Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit is publishing The Spy Cables, in collaboration with The Guardian newspaper.

The Spy Cables: A glimpse into the world of espionage

Secret documents, leaked from numerous intelligence agencies, offer rare insights into the interactions between spies.

Al Jazeera Investigative Unit | 23 Feb 2015 08:23 GMT | Africa, Europe, US & Canada, Middle East, Asia Pacific

A digital leak to Al Jazeera of hundreds of secret intelligence documents from the world's spy agencies has offered an unprecedented insight into operational dealings of the shadowy and highly politicised realm of global espionage.
Over the coming days, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit is publishing The Spy Cables, in collaboration with The Guardian newspaper.
Spanning a period from 2006 until December 2014, they include detailed briefings and internal analyses written by operatives of South Africa's State Security Agency (SSA). They also reveal the South Africans' secret correspondence with the US intelligence agency, the CIA, Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, Russia's FSB and Iran's operatives, as well as dozens of other services from Asia to the Middle East and Africa.
The files unveil details of how, as the post-apartheid South African state grappled with the challenges of forging new security services, the country became vulnerable to foreign espionage and inundated with warnings related to the US "War on Terror".
'HUMINT'
Unlike the Edward Snowden documents that focus on electronic signals intelligence, commonly referred to in intelligence circles as "SIGINT", the Spy Cables deal with human intelligence, or "HUMINT".
This is espionage at the more humdrum, day-in-the-office level. At times, the workplace resembles any other, with spies involved in form-filling, complaints about missing documents and personal squabbles. Some of the communiqués between agencies are simply invitations for liaison meetings or briefings by one agency to another.
Inter-agency communiqués include "trace requests" for individuals or phone numbers. One set of cables from the Algerian Embassy in South Africa relates to a more practical concern. It demands that "no parking" signs are placed in the street outside. The cable notes that the British and US embassies enjoy this privilege, and argues that it should be extended to Algeria as well.
Rather than chronicling spy-movie style tales of  ruthless efficiency of intelligence agencies, they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the daily working lives of people whose jobs are kept secret from the public.

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REDACTED – Editor's note

It has not been easy to decide which Spy Cables to publish, and hundreds will not be revealed.
After verifying the cables, we had to consider whether the publication of each document served the public interest, in consultation with industry experts, lawyers, and our partners at The Guardian. Regardless of any advice received, the decision to publish has been Al Jazeera's alone.
We believe it is important to achieve greater transparency in the field of intelligence. The events of the last decade have shown that there has been inadequate scrutiny on the activities of agencies around the world. That has allowed some to act outside their own laws and, in some cases international law.
Publishing these documents, including operational and tradecraft details, is a necessary contribution to a greater public scrutiny of their activities.
The Spy Cables also reveal that in many cases, intelligence agencies are over-classifying information and hiding behind an unnecessary veil of secrecy. This harms the ability of a democratic society to either consent to the activities of their intelligence agencies or provide adequate checks and balances to their powers.
The Spy Cables are filled with the names, personal details, and pseudonyms of active foreign intelligence operatives who work undercover for the dozens of global spy agencies referenced in the files.
We confronted the possibility that publishing identities revealed in the cables could result in harm to potentially innocent people. We agreed that publishing the names of undercover agents would pose a substantial risk to potentially unwitting individuals from around the world who had associated with these agents.
We believe we can most responsibly accomplish our goal of achieving greater transparency without revealing the identities of undercover operatives.
For these reasons, we have redacted their names. We have also redacted sections that could pose a threat to the public, such as specific chemical formulae to build explosive devices.
Finally, some of the Spy Cables have been saved for future broadcast - ones that needed further contextualisation. Regardless of when we publish, the same considerations will inform our decisions over what to redact.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/spy-cables-world-espionage-snowden-guardian-mi6-cia-ssa-mossad-iran-southafrica-leak-150218100147229.html?utm_content=bufferf8b1b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

El pasado lo persigue

WATCH: Protesters get within inches of Kissinger on Capitol Hill

John McCain kicks out demonstrators, calling them 'lowlife scum,' expresses concern over handling of incident.

By The Associated Press | Jan. 31, 2015 | 3:20 AM

S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain kicked protesters out of a committee hearing Thursday, calling them “lowlife scum” as they hollered for the arrest of one of the witnesses, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
Shortly after Kissinger, 91, took a seat at the witness table, several protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink approached from behind, waving signs and a pair of handcuffs and chanting, “Arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes.”
“You know, you’re going to have to shut up or I’m going to have you arrested,” McCain said from the podium, calling for U.S. capitol police to remove them. As officers escorted the protesters out of the hearing room, the unsuccessful 2008 Republican presidential candidate, a decorated Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, growled, “Get out of here, you lowlife scum.”
U.S. capitol police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said three people were removed from the room, but no arrests were made.
In a statement later, McCain noted a gap between the beginning of the protest and the arrival of officers.
“With no U.S. capitol police intervening, the episode went on for several minutes,” McCain said. He added that he had spoken with police officials and expects that “those responsible will be held fully accountable for their actions”.
The upheaval came Thursday during a committee hearing that also featured testimony from former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and George P. Shultz, who were sitting at the witness table with Kissinger.

Code Pink protesters routinely interrupt congressional hearings and are ushered out by police. But Thursday’s incident was different, McCain said, because the protesters came within inches of Kissinger and waved what appeared to be metal handcuffs near his head.
At one point, a protester alleged that from 1969 to 1973, Kissinger, who was a national security adviser to President Richard Nixon before being named secretary of state, “oversaw” the deaths of millions of people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The protester said many thousands more people died from the effects of the defoliant Agent Orange, or from unexploded U.S. ordnance littering the countryside.

Protesters interrupting a Senate Armed Services hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 29, 2015, shouting at Henry Kissinger, center, joined by George Shultz and Madeleine Albright. Photo by AP

 

http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.639874?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social 

Haaretz.com

"The government is aware of this, but simply doesn’t care. That is, until international agencies threatened to declare Israel a country that finances terrorism."

Are money-laundering Israelis really financing crime and terror?

The gray market is the Wild West of Israel's financial service industry, with thousands of players, billions of shekels changing hands and oversight by six clerks.

By Meirav Arlosoroff | Feb. 12, 2015 | 9:15 AM |  3

Are Israel and Iran similar?

At least at first glance, they seem to be very similar. Iran is considered one of the leading state financiers of global terrorism, and Israel could soon find itself on the same list.

No, it’s not a joke. That was the clear warning that was issued this week in a report by Israel’s Justice Ministry.

“If it’s decided that the country has not demonstrated sufficient progress, Israel is liable to be subject to increased oversight and ultimately even to be added to the list of countries that are not cooperating with the international requirements in the field of the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.” That, in black and white, appears in a current official Israeli government document.

How did we become financiers of terrorism?

As usual, it is due to the criminal negligence with which the state is run. In short, shoddily. In the current instance, it’s a case of particularly shocking shoddiness and not just because Israel could become a sort of outcast nation in the view of the international community. It’s shocking shoddiness because it involves the primary infrastructure that finances all the organized crime in Israel, and the Israel Police have known this for years. It’s the main weak spot exploited by tax evaders, and the Israel Tax Authority has known this for years. It’s a market that attracts the most disadvantaged segments of Israeli society, those invisible people whom the state has neglected and abandoned to the less-than-tender mercies of the country’s family-run organized crime rings.

The government is aware of this, but simply doesn’t care. That is, until international agencies threatened to declare Israel a country that finances terrorism.

The market that I am referring to is the “gray market” — that unregulated segment of the financial sector. This week’s Justice Ministry recommendations were released by a team, headed by Deputy Attorney General Avi Licht, that was appointed to examine the regulation of currency service providers.

According to one estimate, Israel’s gray market has an annual turnover of 150 billion shekels ($39 billion).

That is equal to more than 10% of Israeli banking activity. But while the Bank of Israel oversees every little step the country’s banks make, the gray market gets no oversight. None.

Pretense of oversight

Okay, there is a pretense of oversight. There are six clerks in the Finance Ministry who are responsible for the money changing sector, as it concerns money changers and deals with suspected cases of money laundering. These six oversee at least 2,200 registered money changers. But there are also hundreds of other money changers who have not bothered to register, as required by law.

As industrious as they may be, the six carry out 30 audits a year on average. Licht’s team calculated that at this rate, every money changer in the country would be audited once every 70 years.

Furthermore, this pitiful oversight focuses only on the duty to report large deposits of money. There is no oversight of gray market lending. There is no enforcement when it comes to money changers working without a license. There are no requirements that they demonstrate any level of financial adequacy or account for the source of their capital. No one checks to see if the person registered as the owner of a currency exchange establishment is not a straw man. There is also no consideration given to fair consumer practices at these places.

In short, there is nothing that even makes enforcement of money laundering prevention provisions effective, which explains why we may very soon get tripped up by international organizations that deal with the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

This negligent reality prevails even though all of Israel’s investigative agencies know that the gray market is at the very heart of criminal activity in the country.

Police estimate that when it comes to just about every organized crime case there is a money changer providing the crime organization’s financial base. And in 14% of the Tax Authority’s tax evasion investigations, there was major involvement on the part of a money changer.

Nearly one in five of known money changers have been the subject of Tax Authority investigations. Eleven percent of the warnings provided to the police by the country’s money laundering prevention authority — warnings of clear suspicions of laundering — related to money changers’ activities.

The oversight conducted by our six trusty clerks has revealed that money changers have concealed deposits amounting to 70 billion shekels.

For the past 17 years, the government has been letting the financial base of the crime organizations, which is also the main source of tax evasion in the country, to flourish unimpeded. Why?

Simply because there is no regulatory agency that feels like getting its hands dirty in the tough battle that would be required to clean up the gray market.

All of them invoke lofty rhetoric about the need to fight the underground economy and to boost government coffers in the process of combatting the black market. In practice, however, none of them are taking the necessary practical steps, which would require cleaning up the main weak spot.

What’s especially sad is that the gray market is important and legitimate, a financial market in every sense of the word, which could provide the only competition to that intimidating group, the country’s five largest banks.

Competition
 for the banks

Licht’s team estimates that the gray market provides 30 billion shekels in loans to individual households and to small- and medium-sized businesses every year. The scope of this credit could have been even much larger, and the gray market could have provided significant competition to the banks. It already provides important competition in the money changing, is the only activity in which the banks are exposed to competition.

Becoming real competition to the banks, however, would require the gray market to be regulated rather than a market controlled by crime organizations. People turn to it only when they have no other source of credit.Rejected by the banking sector, these borrowers find themselves in a market in which there is no oversight .

There is in fact a law regulating the maximum rate of interest that can be charged on the gray market, but in the absence of oversight, there has never been a way of enforcing it. And although the law bars interest charges above about 12% or 13%, in practice gray market rates range between 100% and 150%.

The state has also not taken a look at the improper practices used on the gray market in collecting loan payments from those who run into trouble paying back the principal and 150% interest. These improper practices are also thought to include the use of threats and violence. While the country’s corporate business tycoons get to sip Diet Coke in cafes with Israel’s bank CEOs, even if they too have trouble repaying their loans, the weakest members of society are more likely to have to meet up with thugs who threaten their family members in the dead of night.

“Regulatory neglect,” Licht’s team wrote, “is preventing an important market from developing and is leaving consumers of the services, many of whom are from weak populations and small businesses, without protection from the government. ... In the absence of oversight of nonbank loans, problematic practices have developed in the sector and as a result, the wider and weak members of the public are not being protected and are facing these improper phenomena alone.”

While the strong get maximal protection from the Bank of Israel, with its strict oversight of banking activity, the weak don’t get even the most minimal protection. The government itself is pushing them into the arms of organized crime, and then the politicians roll their eyes and talk about those “invisible people,” even though those same invisible people have been subject to threats from the gray market for decades without any politicians caring.

Finally, Licht’s team is proposing that this horrible distortion be corrected by establishing a new regulatory unit within the Finance Ministry that would oversee the gray market, both with respect to its criminal aspects and from a consumer finance perspective. The Finance Ministry has committed to implement the recommendation. If the parties now campaigning in the election really intend to protect those invisible people, they need to put the recommendation at the top of their party platforms.

http://www.haaretz.com/business/.premium-1.642117?utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social

Cartas de amor que han pasado a la historia

MÓNICA ARRIZABALAGA MADRID

Día 14/02/2015 - 18.57h

Desde Napoleón, Beethoven o Simón Bolívar a Emilia Pardo Bazán, Kafka o Neruda, personalidades de toda época han vertido en papel sus sentimientos hacia la persona amada

«Tuyo siempre»

WIKIMEDIA

Detalle del cuado «Carta de amor» de Johannes Vermeer.

«Esas cartas de amor que leen otros, esas cartas que, frías y desnudas, resistiéndose tiemblan de verguenza frente a los ojos que entrevén obscenos los actos inocentes, los más puros, esas cartas raptadas, violadas quizá por otro amor —irresistible», escribía Jorge Guillén. Y bien sabía de qué hablaba porque durante quince años mantuvo una correspondencia casi diaria con su novia y luego esposa, Germaine Cahen. El medio millón de palabras vertidas por el poeta en las 793 misivas que le escribió de su puño y letra a su amada entre 1919 y 1935 fueron recogidas en 2010 en «Cartas a Germaine» (Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de Lectores). «No creas que todo mi sentimiento no es más que sensualidad, pero no creas que pueda amarte sentimentalmente, pero sin sensualidad. Te quiero, a ti, mi mujer», le decía el 6 de febrero de 1926 Guillén, que se confensaba en otra «muy tuyo y tuyo siempre».

Con la misma muestra de pertenencia al otro se despedía Beethoven de su «amada inmortal» en una bella carta de amor en la que le decía: «Tranquila, mi vida, mi amor, sólo contemplando serenamente nuestra existencia podremos conseguir nuestro fin de vivir juntos (...) Siempre tuyo. Siempre mía. Siempre el uno para el otro». ¿Era su «amada inmortal» Antonie Brentano, la esposa de su amigo Franz? ¿O la condesa Josephine Brunswick? Desde que se encontrara esta carta sin fecha al morir Beethoven en 1827, se ha especulado mucho con quién fue la destinataria de los bellos versos en los que el genial compositor le confesaba que su amor le hacía al tiempo «el más feliz y el más desgraciado de los hombres».

A Simón Bolívar quien le hizo sufrir fue la mujer del acaudalado médico inglés James Thorne. Manuela Sáenz se separó del británico para vivir un turbulento amor con el Libertador. «Cada momento estoy pensando en ti y en el triste destino que te ha tocado. Yo veo que nada en el mundo puede unirnos bajo los auspicios de la inocencia y el honor. Lo veo bien, y gimo de tan horrible situación por ti; porque te debes con quien no amas; y yo porque debo separarme de quine idolatro. Sí, te idolatro más que nunca jamás», le escribió Bolívar el 10 de abril de 1825.

Apasionado -aunque lleno de infidelidades- fue también el amor queNapoleón Bonaparte profesó a Josefina. Once días después de su boda, tuvo éste que marchar como jefe del ejército francés a Italia y desde Niza le escribió: «Ni un solo día ha pasado sin amarte, ni una sola noche sin abrazarte en mis brazos, y ni una sola taza de té he tomado sin maldecir la gloria y la ambición que me mantienen alejado del alma de mi vida. En medio de mis ocupaciones, a la cabeza de las tropas, recorriendo los campos, mi adorable Josefina es la única en mi corazón, la que ocupa mi espíritu y atrapa mis pensamientos». Napoleón acabaría repudiando a Josefina antes de casarse con María Luisa de Austria, tras un romance con María Walewska, con la que tuvo un hijo. Días antes de su abdicación, Napoleón le escribiría sin embargo una última carta: «Adiós, mi querida Josefina, resignaos como hago yo, y no perdáis el recuerdo del que no os ha olvidado jamás y no os olvidará jamás».

Decía Víctor Hugo que «es en las cartas de un hombre donde hace falta buscar, más que en el resto de sus obras, el sello de su corazón y el rastro de su vida» y lo cierto es que desde la primera carta de amor de la historia de la que se tienen noticias, que escribió un tal Gimil-Marduk a su amada Bhibi hace más de 4.000 años en la antigua Babilonia, ha habido tantas como historias de amor y desamor: Eloísa y Abelardo, Enrique VIII y Ana Bolena, Robert Schumann y Clara Wieck, Víctor Hugo y Juliette Drouet (ella le escribió 18.000 cartas), Paul Verlaine y Arthur Rimbaud, Emilia Pardo Bazán y Benito Pérez Galdós, Oscar Wilde y lord Alfred Douglas, Sigmund Freud y Martha Bernays, Franz Kafka y Milena Jesenská, Antonio Machado y Guiomar, Neruda y Albertina Rosa, Hannah Arendt y Martin Heidegger, Virginia Wolf y Vita Sackville-West...

El filósofo José Antonio Marina, que analizó en «Palabras de amor» (Temas de hoy, 2009) más de 1.000 cartas, se preguntaba en el libro por qué se escriben cartas de amor. «Por amor, sin duda. Porque el amor es expresivo, porque los amantes están lejanos, porque quieren acercarse, porque se expresan mejor por escrito que de viva voz, por timidez», respondía Marina antes de señalar cómo muchos escritores prefirieron vivir amores distantes, mezcla de pasión y prosa. El poetaKhalil Gibran y la escritora libanesa May Ziadah, recordaba Marina, «mantuvieron una correspondencia que pasó de la amistad al apasionamiento, a pesar de lo cual nunca tuvieron la necesidad de verse».

Otros pasaron su vida juntos, como Winston Churchill y Clementine Hozier. que estuvieron casados 56 años. El primer ministro inglés le confesó a su querida «Clemmie» en una carta sentirse «deudor, si puede haber cuentas en el amor» porque lo que había sido para él «vivir todos estos años en tu corazón y compañerismo ninguna frase puede transmitirlo».

Conmovedoras son las palabras que el filósofo André Gorz dedicó a su esposa Dorine, antes de suicidarse juntos en 2007: «Acabas de cumplir ochenta y dos años. Has encogido seis centímetros, no pesas más de cuarenta y cinco kilos y sigues siendo bella y deseable. Hace cincuenta y ocho años que vivimos juntos y te amo más que nunca. (...) Necesito reconstruir la historia de nuestro amor para captar todo su sentido. Gracias a ella, somos lo que somos, uno por el otro y uno para el otro (...) Te escribo para comprender lo que he vivido, lo que hemos vivido juntos».

Otras cartas se escribieron pese a que nunca iban a poder ser leídas nuncsu destinatario, como la que le escribió Katharine Hepburn a Spencer Tracy dieciocho años después de su muerte («¿Qué dices? No te oigo...»), la de Yoko Ono a John Lennon, o la del físico Richard Feynman a su difunta esposa, que recoge Shaun Usher en «Cartas memorables» (Salamandra, 2013) : «Tú, muerta, eres mucho mejor que cualquier otra persona viva (...) Amo a mi esposa. Mi esposa ha muerto. Rich. P.D: Perdona que no te envíe esto, pero ignoro tu nueva dirección».

http://www.abc.es/cultura/20150214/abci-cartas-amor-pasado-historia-201502041424_1.html

Carta del líder supremo de la República Islámica de Irán a los jóvenes de Europa y Estados Unidos

Mensaje del líder de R.I. de Irán

Mi palabra con vosotros es sobre el Islam, y en especial sobre la imagen que os presentan del Islam

La Razón (Edición Impresa) / Sayyed Ali Khamenei

00:00 / 14 de febrero de 2015

A los estudiantes en general, de Europa y Norteamérica: los últimos sucesos ocurridos en Francia y en otros países occidentales me convencieron para que hable directamente con vosotros, jóvenes, sobre estos incidentes. No porque quiera dejar de lado a sus padres y madres, sino porque veo el futuro de sus naciones y de sus tierras en sus manos, y también veo en ustedes y en vuestros corazones el sentimiento de la búsqueda de la verdad más viva e inteligente. En este mensaje no hablo con vuestros políticos y gobernantes. Creo que ellos conscientemente se han desviado del camino de la verdad y lo correcto en el ámbito de la política. Mi palabra con vosotros es sobre el Islam, y en especial sobre la imagen y el rostro que os presentan del Islam.

Hace dos décadas, es decir poco después del derrumbe de la Unión Soviética, se han esforzado mucho para que esta gran religión se vea como un enemigo monstruoso. Desgraciadamente, los sentimientos de temor y odio y la intención de manipular para movilizarlos tienen un antecedente extenso en la historia política de Occidente. No quiero enumerar en este momento los diferentes miedos que han infundido en las naciones occidentales. Ustedes mismos, con un breve repaso sobre las últimas investigaciones críticas sobre la historia, pueden apreciar que los revisionistas han reprochado las actitudes no veraces e insensatas de los gobiernos occidentales con otras culturas y civilizaciones del mundo. Desde la época del colonialismo la historia de Europa y América se encuentra avergonzada por la esclavitud y la opresión contra las personas afrodescendientes y los no cristianos.

Vuestros investigadores e historiadores se lamentan profundamente por los derramamientos de sangre entre católicos y protestantes en nombre de la religión, y a nombre de los nacionalismos y etnias en la Primera y Segunda guerras mundiales. Estos sentimientos en sí mismos son elogiables, y mi objetivo al repasar este largo índice no es reprochar la historia, sino, deseo que vosotros pregunten a sus intelectuales por qué la conciencia general en Occidente debe despertar y ser informada con un retraso de diez años y a veces de cientos de años. ¿Por qué la revisión en la consciencia general debe relacionarse con el pasado lejano y no con los asuntos del día? ¿Por qué en un tema tan importante como el encuentro con la cultura y el pensamiento islámicos se le niega a la gente una información general y veraz?

Vosotros sabéis perfectamente que humillar y crear odio y miedo imaginarios con respecto a otros siempre ha preparado el terreno para beneficio de los opresores. Ahora yo quiero que se pregunten a sí mismos, ¿por qué la política antigua de crear temor y odio con una fuerza sin antecedentes ha tomado como objetivo al Islam y a los musulmanes? ¿Por qué la estructura del poder en el mundo actual quiere que el pensamiento islámico sea colocado al margen y en una actitud pasiva? ¿Qué contenidos y valores existen en el Islam que perturban al programa de los grandes poderes? ¿Qué beneficios tendrá en la sombra deformar el rostro del Islam?

Entonces, mi primer pedido a vosotros es que se pregunten e investiguen sobre los motivos de esta actitud negativa contra el Islam. Mi segundo pedido es que, en reacción a este diluvio de propagandas negativas y prejuicios, traten de obtener directamente y sin intermediario el conocimiento de esta religión. Una lógica sana exige que al menos sepáis qué es y qué esencia tiene el Islam con el que os atemorizan y os hacen escapar de él. Yo no insisto en que acepten mi punto de vista o el de otro en el Islam, sino, les pido evitar que esta realidad fluyente y activa en el mundo actual no os sea presentada con los objetivos contaminados. No permitáis que ostentosamente os presenten a los terroristas y mercenarios como representantes del Islam. Conozcan el Islam de las fuentes genuinas y de primera mano. Conózcanlo por el camino del Corán y la vida del gran profeta del Islam.

En este momento quiero preguntarles, ¿acaso vosotros mismos habéis recurrido directamente al Sagrado Corán de los musulmanes? ¿Acaso han estudiado actitudes del profeta del Islam con otras personas y sus enseñanzas humanas y morales? ¿Acaso hasta hoy han recibido el mensaje del Islam de otras fuentes distintas a los medios de comunicación? ¿Acaso se han preguntado a sí mismos cómo y en base a qué valores fue que el Islam desarrolló a lo largo de los siglos la más grande civilización científica y racional en el mundo, educando a los más elevados científicos y pensadores? Les pido que, a través de una cara desagradable del Islam, eviten la creación de un obstáculo sentimental entre vosotros y la realidad, quitándoles la posibilidad de poseer un juicio imparcial.

Hoy, que los medios de comunicación han roto fronteras geográficas, no permitáis que os encierren dentro de fronteras mentales falsificadas. Si bien nadie puede en forma individual llenar las grietas creadas, cada uno de vosotros puede construir un puente de pensamiento y equidad sobre estas grietas, con la intención de aclarar esta visión a sí mismos y a su alrededor. Este obstáculo que fue planeado de antemano entre vosotros, jóvenes, y el Islam, aunque es desagradable, puede crear nuevas interrogantes en vuestra mente curiosa y buscadora.

Esforzarse por encontrar las respuestas a estas preguntas les otorga una oportunidad beneficiosa para descubrir nuevas verdades. No pierdan esta oportunidad para comprender correctamente y sin perjuicios al Islam, quizás por la bendición de su compromiso ante la verdad. Que las generaciones venideras que escribirán esta parte de la historia acerca del comportamiento de Occidente con el Islam lo hagan con menos molestia y con una conciencia más tranquila.

Es el líder supremo de la República Islámica de Irán.

Israel-U.S.

McCain: Israel-U.S. ties have never been worse than under Obama

Republican senator says Obama had 'very unrealistic expectations about the degree of cooperation that he would get from Israel.'

By Haaretz | Feb. 2, 2015 | 1:58 AM 

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., bangs the gavel to start the committee's hearing to examine global challenges and US national security strategy, Jan. 21, 2015. Photo by AP

Senator John McCain told CNN on Sunday that ties between the U.S. and Israel have never been worse than under the Obama administration.

Speaking on "State of the Union," McCain asserted that Obama “had very unrealistic expectations about the degree of cooperation that he would get from Israel, particularly on the Palestinian issue as well as on the nuclear issue with Iran.”

While the relationship between the U.S. and Israel has not always been excellent, McCain said, "any observer would argue they’ve never been worse.”

“I’m not putting the entire blame on the president of the United States, but I will say this: No other president has had such a difficult relationship with the state of Israel since it became a country,” the Arizona Republican said according to The Washington Times.

He called the deteriorating ties "a tragedy" because Israel is "the only functioning democracy in the entire Middle East.”

McCain's statements were made on the backdrop of acrisis in the U.S.-Israeli relations, sparked by an invitation extended by House Speaker John Boehner to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress next month on the issue of the nuclear talks with Iran. The invitation was extended – and accepted – without coordination with the White House.

McCain told CNN that he would have discussed such an invitation with the White House in advance, but added that he wasn't surprised by Boehner's actions considering his strained relationship with Obama.

“Obviously we would want everybody to work together, but there’s a real crisis going on, and that is that these negotiations with Iran, which many of us believe are already fatally flawed, that the speaker felt the overriding concern was to have him appear before the American people and tell them about the dangers of a very bad agreement with Iran on nuclear weapons,” McCain said.

'Congress speech may backfire'

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State James Baker said on CBS News' "Face of the Nation" that the Congress speech may "backfire" on Netanyahu in the upcoming election.

Baker said that while Boehner has the right to invite anyone he wants to speak to the House, "it's best done, our foreign policy is best conducted when there's at least cooperation between the legislative and the executive branches."

Baker drew a parallel between the current crisis and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's "trouble managing the U.S. relationship" in the early '90s.

Asked whether the tension could hurt Netanyahu's chances in the election, Baker said "it has the potential to backfire, just as it backfired on Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir back there in 1990 or 1991, when he was challenged by Yitzhak Rabin, and Rabin won, but primarily because Shamir was not seen to be able to manage the relationship with the United States properly." 

Senator Dick Durbin said on the show that Boehner's decision to invite Netanyahu without consulting the White House was "a mistake."

"I don't want to show any weakness in terms of our commitment to Israel," the Illinois Democrat said. "But some of my closest friends in the United States who support Israel have described this Boehner strategy as a disaster. I hope we can find a way to stabilize the situation quickly and take the politics out of it." 

According to a recent report, Netanyahu has been lobbying Democratic leaders to tone down their critique of his invitation to speak before Congress, with the U.S. legislators responding that he should reconsider the move, which could do damage to Israel.

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1967

“I had an abysmal feeling that I was evil” -- interviews with Israeli soldiers, recorded just weeks after the conclusion of the 1967 war, come out in a new documentary.

Amos Oz revisits interviews with soldiers he recorded almost 50 years ago in ‘Censored Voices.’Photo by Dogwoof / JTA

'Censored Voices' film tears apart Israel's heroic narrative of Six-Day War

In the wake of the 1967 war, Israel’s victorious soldiers were lionized as heroes; but many didn't feel that way, a new documentary shows.

By Anthony Weiss Feb. 2, 2015 | 4:38 AM

(JTA) — In the wake of Israel’s seemingly miraculous triumph in the Six-Day War in 1967, the country’s victorious soldiers were lionized as heroes.

But in private, even just one week after the conflict, many of them didn’t feel that way. One describes feeling sick to his stomach in battle and collapsing into a trench.

“I wanted to be left alone,” he says. “I didn’t think of the war.”

Another talks about watching an old Arab man evacuated from his house.

“I had an abysmal feeling that I was evil,” the soldier says.

The voices come from tapes made just weeks after the war’s conclusion and now presented, some of them for the first time, in the powerful new documentary “Censored Voices,” which premiered Jan. 24 at the Sundance Film Festival here.

Piece by piece and story by story, they tear apart the heroic narrative of Israel’s great victory in favor of something far messier, more chaotic and more human.

The tapes were made by fellow kibbutzniks Avraham Shapira and the novelist Amos Oz, who were driven by a sense that amid the triumphalism, more ambivalent emotions were not being expressed.

“It was a sadness that could only be felt in the kibbutz because we were living so close to each other,” Shapira recalls in the film.

Traveling from kibbutz to kibbutz with a borrowed reel-to-reel tape recorder, Shapira and Oz convinced fellow veterans to open up about their feelings, their memories and their misgivings from the war. But when they moved to publish what they had gathered, the Israeli government censored 70 percent of the material. Shapira published the remaining 30 percent in his book “The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-Day War.”

Now, thanks to the efforts of director Mor Loushy, who convinced Shapira to give her access to the tapes, all of the soldiers’ stories can be heard. Films in Israel can be subject to censorship, but according to producer Hilla Medalia, “We were able to release the film as we wanted it.”

The voices from the tapes are combined to great effect with archival footage, photographs, contemporary news accounts and film of the now-aged veterans to tell the story of the war and its aftermath.

What emerges is a vivid portrait of the war as it was lived by those who fought in it. In the tradition of soldier’s-eye narratives like “A Farewell to Arms” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” the movie allows the soldiers to depict themselves as confused, selfishly afraid, often stupefied by the sight of death and dying, and morally troubled when they encounter the enemy as fellow humans.

Conflicting emotions

There is little doubt that prior to the war, the soldiers saw the build-up of hostile Arab forces on their borders as an existential threat.

“There was a feeling it would be a Holocaust,” one says.

Yet once the battle was joined, the soldiers find themselves besieged by a welter of conflicting emotions. They watch their comrades die. They feel terror. They find themselves killing.

“I was impressed at the calmness with which I was shooting,” says one veteran, recalling himself gunning down Egyptian soldiers. “I felt like I was at an amusement park.”

The veterans also graphically describe multiple instances of Israeli soldiers — including themselves — shooting unarmed soldiers and civilians.

“Several times we captured guys, positioned them and just killed them,” one veteran recalls.

They also recall the shock and anguish of being forced to confront the humanity of the men they were killing. One tells of sorting through the papers of a dead Egyptian officer and finding a picture of his two children on the beach. Another recounts captured Egyptian soldiers pleading for water and mercy, and frightened teenage soldiers who soil their pants. One watches Arab families carrying their belongings from Jericho and thinks of his own family fleeing the Holocaust.

Even the recapture of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall evokes mixed feelings far from the iconic images of conquering soldiers weeping for joy. One participant says that when a shofar blows at the wall, it “sounded like a pig’s grunt.” Others are troubled by the sense that they are conquering not soldiers in the Old City but civilians in their homes.

“It wasn’t a freed city, it was an occupied city,” one says.

It is that sense of occupation and displacement of Palestinian natives — that Israel was not merely defending itself, but acting as a conqueror — that troubles the soldiers.

“I was convinced the war was just. It was about our existence,” one says. “But then it became something else.”

There is so much raw, varied and shocking material in the movie that parts can easily be wielded or attacked to serve particular political arguments. But the film is courageous enough to embrace contradictions and leave them unresolved. It offers an unflinching look at Israeli atrocities without being unpatriotic or anti-Zionist, recounting the horrors of the war without suggesting that Israel should have refused to fight it. It is critical of the Israeli occupation, yet doesn’t claim to offer answers.

“This film is about listening,” producer and co-writer Daniel Sivan puts it after the screening.

At the end of the film, Oz, now 78, is asked what he thinks of the tapes.

“I feel we spoke truth,” he replies.

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