must be abandoned immediately.
Manuel Ostermann, deputy federal chairman of the Federal Police Union, has launched a fierce condemnation of Schengen, the EU's hair-brained border-free scheme, in an interview with Focus magazine.
'The crisis in Germany's security is a direct consequence of Schengen's ineffective policies. Schengen's inability to manage migration effectively has put Germany's safety at stake.'
[ZeroHedge] German train conductors in the state of Thuringia have been given permission not to check the tickets of foreign migrant passengers in an effort to reduce intimidating and violent behavior from asylum seekers. That’s one way to guarantee increased AfD votes in the next election.
A married couple who had recently traveled on a Süd-Thüringen-Bahn contacted the Thüringer Allgemeine newspaper to report that they had witnessed individuals who didn’t appear to be German not having their tickets checked while German citizens still had theirs scrutinized.
After the newspaper contacted the railway service provider, they initially denied the claim, insisting that all tickets were being checked.
However, after further enquiries, the company admitted that train conductors had been given powers not to check the tickets of passengers who posed a risk of being troublesome in order to de-escalate tensions.
If the conductors feel threatened or intimidated by approaching such individuals, they can bypass the ticket check and the individual effectively gets to travel for free.
The same company recently complained to Thurinigia’s left-wing Minister-President Bodo Ramelow that its staff were increasingly on the receiving end of unprecedented abuse from foreigners on public transport.
“State and federal politics repeatedly talk about “integration” and tolerance of/towards migrants/refugees. We ask you seriously, how can you expect citizens of this country to be open to the refugee policy being practiced when they have to witness – practically every day, and not just on public transport! – such violence, brutality, and absolute contempt and mockery of our laws and society, including its so-called “values”? asked the letter.
As Remix News highlights, mass migration has also heightened violence and disorder on the train network in neighboring France.
“Annual figures provided by the French interior ministry’s statistics bureau, the SSMSI, in September last year revealed that 69 percent of violent robberies and other violent crimes, including sexual assaults, on public transport in the greater Paris region of Île-de-France were perpetrated by foreign nationals.”
“A closer look at the data showed Africans alone were responsible for 52 percent of such crimes while only representing 3.2 percent of the population of France.”
“Across the whole of France, 55 percent of suspects pertaining to offenses on public transport are foreign nationals, the data indicated.”
Earlier this month, the anti-mass migration right-wing AfD party won a significant victory in the state of Thuringia’s regional election.
The German political establishment has been busy trying to outlaw the AfD, laughably, in the name of ‘protecting democracy’, despite it now being the second most popular party in Germany.
[JustTheNews] The U.S. has been in a perpetual national emergency over terrorism threats since Sept. 11, 2001, which was again extended for another year.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday extended an executive order that has been in place since it was first signed by former president George W. Bush on September 23, 2001.
The White House issued a notice, “Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Persons who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism,” stating Biden signed Executive Order 13224. The order declares a national emergency pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The law relates to “the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York and Pennsylvania and against the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States.”
The order also continues an executive order first signed by former President Donald Trump on Sept. 9, 2019, the notice states. Executive order 13886 was signed “to strengthen and consolidate sanctions to combat the continuing threat posed by international terrorism and to take additional steps to deal with the national emergency.”
It states that those “who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
The White House says the national security threat is ongoing since the 2001 executive order was signed. Biden is adopting measures “to deal with that emergency.” He extended the national emergency and order “beyond September 23, 2024, … for 1 year.”
The notice was published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
The extension was granted as the greatest number of illegal border crossers entering the U.S. have been identified on the terrorist watch list under the Biden-Harris administration.
According to CBP data, from fiscal 2021 through August of this year, 1,856 identified on the U.S. terrorist watch list as known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) were encountered or apprehended at the northern and southwest borders, with the greatest number in a single year of 736 in fiscal 2023.
Under the Trump administration, 1,432 KSTs were apprehended from fiscal years 2017-2020, with the greatest number reported of 541 in fiscal 2019.
CBP’s fiscal year is from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
CBP reported KST data includes numbers from land ports of entry at the U.S.-Canada and US-Mexico borders, including all nationalities, and noncitizens apprehended between ports of entry at both borders. While many congressional and news reports solely focus on one data set, the greatest number reported every year, with the exception of 2019, are caught by U.S. officials at the US-Canada border, The Center Square first reported.
The greatest number of KSTs reported at the US-Canada border total 487 in fiscal 2023 followed by 323 this fiscal year to date.
Overall, 1,178 KSTs were apprehended at the US-Canada border under the Biden-Harris administration and 798 under the Trump administration.
Since fiscal 2021 through August of this year, 382 noncitizens identified on the terrorist watch list were apprehended after they illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico between ports of entry, according to the data. That’s up from 11 under Trump from fiscal years 2017-2020.
Those identified as KSTs are matched to the Terrorist Screening Dataset, the federal government's database that contains sensitive information on terrorist identities. The TSDS originated as a consolidated terrorist watchlist to hold information on known or suspected terrorists. Over the past decade, it evolved “to include additional individuals who represent a potential threat to the United States, including known affiliates of watchlisted individuals,” CBP says.
The CBP data has been reported as hundreds with ties to the Islamic terrorist group ISIS were released into the country by the Biden administration or evaded capture with ties to an alleged ISIS smuggling ring. FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned multiple times of heightened terrorist threats similar to those existing 23 years ago, The Center Square reported.
Retired national security experts have also warned that a terrorist attack is imminent; U.S. military bases have been breached by illegal foreign nationals; retired FBI national security experts have warned Biden-Harris border policies have facilitated a “soft invasion” into the U.S. of millions of military-age men illegally entering the country, including from terror-linked regions, China and Russia.
The former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who worked under six presidents, Tom Homan, said Biden is the only president in U.S. history to “unsecure the border on purpose.” He and others argue the Biden-Harris “open border policies have created the greatest national security crisis since 9/11.”
[GEO.TV] Israel will face "a crushing response from the axis of resistance", Iran's Revolutionary Guards Commander Hossein Salami told Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday according to state media, after attacks on Lebanese Hezbollah's communication devices.
The axis of resistance refers to Iran-aligned armed groups in the Middle East, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis, and Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2024 01:31 ||
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[11126 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
You and whose balls?
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/20/2024 10:10 Comments ||
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#2
Mother of all battles, dire revenge. stomachs roasting. Yeah, anything else impotent boy.
Posted by: Difar Dave ||
09/20/2024 12:31 Comments ||
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[GEO.TV] US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm... on Thursday said he does not want to see any escalatory actions by any party that make a Gaza ceasefire deal even more difficult, adding that he believed a ceasefire remains possible and necessary.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2024 01:30 ||
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[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
[GEO.TV] US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Paleostinian group Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... is unlikely before President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. The man who made Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter look competent, if only by comparison.... leaves office in January, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them. Those bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart," Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told news hounds on Thursday before the report was published.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm... said two weeks ago that 90% of a ceasefire deal had been agreed upon.
The United States and mediators Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.
Two obstacles have been especially difficult: Israel's demand to keep forces in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Paleostinian prisoners held by Israel.
The US has said a Gaza ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears the conflict could widen.
Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire proposal on May 31 that he said at the time Israel agreed to. As the talks hit obstacles, officials have for weeks said a new proposal would soon be presented.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2024 01:29 ||
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[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
Raylan Givens:
"Sometimes, we have to make deals with lowlifes because we have our sights set on life forms even somehow lower on the ladder of lowlife than they."
[Breitbart] Israel has made a new hostage deal offer to Hamas leaders: free all 101 remaining hostages, and we will let you live.
The offer came after months of futile negotiations over an American-backed proposal that would see the hostages released in stages. Israel reluctantly accepted the American deal, which did not guarantee the release of all of the hostages, and which was vague about whether Hamas would be fully disarmed or removed from the Gaza Strip.
The new proposal is a single-stage deal: all 101 hostages, alive or dead, and an end to Hamas rule in Gaza, in return for safe passage for Hamas leaders out of Gaza, and possibly the release of a number of Palestinian terror convicts.
The Times of Israel reported Thursday:
Israel has proposed a framework for a deal with Hamas that would see all the hostages released at once and an end to the fighting in the Gaza Strip, along with safe passage out of the enclave for Yahya Sinwar and his associates, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The proposed plan would see the release of Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, the demilitarization of the Strip, and a new system of governance for Gaza, the report says. No further details are given.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which has been opposed to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent months, welcomed the announcement of the new plan, urging the government to pursue it.
“A one-shot deal that includes all 101 hostages is the wish of all Israeli citizens and the families of the hostages. The proposal strengthens security in Israel and makes it possible to reach a comprehensive regional settlement,” the forum said in a statement, as reported by the Times of Israel.
(This author has long argued that the only possible deal in circumstances where Israel had committed, out of necessity, to destroying Hamas as an organization was one in which the leaders could be convinced to save their own individual lives in exchange for the hostages’ release.)
[Yahoo] The mass pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has turned the spotlight on Israel's secretive Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence unit, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation.
Israeli officials have remained silent on the audacious intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives. At least one person was killed on Wednesday when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated.
A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency was responsible for a sophisticated operation to plant a small quantity of explosives inside 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah.
One Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military unit that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah which was over a year in the making.
The source said Unit 8200 was involved in the technical side of testing how they could insert explosive material within the manufacturing process.
The Israeli military declined to comment. The prime minister's office that has oversight of Mossad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a former military intelligence official and now research director at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, said there was no confirmation that the military intelligence unit was involved in the attack.
But he said 8200's members were some of the best and brightest personnel in the Israeli military, serving in a unit at the centre of Israel's defence capabilities.
"The challenges they are facing are immense, very demanding, and we need the best people to get involved in that," he said.
The unit - and its legion of young, hand-picked soldiers - develops and operates intelligence gathering tools and is often likened to the U.S. National Security Agency.
In a rare public statement about the unit's activities, the IDF said in 2018 that it had helped to thwart an air attack by Islamic State on a Western country. At the time, it said the unit's operations ran from intelligence gathering and cyber defence to "technological attacks and strikes."
While Israel has never confirmed its involvement, Unit 8200 was reported to have been involved in the Stuxnet attack that disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges as well as a series of other high profile operations outside Israel.
YOUNG RECRUITS
The unit is effectively Israel's early warning system, and like much of the rest of the defence and security establishment, shouldered some of the blame for failing to detect Hamas' Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel.
Its commander last week said he was stepping down. In his resignation letter carried by Israeli media he said he hadn't fulfilled his mission.
The unit is famous for a work culture that emphasizes out-of-the-box thinking to tackle issues previously not encountered or imagined. This helped some graduates build Israel's high-tech sector and some of its biggest companies.
"Whether it's a problem with software weakness, math, encryption, a problem hacking into something ... you must be capable to do it on your own," said Avi Shua, a graduate of 8200, who went on to co-found Orca Security, a cloud security unicorn.
The unit has a high turnover rate of young recruits replacing veterans, said Kobi Samboursky, another former 8200 member and Managing Partner at Glilot Capital Partners, an early stage fund investing in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
"The most significant thing here is the 'can-do' culture, where everything is possible," Samboursky said.
[IsraelTimes] Revelation comes in Channel 12 report that claims Netanyahu keeps ‘torpedoing’ 2nd hostage deal for political reasons; PM’s office says ‘false claims… echo Hamas propaganda’
Israeli television on Wednesday reported that November’s hostage-truce deal collapsed after a week because Hamas — instead of the 10 living hostages it was supposed to release on the eighth day of the deal — offered to return seven bodies and three living captives, who were two men and one woman. In fact, the report quoted a senior Israeli security source saying, Israel knew that the women among the seven purportedly dead hostages were alive and assessed that Hamas would immediately kill them if Israel accepted the changed terms.
The report was included in a lengthy story on Channel 12 that alleged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently acted since December to “torpedo” a further possible hostage deal with Hamas for political reasons — a claim that was immediately and forcefully denied by the premier’s office.
In its report, Channel 12 news blamed Hamas, not Netanyahu, for the collapse of the seven-day ceasefire deal that enabled the release of 81 Israeli hostages and 24 foreign nationals in late November.
It specified that among the seven hostages who Hamas claimed were dead was Noa Argamani, who was rescued by the IDF along with three other living hostages in June. And it quoted the senior security official stressing that if Israel had accepted Hamas’s changed offer, the terror group would have simply shot the living female hostages it was claiming were dead.
“In the hours before [that day’s scheduled set of releases], Hamas announced via the mediators that the women who were supposed to be freed were dead,” Channel 12 quoted the senior Israeli security source saying.
“But we knew for certain that they were alive. Hamas said that Noa Argamani was dead, but not only her, and that others could not be located. And that was despite the fact that we had agreed in advance on the whole list of names [of living hostages to be freed].”
Added the security source, “As far as we were concerned there was no dilemma” regarding how to proceed. “If we played their game, we made clear to the political echelon, Hamas would murder the women. A minute later, they’d shoot them in the head. If we’d allowed them to play us, we’d never have seen those women again.”
The TV report also said that Hamas insisted on listing all the younger women it was holding hostage, including Mia Shem, Romi Gonen, and Carmel Gat, as soldiers. Shem was released on November 30, the day before the truce collapsed. Gonen is still held hostage. Gat was one of six hostages murdered by their Hamas captors last month.
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
A senior cabinet minister told the network that “coalition threats” at the time from far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich dominated cabinet discussions about finding a way to continue the release of hostages despite Hamas’s games.
“That was the biggest missed opportunity. It would have been right to see the process through to the end, and move to the next category [of hostages]. It was possible to bring back the elderly men who died later in captivity, it was possible to bring Yarden Bibas home on humanitarian grounds,” the unnamed minister was quoted as saying.
In an interview last month, MK Gadi Eisenkot (National Unity), a former IDF chief who was an observer in the war cabinet at the time, said Israel could have gained the release of some elderly men if the government hadn’t resumed fighting in response to Hamas’s breaches of the deal, but “then Ben Gvir put out a statement that he would topple the government” if the truce continued.
The “threats from extremists in the government,” said Eisenkot, are a “cloud that hangs over all decision-making.”
Israel was right to insist on releasing women, he said, “but I didn’t think it was right to insist toward the end… I was in favor of actualizing the agreement in any way, even if we moved on to the category of elderly men and then returned to women,” he said, adding that he was alone in the war cabinet in this opinion.
Wednesday night’s TV report laid out Netanyahu’s decision to turn down an Egyptian proposal on December 24 and prevent Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from holding a discussion with Mossad chief David Barnea the next day.
There was also the potential for a breakthrough in January with a summit in Paris, said the report, but after Ben Gvir threatened to bring down the government, Netanyahu stressed five times over the next four days that there were obstacles in the talks.
Netanyahu continued along that line in March, refusing to expand the negotiators’ mandate. The report cited a former associate of Netanyahu, who argued that when the premier wants a deal he doesn’t speak publicly about his red lines, as he has done repeatedly since US President Joe Biden presented Israel’s proposal on May 31. Channel 12 also said the top security officials were surprised by Netanyahu’s announcement in June laying out his red lines, including continued IDF deployment in the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.
Netanyahu’s office later issued a statement denouncing the TV report, saying the “false claims” in the media “echo the propaganda of the terrorist organization Hamas.”
The Prime Minister’s Office argued that Netanyahu accepted all of the US proposals, which “completely refutes the claim that he sabotaged any deal for political reasons.”
It noted that Netanyahu sent a proposal on April 27 that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called “very generous”; that he agreed to US President Joe Biden’s proposal on May 31; and that, on August 16, he accepted the US “final bridging proposal,” all of which were turned down by Hamas.
Netanyahu’s office also pointed out that US officials have said repeatedly that there is no deal because of Hamas — though they have also put some of the blame on Israel on occasion.
“Those who want to help in the effort to free our hostages should put pressure on the murderer [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar and not on the prime minister of Israel,” Netanyahu’s office said.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Along with the 105 civilians freed during a weeklong truce in late November, Hamas released four hostages before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
It can also be said that Hamas was gaming for a Hostage Deal where to honor the deal, Hamas would have to execute the women...
There it is, they see the complete picture.
“As far as we were concerned there was no dilemma” regarding how to proceed. “If we played their game, we made clear to the political echelon, Hamas would murder the women. A minute later, they’d shoot them in the head. If we’d allowed them to play us, we’d never have seen those women again.”
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[GEO.TV] Israel will face "a crushing response from the axis of resistance", Iran's Revolutionary Guards Commander Hossein Salami told Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday according to state media, after attacks on Lebanese Hezbollah's communication devices.
...71st United States secretary of state and a leading light of the corrupt and inept Biden administration. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under the corrupt and inept Obama administration. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for the Biden 2008 presidential campaign. During his tenure in the Obama administration, Blinken helped craft B.O.'s policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. We all saw how well each of those worked. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a lobbying firm...
