Israeli Spy? The Lebanese in shock over Jarrah’s arrest

By Robert F. Worth
Maraj – For 25 years, Ali al-Jarrah managed to live on both sides of the bitterest divide running through this region. To friends and neighbors, he was an earnest supporter of the Palestinian cause, an affable, white-haired family man who worked as an administrator at a nearby school.

To Israel, he appears to have been a valued spy, sending reports and taking clandestine photographs of Palestinian groups and Hezbollah since 1983.

Now he sits in a Lebanese prison cell, accused by the authorities of betraying his country to an enemy state. Months after his arrest, his friends and former colleagues are still in shock over the extent of his deceptions: the carefully disguised trips abroad, the unexplained cash, the secret second wife.

Lebanese investigators say he has confessed to a career of espionage spectacular in its scope and longevity, a real-life John le Carré novel. Many intelligence agents are said to operate in the civil chaos of Lebanon, but Mr. Jarrah’s arrest has shed a rare light onto a world of spying and subversion that usually persists in secret.

Mr. Jarrah’s first wife maintains that he was tortured, and is innocent; requests to interview him were denied.

From his home in this Bekaa Valley village, Mr. Jarrah, 50, traveled often to Syria and to south Lebanon, where he photographed roads and convoys that might have been used to transport weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, investigators say. He spoke with his handlers by satellite phone, receiving “dead drops” of money, cameras and listening devices. Occasionally, on the pretext of a business trip, he traveled to Belgium and Italy, received an Israeli passport, and flew to Israel, where he was debriefed at length, investigators say.

At the start of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli officials called Mr. Jarrah to reassure him that his village would be spared and that he should stay at home, investigators said.

He was finally arrested last July by Hezbollah, which now has perhaps the most powerful intelligence apparatus in this country. It handed him to the Lebanese military — along with his brother Yusuf, who is accused of helping him spy — and he awaits trial by a military court.

Several current and former military officials agreed to provide details about his case on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss it before the trial began. Their accounts tallied with details provided by Mr. Jarrah’s relatives and former colleagues.

It is not the family’s first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah’s cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though the men were 20 years apart in age and do not appear to have known each other well.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, declined to discuss Mr. Jarrah’s situation, saying, “It is not our practice to publicly talk about any such allegations in this case or in any case.”

Villagers here seemed incredulous that a man they knew all their lives could have taken money to spy for a country that they regard with unmixed hatred and disgust.

Many maintained his innocence. But Raja Mosleh, the Palestinian doctor who was his partner for years in a school and health clinic near here, did not.

“I never suspected him before,” Dr. Mosleh said. “But now, after linking all the incidents together, I feel he’s 100 percent guilty.”

“He used to talk about the Palestinian cause all the time, how he supported the cause, he supported the people, he liked everybody — this son of a dog,” Dr. Mosleh added, his voice thick with contempt.

Mr. Jarrah would often borrow money to buy cigarettes, apparently posing as a man of limited means. Investigators say he received more than $300,000 for his work from Israel.

Only recently did he begin to spend in ways that raised questions. About six years ago, neighbors said, he built a three-story villa with a terra-cotta roof that is by far the grandest house in this modest village of low concrete dwellings. Outside is a small roofed archway and a heavy iron gate, and on a recent day a German shepherd stood guard.

Dr. Mosleh asked him where he got the money, and Mr. Jarrah said he got help from a daughter living in Brazil. It is a natural excuse in Lebanon, where a large portion of the population receives remittances from relatives abroad.

Mr. Jarrah also had a secret second wife, according to investigators and his former colleagues. Unlike his first wife, Maryam Shmouri al-Jarrah, who lived in relative grandeur with their five children in Maraj, the second wife lived in a cheap apartment in the town of Masnaa, near the Syrian border. This apparently allowed Mr. Jarrah to travel near the border in the unremarkable guise of a local working-class man.

Mr. Jarrah has said he was recruited in 1983 — a year after Israel began a major invasion of Lebanon — by Israeli officers who had imprisoned him, according to investigators. He was offered regular payments in exchange for information about Palestinian militants and Syrian troop movements, they said.

After Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, thousands of Lebanese from the occupied zone in the south were tried and sentenced — mostly to light prison terms — for collaborating with Israel.

Far from the border, a different class of collaborators, rooted in their communities, persisted. A few have been caught and sentenced.

Mr. Jarrah’s motives remain a mystery. He said he tried to stop, but the Israelis would not let him, investigators said.

It all came to an end last summer. He went on a trip to Syria in July, and when he returned he said he had been briefly detained by the Syrian police, his first wife said. He seemed very uneasy, not his usual self, she said.

He left the house that night, saying he was going to Beirut, and never returned, Mrs. Jarrah said. Only three months later did she get a call from the Lebanese Army saying it had taken custody of him.

A few weeks ago, Mrs. Jarrah said, she was allowed to see him. He looked terrible, exhausted, she said.

Lebanese security forces released a photograph of Mr. Jarrah, taken before his arrest. In it, he appears against a blue and white backdrop, dressed in a formal dark shirt, wearing an enigmatic smile.

New York Times

Via:Yalibnan

Gaza: A Grotesque Death Experiment?

By Ghassan Karam
Special to Ya Libnan
New and ugly allegations have surfaced recently in connection to the recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza. The accusations

are coming from many reliable sources and as such must be thoroughly investigated in order to determine their veracity.

According to a Norwegian MD who was working at a Palestinian hospital in Gaza during the recent war the type of injuries that were inflicted on war casualties ,during this campaign, were different than anything that he has seen before in a war theater and he has seen quite a few conflagrations over the past thirty years. Another Norwegian doctor named DR. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen that “there is a strong suspicion that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons.”

The suspicion as expressed by many medical doctors is the use of what the US Army calls DIME, Dense Inert Metal Explosive. This weapon was originally designed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories to inflict severe damage on people but cause lighter destruction on buildings. Dr. Brommant , a German Doctor , who was also present in Gaza, describes the injuries that he has witnessed by saying that “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” Those who are lucky to survive the initial injuries are most likely to develop RMS a deadly cancer related to the tungsten tiny particles.

Some observers had suspected the use of these weapons in the Lebanon war of 2006 but the intensity was no where close to what took place in Gaza during the first three weeks of January 2009. No one has yet accused the United States military of either deploying or using this type of a deadly weapon either in Iraq or Afghanistan but the question that begs to be asked is: Where did the IDF get these ammunitions from? If it can be shown that Israel has built its own DIME ammunition then we need to find out whether this development is purely coincidental or whether the US military supplied the Israeli government with the plans to build DIMEs. Irrespective of whether Israel bought the weapons from the US or whether they obtained the right to manufacture them the US has clearly acted as a co-conspirator in this case. If it is to be shown that the Israeli forces did use DIME explosives in the Gaza campaign then it would be difficult not to view the US as an active partner in that war. What is even more unconscionable is the idea that the whole Gaza campaign might have been designed in order to test the effectiveness of this new killing device. It is to be noted that DIME weapons are not banned by the Geneva Convention but may I suggest that the weapons have not been banned simply because they have never been used before. Many are confident that once the use of these devices is established then their use will probably be prohibited.

Citizens of good will, the world over, must make their voices heard in order to demand a thorough investigation by the international community in order to establish clearly what weapons were used in Gaza, the origin of these weapons , how was the design for manufacturing them obtained by the IDF and whether the whole Gaza affair was nothing short of a camouflaged operation whose only purpose was to run an immoral and grotesque death experiment. If the above hypothesis can be proven then, paradoxically, Hamas’ naiveté was even deadlier to their Palestinian brethren than what was originally thought.

Source: Yalibnan

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2 rockets fired from Lebanon and 8 from Israel

Beirut – Two rockets were fired from south Lebanon at Israel early Saturday, with one slamming into a mostly Christian Arab village and causing minor injuries to at least one Israeli, reported Lebanese and Israeli officials.

Lebanese security said the rockets were fired from the Mansouri and al-Qulaila areas near the coastal town of Naqoura and said one rocket appeared to have landed in Israel.

An Israeli army spokesman said a woman was injured and the military responded to the rockets. He did not elaborate.

Israeli paramedics in Jerusalem said one rocket landed in northern Israel, causing minor injuries to three people who were taken to a hospital in the nearby coastal town of Nahariya. Israeli censorship rules do not allow media to report where, specifically, rockets fired from Lebanon land in Israel.

The rocket exploded in a mostly Christian, Arab village in the Galilee region, leaving a large groove in the ground next to a house. Drops of what appeared to be dried blood were sprayed on the pavement and shrapnel smashed through a kitchen window, filling the sink with glass.

“I was sleeping when I heard something like a bomb,” local resident Masad, who did not give his last name, told Associated Press Television News. “I got up and saw something unbelievable — a katyusha,” he said, referring to the type of rocket often used by militant groups in south Lebanon.

Around half of the residents of Israel’s hilly Galilee area are Arabs, mostly ethnic Palestinians. During Israel’s war with Lebanon in 2006, their villages were shelled by Lebanese guerillas, killing a number of people.

The Lebanese officials said Israel responded by firing at least six shells on villages in the area where the rockets had been launched. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

A Lebanese army spokesman said Israel fired eight artillery shells on villages in the area where the rockets had been launched. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

There were no reports of injuries in Lebanon.

Panicked residents could be seen fleeing as Israel retaliated.

“My six-year-old girl was terrified,” said Hassan Faqih, 49, as he headed to the nearby coastal town of Tyre with his wife and two children. “We will stay in Tyre if the situation escalates.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora condemned both the rocket attack on Israel and the Israeli retaliation.

In a statement Saturday, Siniora said the rockets fired from south Lebanon “threatened security and stability” in the region and violated a U.N. resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. He also condemned the Israeli firing of shells on Lebanese territory, calling it “an unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”

No one has claimed responsibility for the rocket firing.

The militant Hezbollah group has a large rocket arsenal but is not believed to have used them against Israel since their 2006 war. It has denied involvement in recent rocket attacks on Israel.

Rockets from Lebanon have been fired into Israel on two occasions during Israel’s Gaza offensive last month. Palestinian militant groups are suspected of launching them.

The Syria-based radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command denied the group was responsible for Saturday’s incident and urged Lebanese authorities to find those who carried out the attack.

The firing came a day after the Israeli president chose hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new Israeli government.

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