Espionage in Israel

          

As Arab/Israeli hostilities continue to plague the Middle-East, Arab-Israeli members of Israel's own Golan Heights community cause a breakdown of trust in Israel herself.  

On Tuesday, the Israeli government released information that it had arrested two Israelis-Arabs after months of suspicion that they were spying for the Syrian intelligence agents.  

Charges were filed in a Nazareth court against Fars Shaar, 40, and Said Abu Zid, 57. Both men are residents of Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the northern Golan Heights. The two men were arrested on suspicion of aiding Madhat Salah, a Syrian government official and intelligence officer who is in charge of the Golan Heights region.

Salah, who was formerly a member of the Majdal Shams area, had previously spent time in Israeli prison for offences relating to security. In 1998 Salah successfully snuck through Israel’s border with Syria where he has remained ever since.

Fars Shaar met Salah in prison. While inside, Salah offered Shaar money to kidnap an IDF soldier, an offer Shaar clams to have refused. Shaar was however used by Salah to transfer monetary funds, from Syria, to prisoners, residents of Golan Heights, and their families.   

Shaar’s sister is believed to have served for a time as a contact between her brother and Salah as well as another man, Said Abu Zid. Zid worked as a contact between Salah and Shaar, transferring a letter between them during a trip to Syria.

Last May, two Israeli-Arabs, Amir Makhoul and Omar Radwan Said were arrested for allegedly spying for Hizbullah. Said, who admitted to “working for an illegal organization”, spent seven month in prison.

In August of 2009, another Israeli-Arab, Rawi Sultani, was indicted for conspiring to murder senior Israeli officials. Among the planned victims was IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi. Sultani, who admitted to working for Hizbullah, “was indicted on a number of charges, including contact with foreign agents, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting enemies of the state.”

This information, reported by the Israel National News, seems to be a bit bias in my opinion. I am not sure of the Israeli laws concerning the case, or if Israel shares the American “innocent till proven guilty” principal, but I did notice that though the two men arrested had not yet been convicted, the author speaks of their supposed guilty actions as a matter-of-fact. At a few points in the article the author uses words like “suspicion”, “suspected” and “allegedly”. However, in other parts of the article, when referring to the same “suspected” action, the author presents the material as if it were absolutely true. This causes me to strongly question his bias, and subsequently the factuality of the contents of the article. The article also seems to be focusing on the Arab-Israeli spy community alone. This causes me to also question weather the information in the article is presented in a balanced manor.

Elad Benari is an author I have reviewed before. Previously I found his work to be quite cut-and-dry, with down-the-center, objective reporting and with no apparent bias to the story presented. However, the way he fashioned this article; with its lingering contradictions between alleged actions and seemingly confirmed facts causes me to question his journalistic integrity. I am however open to the idea that there is some process of the Israeli Justice system that I am ignorant to, in which the style of reporting, as displayed in this article, is in accordance with. Although, read by someone such as myself, American with a Western perspective, I am off set by his blurring the lines of supposed and definite guilt.

Israeli Manners

Yom Kippur, (the day of atonement in which Jews around the world will ask their friends and family members for forgiveness for trespasses they have committed in the past year) will take on special meaning this year for Israelis, who will have statistics reinforcing their need for forgiveness.

For the first time ever, the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies (JIMS) conducted a survey to find out which groups among Israelis are the most polite. 992 adult Israelis were interviewed, and asked an array of questions concerning cell phone usage, profane language usage, as well as treatment of senior citizens. Respondents were asked to record their behavior and were ranked on a scale form 0-4 based upon their answers. The average score was 2.94.

The survey found that Men are less polite than women. New immigrants were found to be more polite than native born Israelis. The most polite group was the Ultra-Orthodox with an average score of 3.16. No correlation was found tying politeness to education, marriage, or number of children.

According to Professor Robert Sauer, President of JIMS “The results of the survey are important because it suggests that the public education system in Israel is making a series of disastrous mistakes. The survey shows that there is no correlation between education and politeness, indicating that focusing almost exclusively on improving grades and cognitive skills, does not at the same time succeed in improving non-cognitive skills such as manners, self-control, and persistence. And since the survey shows that income substantially increases with politeness, Israeli employers highly value these non-cognitive skills. In other words, the Israeli education system would do well to switch tracks and devote much more attention to fostering politeness and other non-cognitive skills among the student population.”

JIMS also asked respondents where they encountered impolite behavior the most. JIMS compared the results to a similar survey that had been conducted in the United States. The survey reported that most people encountered rude behavior in shopping centers with a 31 percentile. Second most rude were people at airports and at work with 13 percentile. Lastly, 9 percent encountered rude behavior in their own close environment. Though the percentages were either the same or lower than the US statistics, when it came to rudeness encountered when interacting with government agencies only 19 percent of Americans reported negative encounters compared to 28 percent of Israelis.

The two most common forms of indecency occurred by 78 percent of Israelis experiencing loud talking on cell or public phones and 71 percent experiencing aggressive or inconsiderate drivers while on road.

The research found by Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies as reported by the Israel National News seems on the level as a legitimate and unbiased source. After a brief period of research I found that the University of Pennsylvania awarded JIMS placement in a 2009 study naming the world’s most influential think tanks.  Though the article does not address who exactly was polled I cannot imagine that JIMS would sample anything but a fair portion of the Israeli populous.

Author, Elad Benari, shows a neat discipline in reporting the straight facts of the survey without twisting the poll’s statistics to meet any personal agenda. I found that his article was fair and balanced throughout it’s entirety. At no point in the article did I find any excess information or tangents unrelated to the main point of the article. His treatment of the information in relation to information collected in the US was interesting and kept on an even keel by displaying that both Israeli and US residents had differing strong points of polite behavior in their respective cultures.

Well, this is Tim and I plan on going to israel next sunmmer.
here is a link to an israel newspaper.