MORE FROM MCCLATCHY Gazans say Israeli troops forced them into battle zones Israeli troops killed children carrying white flag, witnesses say Israeli military blames Gaza deaths on 'errors' Israeli soldiers say rabbis framed Gaza as religious war Israeli destruction of U.S.-style school shocks Gazans Israeli soldiers say they have OK to use tough tactics in Gaza Did the Israelis use white phosphorus in populated areas? 
Ex-Israel troops: Army used reckless force in Gaza
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press
JERUSALEM – The Israeli military used reckless force during the fighting in Gaza earlier this year, resulting in needless deaths and damage, a group of former Israeli soldiers charged in a report Wednesday.
In testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army reservists, 26 soldiers who participated in the three weeks of Gaza fighting describe demolishing homes and using firepower beyond what was necessary given the relatively light resistance they encountered.
None of the soldiers was identified and no dates or locations were provided for the events they recount.
The Israeli military accused the group of "defaming and slandering the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and its commanders."
"The IDF is one of the world's most moral armies and operates according to the highest moral code," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a separate statement.
In one of the new testimonies, a soldier said his unit used Palestinian civilians as human shields — a practice outlawed by Israel's Supreme Court — forcing them to enter buildings suspected of housing militants and to break down walls using sledgehammers.
"Sometimes the force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian's shoulder, advancing into a house and using him as a human shield. Commanders said these were the instructions and we had to do it," the soldier said.
Another said the regulations on when to shoot were vague.
"My impression about rules of engagement was that, at least at our level, they were not clear. There were no clear red lines," he said.
More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed in the Gaza fighting, thousands of homes were destroyed and Gaza's infrastructure suffered heavy damage, according to Gaza health officials and human rights groups. Israel puts the death toll closer to 1,100 and says most were armed fighters. Thirteen Israelis also were killed, including three civilians who died from rocket fire.
The report did not represent a cross-section of soldiers, but rather included troops who approached the group or were reached through acquaintances of group members. Two were junior officers and the rest were lower-ranking troops.
Yehuda Saul, a founder of Breaking the Silence, said the Israeli public, which overwhelmingly supported a military operation aimed at halting years of rocket fire from Gaza at Israeli towns, needed to know what soldiers saw during the fighting.
"In terms of what Israeli society knows, the Gaza operation is a black hole," Saul said. "In order to discuss what we want and what values we stand for as a people, we must have the information about what happened on the ground, and as a group of soldiers we see this as our job."
The military attacked the report's veracity, saying it "regrets the fact that yet another human rights organization is presenting to Israel and the world a report based on anonymous and general testimonies, without investigating their details or credibility."
The military also said the fact that no identifying details are given makes verifying the accounts impossible and urged soldiers who saw improper behavior to come forward and register official complaints.
Breaking the Silence was founded in 2004 by recently discharged soldiers who served in the West Bank. Since then, they have recorded the testimonies of some 670 soldiers speaking about their service in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel maintains that responsibility for the Gaza carnage lies with Palestinian militant groups, and chiefly Hamas, who hid ammunition in civilian buildings, whose fighters blended in with the civilian population and who provoked Israel with thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli civilians over an eight-year period.
While confirming that Palestinian militants also violated the laws of war, human rights groups like Amnesty International have focused on Israeli violations, charging that Israel's response was disproportionate and that Israel's military used powerful weapons indiscriminately in heavily populated areas.
The U.N. has also launched a probe into Israel's actions during the offensive.
Amnesty International Video
'Everyone is your enemy,' Israeli soldiers in Gaza told
TESTIMONIES OF EX-ISRAEL SOLDIERS ON GAZA WAR
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND BE-END
On the international front, Israel is involved in psychological warfare with Iran by alleged planning to target Iranian nuclear scientists with letter bombs and poisoned packages and had set off explosions in Iran in the former attempt to undermine Iran's nuclear programmes.
At the home front , Barisan National is trying to wrest the states 
controlled by the Pakatan Rakyat by various means, by crooks, by hitting below the belt, and you name it.
Israel engaged in covert war inside Iran: report
Israel is involved in a covert war of sabotage inside Iran to try to delay Tehran's alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, a British newspaper said on Tuesday, quoting a former CIA agent and intelligence experts.
An intelligence source in the Middle East told Reuters last year Israel planned to target Iranian nuclear scientists with letter bombs 
and poisoned packages and had set off explosions in Iran. Analysts offered similar accounts and said such tactics would be credible, but no confirmation has been available.
Some analysts caution that reports of such a "dirty war" may form part of a psychological warfare campaign to unsettle Iran.
The intelligence source told Reuters that Israeli agents were working with Western governments and firms doing business with Tehran, whose Islamist leadership is a sworn enemy of Israel but denies accusations its nuclear program has a military purpose.
Israel's government, widely assumed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, declines all comment on such reports.
"Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran's nuclear program," Britain's Daily Telegraph said on Tuesday. "It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime's illicit weapons project, the experts say."
Quoting intelligence experts and an unnamed former CIA agent, the newspaper said Israel's "decapitation" strategy had targeted members of Iran's atomic program, hoping to set back the country's nuclear ambitions without resorting to war.
"SABOTAGE GOING ON"
Meir Javendafar, an Iran expert at Meepas, a Middle East analysis group, told Reuters there were also reports Iran was being sold faulty equipment for its nuclear program, and that there were attempts to disrupt the electricity supply to Natanz, a uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.
"I think there is sabotage going on. It's a logical move and it makes sense in the game that is part of the overall struggle to disrupt Iran's nuclear ambitions," he said.
As evidence of Israel's reported strategy, Iran watchers have pointed to events such as the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a nuclear scientist at the Isfahan uranium plant who died at home from apparent gas poisoning in 2007.
The former CIA agent told the Telegraph: "Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way they don't realize what's happening. The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution.
"It's a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks."
Asked about the newspaper report, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told Reuters: "It is not our practice to comment publicly about these sorts of allegations, not in this situation, not in any situation."
New U.S. President Barack Obama has taken a more diplomatic line with Tehran, quietening former Bush administration talk of a possible military strike against Iranian nuclear assets.
Israeli leaders have been careful not to rule out their military options, though analysts question how far a new Israeli government, still to be formed after last week's parliamentary election, will be prepared to act without Washington's backing.
Javendafar said there were indications several states were attempting to infiltrate Iran to disrupt nuclear development but also suggested much of the reported clandestine activity was more part of a psychological war than an actual one of sabotage.
"Numerous intelligence agencies are trying their best to do this. Not just Israel, but the Americans and many European spy agencies," he said. "If it's true, then it's putting pressure on the Iranian program technically.
"Even if there's no truth to it, it's part of what is a massive psychological war against Iran's nuclear program ... It's ... much more affordable than sabotaging equipment.
By Luke Baker/ LONDON (Reuters)
ISRAEL AND USA : WHAT'S THE CONNECTION
Despite distance, Jews do feel a connection
By HAVIV RETTIG GUR
JPost.com
Amid world Jewry's nail-biting over Iran, rising anti-Semitism and declining affiliation, a new survey of "Jewish attachment" offers much-needed good news.
The study reports strong feelings of connectedness and mutual concern between the world's two largest Jewish communities, in the United States and Israel, each of which accounts for some 40 percent of world Jewry.
"Both populations report substantial ties of family, friendship and communication with Jews in the other country. Israelis, in fact, report more such ties, perhaps [reflecting] the significant number of Israelis who have taken up residence in the US," report sociologists Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ephraim Ya'ar of Tel Aviv University.
Their complete report will be presented on Tuesday at a panel on Jewish peoplehood chaired by Leonid Nevzlin at the Herzliya Conference taking place at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, this week.
The mutual concern triumphs over a gap of ignorance - "on both subjective [self-evaluated] and objective measures, members of both societies demonstrate low levels of knowledge about the other" - and the lack of any significant expression of these emotions.
"Few American or Israeli Jews engage in activities designed to express and foster strong ties," the report states.
In the best news yet for a Jewish world obsessed with continuity, the researchers report that "contrary to widely held expectations, young self-identified Jews are as engaged with Jewish peoplehood feelings as their elders."
All these factors imply that "the good feelings toward one another can serve as a basis for mutual interaction and education."
The survey, funded by the NADAV Fund, was conducted simultaneously among American and Israeli Jews, incorporating over 1,000 participants in each community.
The "policy takeaway," according to Cohen and Ya'ar, is determining how to capitalize on this good feeling.
"Prior to this research, one might have thought that the major policy challenge is to design programs to strengthen goodwill and good feelings," they write.
Instead, the challenge is "to translate good feelings into real action that will strengthen mutual ties and the bonds of Jewish peoplehood."
Among the report's findings, Israeli Jews reported a slightly higher identification as "Jews".
VIDEO TENTANG ZIONISM LWN ORTODOKS JUDAISM
Zionist Israeli Thugs are beating up and using tasers on members of the Orthodox Jewish Faith Neturei Karta.
Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews protesting the desecration of graves by a highway construction project near Haifa were attacked and brutally beaten by private security guards hired by the Ministry of Transportation.
The group, known for being outspokenly critical of the State of Israel and its very existence were peacefully demonstrating at the time. This attack follows a long history of violence against the Orthodox Jewish community.
Consistent with fundamental Jewish beliefs, some of these protesters often take part in demonstrations, side by side with Palestinians, against the State of Israel and its inhuman policies toward the Palestinian people." The apparent strategy of using organized violence through private security personnel against these peaceful protesters is only one of many tactics used by the State of Israel to intimidate and discourage further protests. The police were nowhere to be found at the time or even hours after the melee. Several Rabbis and children were attacked with electric stun gun devices and knives, requiring some to be hospitalized.
Among the injured were Rabbi Leibl Deutsch and Rabbi Yisroel Rothchild, both of Jerusalem who were stabbed in the lower back and leg respectively. The Jewish cemetery at the heart of the incident dates back to the Second Temple era, over 2000 years ago.Some of the caves that comprise the cemetery have been destroyed as a result of the ongoing highway work and there are heightened fears of further desecration as the highway project continues unabated.
video rabbi dipukul samseng zionist
On April 26, 2005, thousands of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem gathered to protest the despicable events which occurred during a protest at Highway 6 near Kibbutz Rigavin when demonstrators against the Highway 6 expansion which was destroying ancient Jewish graves (from the second temple period)were viciously attacked by Security Guards.
In retaliation for the mass protest, Israeli police entered an Orthodox Jewish Synagogue in Jerusalem and attacked devout Jews who were in the shul to pray during the Passover Holiday.
An orthodox jewish man in Israel talks about how his grandparents, who lived in the holy land since before Israel was established, used to be friends with the muslims in the area. They were "like brothers." They used to "babysit each others kids". He says the problem isn't judaism or jews or muslims, but that the problem is zionism.
