Belgium: big big 2003 spy "scandal" revealed - when in doubt blame Israel and Mossad

Big big spy "scandal" ... Follow Peter de Smet's logic: ""It could be Israel, it could be Russia, it could be England or it could be the U.S.", but while "there is no hard evidence" [his hunch is that] the Israeli spy agency Mossad carried out the eavesdropping operation".  Why on earth does he rule out Belgium ? The report states on page 15 that, according numerous sources, the Israeli Interior Ministry is reported to hold a 40% stake in COMVERSE INFOSYS Ltd. and that the Mossad reports to the Interior Ministry [1].  That's big news.  Even Wikipedia knows that Mossad reports to the Israeli Prime Minister. Our own reliable sources have indicated that no Israeli government agency holds stakes in private companies.

Background : EU Observer (Fresh report into 2003 EU spy scandal points to Israel)
Source: UPI.com (Israel possible culprit in EU spy scandal)

A Belgian intelligence committee's best guess is that Israel was behind an old European Union bugging scandal, a member of the panel said Tuesday.

Peter de Smet of Belgium's Standing Intelligence Agencies Review Committee told EUobserver.com that while "there is no hard evidence" the Israeli spy agency Mossad carried out the eavesdropping operation, two people suspected of planting listening devices in the EU member states' headquarters in the mid-1990s had been trained by Comverse. The Israeli telecommunications company allegedly has ties to Mossad.

De Smet said there were only a handful of countries that possessed the "really state-of-the-art listening equipment placed in the Justus Lipsius building in 1993 or 1994.

"It could be Israel, it could be Russia, it could be England or it could be the U.S. -- there you have really the four countries possible, but it will never blow up who did these things," de Smet said. "It will remain a game inside the intelligence services."

The listening devices were discovered by technicians at the Justus Lipsius building in February and March 2003 in sections used by British, French, German and Spanish diplomats, the European Web site said.

Spain denies knowledge of funding PA TV ad calling for boycott of Israeli products

Latest on this :  Spanish government sponsors PA TV ad calling for boycott of all Israeli products

Source: PMW : Israeli Channel 2 TV's evening news opened yesterday with Palestinian Media Watch's exposure of a Palestinian TV public service ad calling for boycott of Israeli products, which was funded by the Spanish Foreign Ministry. The following Spanish government logo appeared as sponsor of the ad:

Text on logo:
"GOBIERNO DE ESPAÑA (Government of Spain)"
"MINISTERIO DE ASUNTOS EXTERIOES Y DE COOPERACIÓN ([Spanish] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation)"
"AECID - Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el el Desaroll (AECID - [Spanish] Agency of International Cooperation for Development)"

Channel 2 reported the following response from the Spanish government:
"'We [the Spanish government] don't know about a broadcast that we funded. The Spanish government logo was used without our knowledge.' Following our inquiry (Channel 2 TV's), the Spanish government has opened an investigation to find out exactly what happened."

The Channel 2 news anchor ended the story telling the viewers:
"When we obtain answers [from the Spanish government], we'll be glad to update you."

The following is the full story from the Israeli Channel 2 TV news:
News anchor: "Good evening. A new broadcast on Palestinian TV calls for a boycott of Israeli products - those produced on both sides of the Green Line. Whoever buys them is an accomplice in the killing of Palestinians, according to the ad. This doesn't come as a big surprise. But our political reporter, Udi Segal, reveals this evening that a partner in the funding of this broadcast, this offensive broadcast, is a European country - the Spanish government."

Political reporter, Udi Segal: "The Palestinian campaign of incitement against Israeli products has reached a new level. Not only products from settlements, [but] anything Israeli is ruled out, according to a public service advertisement on PA TV."

Spanish government sponsors PA TV ad calling for boycott of all Israeli products

Sadly, Europeans - even European Jews - are just not interested.  Spain is facing a terrible economic crisis but the Government will find plenty of money to finance this kind of vile anti-Israel incitement.

Source: Palestinian Media Watch

Last week Palestinian Authority TV started broadcasting an ad promoting the boycott of all Israeli products.

The ad is sponsored by the Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and AECID - the Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development.

The TV ad opens as a Palestinian boy enters a store and overhears a conversation. A customer informs the shopkeeper that "they're plastering the city with advertisements about boycotting Israeli goods." The shopkeeper argues that he has to offer Israeli goods because the Palestinian customers demand it. The customer agrees adding that "Israeli products are better than the local products." (Watch the video HERE)

The shopkeeper then ask the boy him what he wants. The boy looks at the Israeli products in the store and says: "I want Israeli chips." He takes the chips, walks to the door, and then hears gunfire, presumably from Israeli soldiers, and he decides that he will not buy Israeli goods. He looks to each side, drops the chips on the floor, returns to the shopkeeper and says: "I don't want the Israeli product, I want the Palestinian product."

The ad ends with this text on the screen:

"Don't prolong the occupation's life upon our land," while displaying the logo of the Palestinian NGO Health Work Committees, followed by the logos of the ad's sponsors:

"The Spanish government, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and AECID (Spanish governmental humanitarian aid development), ACSUR (a Spanish non-profit organization), and Canaan Joint Development Project for Jerusalem (Palestinian)."

Nazi past of Walter Sommerlath, the Queen of Sweden father

Source: Sweden, Israel and the Jews (Queen Silvia of Sweden—Opponent of Democratic Freedoms?)

On November 28, 2010, the Swedish program “Kalla Fakta” (Cold Facts) on TV4 broadcasted a documentary about the Swedish Queen’s late father, Walter Sommerlath (1901-1990), and his Nazi past. The factual program raised some inconvenient truths—which the queen is now trying to suppress.

Queen Silvia’s father was a German national, who worked in the steel industry in Brazil in the 1920’s. There were many German expatriates in Brazil, and Sommerlath and his brother affiliated themselves with the German Nazi party in 1934. The Sommerlaths joined the National Socialists’ foreign division (NSDAP/AS) in Brazil. In 1938 Sommerlath returned to Germany where he was able, with the help of the National Social Democrats (Nazis), to expropriate a metal factory in Berlin from its rightful Jewish owner, Efim Wechsler. The factory was soon turned into an integral part of the war industry, producing tank parts and anti-aircraft guns for the German army.

Therefore, Queen Silvia’s father was, in fact, an active Nazi sympathizer who made his fortune by acquiring a factory owned by a Jew, Efim Wechsler. Wechsler, having had his property taken away from him by extortion, and left penniless by further Nazis taxes, was then destitute and forced to flee Germany. Perhaps this was new information for Queen Silvia, who has commented previously that “her father’s involvement in Nazism was neither politically active or as a soldier”. In fact she claimed that her father’s factory produced toy trains and hair dryers and civil defense items.

New head of Germany’s Jewish group says Jews ‘must move beyond the role of victims and moral critics’

BERLIN (EJP)---The new head of Germany’s Jewish representative body said Jews must move beyond the role of victims and moral critics in German society.

Dieter Graumann, who was elected in November President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the Financial Times Deutschland : "The role of the victim is not enough, Judaism is much, much more."

"Our community now consists 90% of people who have just come to us in the last 20 years," said Graumann.

"With all due respect to honoring the memories of the millions of Jews murdered during the Holocaust, the Council must also show that we do not always just criticize, that we do not always just correct others," he said.  "That has something to do with us, but that also has a lot to do with the media, who often virtually challenge us to make such statements. We do not always need to serve this need, however," he added.

Graumann, who succeeded Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor, acknowledged that moral outrage had become an established ritual for the Council. The new Council president is the first post-war leader who is not a survivor of the Holocaust.

Censorship In Hungary, by Karl Pfeifer

Source: The Propagandist (Censorship In Hungary, by Karl Pfeifer)

I am told not to be alarmed when I encounter aggressive anti-Semitism in Hungary. After all there exists a vibrant Jewish culture in Budapest and there was hope the “conservative” Fidesz government would curb the development of aggressive anti-Semitism - although it is tolerating the implicit and not so implicit anti-Semitism of some Fidesz journalists at present. But Fidesz is supposed to do this only to attract Jobbik voters. A dim hope indeed, when a random sample of Hungarian media proves the continuing anti-Semitic incitement after the overwhelming victory by Fidesz at local and national levels.

There are the Fidesz politicians who light Chanukah candles and Fidesz media like “ECHO TV” and the Budapest daily “Magyar Hirlap” (both owned by Fidesz millionaire Gábor Széles) who regularly distribute anti-Semitic incitement, often in its crudest form.

One of the arguments for a new media law in Hungary was the anti-Semitism present in Hungarian media. But traditional Nazi propaganda can be legally rehashed and is taken for true by many Hungarians. They consider the Jews who pull the strings behind the scene as the root of evil. The extreme diversity of Jewish existence is taken as proof for the reality of the mythical hate-figure of the extreme right. The intellectual assimilated Jew stands for the despised modernity; the religious Orthodox Jew fits into the traditional image of Christian anti-Semitism; the economically successful Jew stands for the “money-grubbing capital” and liberalism, and the Jewish socialist for abominable “Marxism”.

If you want to understand Hungary in the 21st century, visit Budapest and see the plaque in the military history museum which honors the memory of the Hungarian gendarmes, an organization whose record in the Holocaust is comparable to that of the SS.

The Jerusalem Institute for Global Jewish Affairs has published a remarkable report on anti-Semitism in Hungary by László Molnár in November 2010. I am quoting from the chapter “Anti-Semitism in the Subculture”:

“After the 1990 transition, the quickly emerging extreme-right subculture also strengthened the traditional anti-Roma attitude. A good many neo-Nazi, Hungarist, “nationalist rock” bands came into being in including HunterSS, White Storm, Endlösung, Blood Libel, Power and Vendetta, Romantic Aggression, New Order, Mos-OI, Stoned Cherry, and others. All of these have used extreme racist language and symbols. A song by Mos-OI threatens to turn the country into a “Gypsy-free zone”. It contains the lyrics: “The flamethrower is the only weapon I need to win, all Gypsies, adults and children we will annihilate, but we can kill all of them at once in unison, after it is done we can say it is a Gypsy-free zone.” A song by White Storm proclaims: “Let's exterminate Gypsies!” In their racist outlook, “every Gypsy is a criminal, there is only one solution for them: Auschwitz.... There is a cloud of dust above Poland, where every Gypsy is traveling in the sky.”


These and many other bands perform at illegal concerts and at the infamous Magyar Sziget or Hungarian Island Festival. This year this summer camp for “nationalistic youth” was organized for the tenth time. The camp offers national-heritage competitions featuring archery, animal tracking, runic script, Hun cuisine, as well as family and children's programs and with anti-Semitic and racist lectures that deny the historical Jesus his Jewish identity and talk about “Jewish world conspiracy”.
Read the whole article HERE

Holland: comparing persecuted Jews in the 30s to Muslims today

"Yet if the main threat is revolutionary Islamism and the collapse of national identity, stability, and democracy, then Europe is in a lot of trouble."

Source: Barry Rubin (What's Happening in Europe: Holland As A Case Study on Islam and Israel). Excerpts:

"Another development in Europe, however, is rising antisemitism. Here's an article providing examples of both sympathetic and unsympathetic reactions on the issue by various Dutch figures.

Having reliable statistics at last regarding the number of Muslims in Europe also makes it timely to discuss that issue. The European left often argues that Muslims face imminent persecution and even massive repression. One of the more sophisticated versions of this theme comes from the Dutch Labor Party journalist and intellectual Geert Mak in one of the country's leading newspapers:  "No, in the comparison between Jews and Muslims it's not about deportation and mass-murder. It's about the beginning, about the 1930s, when Jews felt themselves excluded and when it was spoken about them as it is now about Muslims."

Yet how can one deal with this issue without noting the fact that Islamists who are Muslim have committed more than 10,000 terrorist attacks in the last two decades? Or the fact that in many mosques in the West, preachers systematically incite hatred for Jews and Christians? Or that a whole series of special privileges are demanded by local Muslim leaders that break the Western democratic tradition of equal treatment under law? Or that the overwhelmingly main cause of growing antisemitism in Europe comes from the Muslim sector of the population?

Needless to say, Jews in the 1930s weren't doing any of these things. There was not a single incident of violence by Jews against the Christian majority. While Jews were sometimes accused of religiously preaching hatred against Christians, those claims were always false. And far from asking for special privileges, most Jews were trying desperately to assimilate culturally while the rest only wanted to be left alone. If one ignores these differences it is impossible to understand the situation today.

Here's one little detail reported by the French press agency, AFP that provides an ironic example of the problem. A Lebanon-born Swedish citizen named Munir Awad was arrested in Somalia in 2007 and again in 2009 in Pakistan on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The Swedish foreign ministry helped get him freed on both occasions. Awad expressed his gratitude. Now Awad has been again arrested--in Sweden--after participating in a plot to "kill as many people as possible" in an attack on a Danish newspaper that published cartoons he found objectionable.