Saturday, January 24, 2009

Speaking of False-flag Victims, How about the First One? A cute 3-year-old?

How utterly clear it all is to me now, and don't you just hate it that I won't drop it? I do go on.

Where once, the ancient curse I often employ, which I thought was under effect: Everything you touch will turn to shit from here on out busters! (with its sweet corollary as my collateral: Everything you touch dear, precious evolved Steven will turn to gold in your hands.) has been superseded in full, by a new and improved version of the old curse-on-them, what I call the Bernie Madoff: Until you get right with God jerks, everything you touch is going to turn to shit and then cost you another $50 billion, U.S.

I happened to stumble on a credible source in the following article in the Christian Science Monitor, describing the first rocket-attack deaths in Israel, in Sderot, natch, lets get real. After three long years of volleys---then it took a little three-year-old boy as he entered nursery school. As I started to read the piece, I wondered to myself if any truth would rise up noticably to reveal itself. But when I finally got to the relevant passage, the truth jumped up and gave me a big old fat kiss on the lips! Read it and see what you think:

After 200 near misses, Israeli town suffers first fatalities; Palestinian rocket attacks on a town near Gaza Monday killed two Israelis, including a 3-year-old boy.

(WORLD) June 29, 2004 www.highbeam.com
The Christian Science Monitor
June 29, 2004

Byline: Ben Lynfield Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SDEROT, ISRAEL -- For three years, Palestinian Kassam rockets rained down on the area of Sderot, a poor Israeli town near the Gaza Strip. But the primitive missiles seldom hit anything, and never killed anyone - until Monday.

Kassams fired by Hamas militants claimed their first-ever fatalities in Israel, killing two Israelis and injuring 11.

One primitive rocket landed outside the Lilac Nursery School, killing 3-year-old Afik Ohayon, and also taking the life of a 50-year-old man. This new escalation in Gaza is driving home a painful reality here: The transition to a possible Israeli withdrawal in the crowded coastal enclave is to be accompanied not by tranquility but by bloodshed on both sides.

In other violence, late Sunday night, an Israeli soldier was killed and five others wounded near the town of Khan Yunis when their position was blown apart by Palestinian militants who tunneled underneath it. Three Palestinians, including 11-year-old Mohammed al-Shourbaji, were killed and seven others wounded during Israeli army gunfire after the incident.

The rockets touched a raw Israeli nerve, since the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is anxious to avoid the appearance that its moves toward dismantling the 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza is a result of Palestinian pressure. After the rocket firings, Mr. Sharon met with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to weigh a response, and officials warned they will not allow the Palestinians to gain the initiative in the fighting at Sderot's expense.

"The disengagement [from Gaza] will continue as planned, but there will be no withdrawal under fire," a senior official said. Earlier, Sharon announced that compensation to Gaza settlers choosing to leave would be made available immediately instead of in August, as was initially planned.

After previous Kassam firings, the Israeli army has raided the Palestinian border town of Beit Hangout, from which the army said the rockets originated. The army raids have focused on destroying citrus orchards the military says offer cover to the rocket firings, but have also included widespread destruction of factories in what Palestinians consider collective punishments.

Last month, Israeli forces invaded and occupied the southern Gaza town of Rafah, causing heavy casualties, many of them civilians, after five Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush in a border corridor. The army said the operation's aim was to stop weapons smuggling from Egypt.

For Sderot, whose residents include a large Russian immigrant population and many Jews of Moroccan descent, Monday's fatalities mark the realization of a nightmare.

"This is the horrible scenario I have been warning about for three years," says Mayor Eli Moyal. Previously, some 200 Kassam rockets fell in and around the town, he says. But in what residents saw variously as luck or divine intervention they caused only a handful of light injuries, he adds. "We have woken up to a new reality, and we do not know what will happen now," says Mr. Moyal. "The main impact is on people's sense of personal security. Now they will be afraid to send their children to school, to go out to the supermarket, to go out to have a good time or even to go jogging. This impacts every facet of life."

Simcha Revivo, who works at the nursery, says she knew Afik Ohayon, the slain toddler, well because he arrived first among the 35 children every morning, at 7:20 a.m. He would talk to her about his father, cousins, birthday parties, and family celebrations, she recalls. "He was a delightful and very cute boy," she says. Monday, Afik arrived near the entrance to the nursery late, at 8:15, exactly when the Kassam landed. "There was a loud blast, and after it another blast. We brought all the children into the shelter and gave them water to drink and calmed them. I went outside and saw Afik's mother lying on the ground with Afik on top of her. The mother was turning her head around. It seemed as if she could not speak."

About a half mile away, at the corner of Jerusalem and Moshe Dayan Streets, another rocket fell, lightly wounding a man, knocking the electricity out, and paralyzing life for several hours. For all the mayhem it caused, it made only a small physical impact - a crater about a foot deep in the sidewalk.

The explosion blew out supermarket cashier Rosa Sabry's windows and littered her bedroom with glass shards. Her response was immediate: She sent her two daughters, ages 9 and 5, to stay with cousins more than an hour away in the town of Dimona.

"My husband has wanted to leave here for years but I was born here and wanted to stay," she says. "But now the idea of leaving is making more sense. When it enters your home, it changes things."

She said her husband, Yosef, was changing the oil of his car when he heard the whistle of the rocket and moved backward, narrowly missing being injured. "It is a miracle, but you cannot count on always having miracles," she says.

He's watching you now. He sees everything you do.

Is not such a truth self-evident, seen in hindsight, now at least, with all of our subsequent therapy and work? So casually given away in a guileless extended quote as sweet as pie. Knowing now the chances for these over-class manipulations and the management of "situations," will be ever be able to just say things again? Or must we go mute?

I'm sure we could cross reference this date, shortly before June 29th, 2004, correlating it with some heavy politically machinations going on, something necessary to TODDLER MURDER ISREAL! How do you like them fighting words, Livni---you criminelle de guerre?

For it was the child who always came first to the nursery school, who was the special favorite of Miss Teacher, who shared special sharing times with him, the little Afik Ohayon. But it just happened to be that that would be the one day he had to come late, 55-minutes late to be exact, that was the day--that a Palestinian rocket was to land right upon him! Can you say Palestinian, little boy? No? Cause your dead? Fancy the luck of that poor Mr. Madoff!

Doesn't it send a chill down your spine too? And don't you just love, (sotto voce) "the Lilac Nursery School?" And what's up with a mother who is willing to contract for the sacrifice of her own 3-year-old child?!?!?! YUMMERS DEMONS!!

But wait just one minute here! Doesn't something like that also figure as some major episode in that Old Testament Jewish thing too? Something about just being willing to let God's will happen right? With your son spread eagle on the cold stone alter? That turned out all right, didn't it? The right thing happened there huh? Oh gee, thank you, dear Lordy and Master Jehovah!

Such a thing even happened at the Pentagon on 9/11, so I was primed, so there! And what about that later episode, in Sderot?---you know the one, where a youngish boy actually suffered one below the knee amputation from a rocket attack? Wasn't his father also involved, over-acting with his own leg injuries in that same episode too? Were they casting lots for roles?

I like this one even better! Selling a child's parts---but doing it slowly, in bits and pieces, to draw it out! A good liver could go next to a rich Chinese dowager! Do I smell lemon chicken cooking somebody, or matzo ball soup?


"Young Palestinian girls giggle as they are photographed in front of a house at sunset, January 22, 2008"

Nah, nah, nah, nah. nah, nah, nah, nah. Hey, hey...goodbye!
Nah, nah, nah, nah...


BOO!

I see you.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Essential Video from Occupied Palestine



Painful as all heck to watch, but we all must.

Titled: Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See

1,634,387 Views

36,087 Text Comments

What good does it do? How will the madness stop?

I'm just a poor gentile boy, born in Iowa, raised in Tennessee, 30-plus years living in New York, around all the variety of Jewishness contained in the world. And I am so deeply radicalized and ashamed by what's happening. Jews seem clearly trying to bring about the end of the world---it is the only explanation I can think of---and in that, they must make an enemy of me. Let the spiritual warfare begin now. Arm the Vedic missile defense. Check Operation Samson. I'll take on that nasty old man with the white beard any day and I'll trounce him.

All the rest of my intemperate expressions below just got deleted into the recycle bin. I'm feeling better maybe? I'm rooting today for the ones holding the cards. Come on everybody! Play! Lets have some fun!

Monday, January 12, 2009

Beber Vaknin, In Extremis

The magnificent photo essay at boston.com from December 31st, Israel and Gaza, like a subsequent one, Scenes From the Gaza Strip, is singular in many ways beyond making the case for "The Big Picture." Picture Number 23, for instance, is captioned:
A medic crouches over the body of an Israeli man after he was killed in a rocket attack launched from the Gaza Strip and hit the southern Israeli town of Netivot on December 27, 2008 following Israeli bombardment on the Palestinian coastal strip. The rocket attack killed one man and wounded four others, according to the Magen David Adom, Israel's equivalent of the Red Cross. (HAIM HORENSTEIN/AFP/Getty Images)
Although unnamed as being the single fatality in the Netivot attack, the man in the photograph is Beber Vaknin, the reclusive bachelor, who rather than going to his safe room as instructed when a warning red code was sounded, went instead to stand in his apartment doorway, where he was said to have been struck in the heart by shrapnel from a rocket hitting the third-story of an apartment building across the street.

Reconciling that lobby scene of Vaknin's death, with the following photograph, published by Time magazine, said to be the site of the first-ever, third-story missile hit in Netivot, whose shrapnel killed Vaknin standing in his doorway across the street, is next to impossible given that Israel is a theocratic society well within her rights to keep community-wide public relation's secrets---ignoring even, the obvious anomalies surrounding all of these isolated un-attended deaths. But it behooves the rest of the world to dig for the truth because Israel is willing to kill 1,200 souls on trumped up charges of aggression against their state, in my exceedingly humble opinion.

One thing---it goes to show what happens to the powerless in this world, as distinct from the alternate scenarios. It would be useful to have a similar picture of Irit Shitrit published, since we are told that the Magen David Adom, was on the scene at both attacks, then perhaps they journalists were allowed there too. We are told the Vaknin attack wounded four others and I wonder were they in their safe room on the third story of the apartment that was hit, or outside with Vaknin?

Since Hamas in Gaza lacks rockets with long enough range to strike Netivot, we must attribute Vaknin's death to a conspiracy of Israeli officials willing to pick out victims and execute collateral damage within the civilian Jewish population of Israel for political purposes. May God rest Vaknin's soul.

OK. May I call a storyboard continuity resolution meeting please everybody?

If in the Getty image above we are told that Vaknin was D.o.A. in the lobby---um, "
A medic crouches over the body of an Israeli man after he was killed in a rocket attack," is how Haim puts it there, so why we do we see the medics hoofing it outside a short while later as they tear across the walkway? Just look at their feet kick-starting off the ground, and then look at the fat one huff as he hoofs. Are they scared of more rocket attacks maybe? Than why aren't these two guys in short sleeves wearing a helmet like the first guy in a long sleeve undershirt kneeling above is wearing? Speaking of which, go back to that first image and check out the extremely discrete code of a one-color band, either in piping but I've also seen a discrete piece of duck tape used across a bicep on an army nurse who figured into the Father Stephen McGraw medical vignette images from about 9:50am at the Pentagon, taken by Mark Faram. You lose strips in the Magen David Adom as you move up the ladder, but you gain accessories?

If a code, this is to indicate exactly what to whom?

So, what do you think are the chances that the AP reporter who captured the period of Vaknin's expiration, Haim Horenstein, was also on hand two days later to capture the death of Warrant Officer Lutfi Nasraladin from a mortar attack on a military base (some people like to call it a kibbutzim instead) near Nahal Oz---or at least its aftermath, at the Soroka hospital in the Southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva?

"Israeli soldiers wheel an injured comrade at the Soroka hospital in the Southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva on Monday, December 29 after he was wounded by Palestinian rocket fired from the Gaza Strip to the Nahal Oz army base. (Haim Horenstein)"

I wonder...do you think there's any chance that Horenstein could be as ideologically driven and morally corrupt as the hundreds of professional photographers whom I've identified, working in New York City and Arlington, Virginia on September 11th?

Proportionality

An Israeli firefighter stands at the scene of a rocket attack in the southern city of Beersheba, Jan. 11, 2009.

Palestinians inspect a crater caused by an Israeli air strike at a police station in Gaza City on December 29, 2008. MAHMUD HAMS AFP Getty Images


"Beersheba is threatened! Oh me! Oh my!"

This map came with the following distances:

White Line-- Mortar shells – 3 kilometers
Green Line-- 115 mm rockets (Qassam 2) – 6-7 kilometers
Yellow Line-- 90 mm rockets (Qassam 1) – 9 kilometers
Red Line-- 115 mm improved rockets – 11-12 kilometers
Orange Line-- Future Qassam development – 12-14 kilometers
Brown Line-- 122mm standard Katyusha rockets (Grad) – 20.4 kilometers
(JCPA)

As you will notice, even after these many stages of improvements to Hamas' ability to import (smuggle in) professional grade munitions from (Syria? Iran? China? All via Egypt?) a world-class arms exporter, Ashdot is still well out of range of missile fire. Even if the shot that killed Irit Shitrit really came from an independent Hamas opponent of Israel, no gauge munition would be capable of such a shot.

Israel's Transparent Bullshit Justification for Invading Palestinian Gaza


is contained in a report titled, Summary of rocket fire and mortar shelling in 2008, which was put out by the "Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC)" dated: [January] 1 בינואר 2009

Overview:
1. The year 2008 saw the peak of rocket use by Hamas and the other terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip. Last year, the terrorist organizations managed to significantly increase the scope of rocket attacks. They gradually put nearly one million Israeli civilians living in the south (about 15 percent of the entire population) within the range of the rockets, and posed a security challenge to Israel, prompting it to launch Operation Cast Lead.

2. Rocket fire and mortar shelling first started in 2001, gradually becoming the major threat posed by the Palestinian terrorist organizations, which consider it an asymmetrical, simple, cheap, and reliable solution to Israel’s military superiority. The rockets, while still having their share of problems and shortcomings, in the terrorists’ view, allow them to disrupt the lives of Israeli civilians within the range of fire, destabilize their social fabric, override the security fence built by Israel along the Gaza Strip, and create a kind of balance of terror that makes it difficult for Israel’s security forces to conduct counter-activities and reflects the terrorist policy
of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

3. Following are three major characteristics of the use made by Hamas and the other terrorist organizations of rockets during 2008 (see chapter on statistical data for details):
a. A dramatic increase in the extent of rocket fire and mortar shelling despite the six months long lull in the fighting: in 2008, the peak year of rocket fire and mortar shelling, a total of 3,278 rockets and mortar shells landed in Israeli territory (1,750 rockets and 1,528 mortar shells). That is a significant increase compared to 2007 (the number of landings in 2008 more than doubled) and compared to the previous years of the Palestinian terrorist campaign.

b. A significant increase in the number of Israeli residents exposed to rocket fire within 40 km of the Gaza Strip: before 2008, the city of Sderot (about 20,000 residents) as well as villages around the Gaza Strip were the preferred target of rocket fire and mortar shelling. In 2008, other cities and hundreds of thousands of Israelis gradually entered the circle of fire: first the cities of Ashkelon and Netivot, and later, during Operation Cast Lead, Ashdod, Beersheba, and other cities within a range of 40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. The rocket attacks created a new reality in which nearly one million Israeli residents (about 15 percent of the entire population) are exposed to rocket fire and mortar shelling in various levels of intensity.

c. A significant improvement in the effectiveness of rockets and mortar shells possessed by Hamas and an increase in their quantity: in 2008, Hamas put into use 122-mm Grad launchers (for ranges of 20.4 km and approximately 40 km) and standard 120-mm mortars, which were smuggled into the Gaza Strip (in our assessment, from Iran). Those standard rockets and mortars, significantly different from self-manufactured rockets and mortars, not only increased the range of fire but also increased its effectiveness. That is a result of increasing the rockets’
warhead size and their fragmentation. As for the mortars—the standard 120-mm mortars are more precise and their range is greater than that of the other mortars possessed by Hamas and the other terrorist organizations.

4. The quantity of rockets held by Hamas and the other terrorist organizations has also increased, currently reaching, in our assessment, a constant supply of several hundred self manufactured 90 and 115-mm rockets and an unknown quantity of self-manufactured long-range rockets capable of attaining greater ranges (up to 19 km). Also, we assess that Hamas has dozens of standard long-range Grad rockets (122-mm) with a range of 20.4 km and a range of approximately 40 km, smuggled into the Gaza Strip through the tunnels in the Rafah region, some during the lull in the fighting.

5. As a result of the rocket and mortar shell fire, eight people were killed in 2008, four of them during Operation Cast Lead.1 During that operation, 58 people were injured as a result of rocket and mortar fire, 10 of them moderately and severely (as at December 31, 2008). Also, several dozen civilians were injured as a result of the rocket fire in 2008 (prior to Operation Cast Lead), and several hundreds suffered stress-related traumas. The number of fatalities, injuries, and stress-related traumas in 2008 is added to the number of casualties in the previous years of the confrontation (2001-2007): 10 civilians were killed, 434 were wounded, and thousands of civilians suffered from anxiety, shock, and various traumas as a result of the fire. The continuing fire of rockets and mortar shells has a severe, cumulative psychological effect on the population, causing severe damage to its social structure and severe damage to its feeling of safety. The fire also disrupts the efforts to promote a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians (the Annapolis process) by creating a lasting 1 In 2008, 21 people were killed as a result of terrorist attacks originating in the Gaza Strip, out of 31 killed as a result of terrorist attacks during that year (Summary of 2008 by the Israel Security Agency). reality of rocket fire and counter-measures by Israel, which reached their peak in Operation Cast Lead.

The rest of the report consists of charts of statistical data based on "complimentary studies," for which links are not provided:
"To complete the data and analysis in this document, one can draw upon four fundamental papers written by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in 2008:

a. Rocket threat from the Gaza Strip, 2000-2007 (December 2007)
b. Hamas’s military buildup in the Gaza Strip (Updated April 2008)
c. Anti-Israeli Terrorism in 2007 and its Trends in 2008 (May 2008)
d. The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement (December 2008)"

This escalation of threat levels to new "large Israeli cities exposed to rocket fire," is totally and completely false. It is a made up lie by the powers-that-be to try and vilify the nearly inconsequential Palestinian opposition to Jewish occupation of their land by lobbing home-made mortars over the border. Suddenly, one million Israelis were under threat of rocket attack:
Ashdod 208,900
Beersheba 186,800
Ashkelon 110,000
Kiryat Gat 47,900
Rahat 43,300
Yavne 32,300
Netivot 26,100
Ofakim 24,700
Kiryat Malachi 19,700
Sderot 19,400

The truth is that under 50,000 settlers in cities like Sderot and surrounding areas have been under the shocking threat of un-aimed firecracker-explosive-like munitions. This is the response since 2001 from a powerless and exploited people to the theft of their homeland. Many of the people of Gaza came literally from the farms and villages now occupied by Zionist settlers whom they engage in this fashion. Ultimately, that engagement can be said to be effective since it has brought us to this day that God gave us.

Every one of these rocket attacks since December 27th, including the three supposed fatalities, is a false-flag, self-dealt blow, a public relations stunt, a self-terrorizing ploy by Israeli leaders to traumatize their own citizens. I can have nothing but compassion for the average Israeli who in the face of lies of this magnitude have responded like sheep as they were told too.

To attribute to Chinese manufacture these new rockets with a range up to 40-km, is a demonstrable and provable lie. The international arms community is organized and qualified enough to uphold the truth of this without accusations of "black market" smuggling or subterfuge. In fact, that the Sichuan Aerospace Industry Corporation, would even set out to make a new munition like the WS-1E rocket, saying it "is compatible with legacy 122mm rockets"---in other words, it is the same small, lightweight, hand-carried instrument, which is the most advanced weapon used by Hamas in Gaza, only with twice the range---is evidence of Israeli and United States involvement at the highest levels of the military-industrial complex. This is the manufacture of reality, not weaponry.


Israel states unequivocally within this report that a rocket which landed near Gan Yavne on December 28 was the Chinese made WS 1-E, but globalsecurity.org states just as unequivocally, that "The WS-1 series weapon system did not enter PLA service, and has not received any orders from foreign customers," stating,
"The WS-1E is compatible with legacy 122mm rockets. Each rocket is 2.94 meters in length, weighs 74 kg, carries a18 or 22 kg warhead, and is capable of engaging targets located at ranges between 20 and 40 kilometers. The WS-1E is the 122mm multiple rocket system developed by SCAIC as a successor to the PLA’s current Type 81 122mm rocket system. It is similar to the Type 90 122mm rocket system, but did not enter production."
This is clear proof that the whole story of new rockets with a range between 20-km and 40-km is an an elaborate hoax put out by Israeli psychological-warfare operators, and the scores of actual missiles which may, or may not, have landed in these advanced areas, were launched by Israel itself, in a false-flag bid for sympathy and justification for attacking Gaza.


This a psychological warfare conceit, for some reason didn't pan out.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Israel Fakes Rocket-Fire Fatalities in Order to Launch Offensive Against Palestinians

For years there were no fatalities in Israel from the thousands of rockets fired over the border from Gaza, but after the Israeli Defense Forces launched a major offensive on December 27th against the Hamas militants responsible for the missiles, suddenly Hamas "got lucky," killing four people in Israel in three days.

But---Cui bono---it was Israel who needed Jewish fatalities to justify its aggression against the Palestinians of Gaza, and I submit an examination of the public record, along with a little common sense, will prove that Israel either faked these deaths or was actually responsible for the killings themselves.

In an interview with the Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua conducted by Todd Hasak-Lowy, a professor of modern Hebrew literature at the University of Florida, and first published at JBooks.com in June 2006. The deeply sensitive and aware Yehoshua said:
"Saddam Hussein's 40 Scuds in the Gulf War and all the Kassem rockets that have been fired at Israel since the withdrawal from Gaza haven't killed a single Israeli civilian."
I had suspected that this, or something close to it, was the truth, but I lacked the ability to verify the fact, or the moral or intellectual authority to express it to any purpose. But what I could help with is acting lessons.

An Israeli perspective is found on a timeline put out by the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C., which says that "since December 27, four Israelis have been killed by rocket and mortar fire from Gaza."

Dec 27, 2008 - Beber Vaknin, 58, of Netivot was killed when a rocket fired from Gaza hit an apartment building in Netivot.

Dec 29, 2008 - Hani al-Mahdi, 27, of Aroar, a Beduin settlement in the Negev was killed when a Grad-type missile fired from Gaza exploded at a construction site in Ashkelon. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 29, 2008 - Irit Sheetrit, 39, of Ashdod was killed and several wounded when a Grad rocket exploded in the center of Ashdod. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 29, 2008 - Warrant Officer Lutfi Nasraladin, 38, of the Druze town of Daliat el-Carmel was killed by a mortar attack on a military base near Nahal Oz.

We will have to exclude the death of the combatant Nasraladin as being unverifiable, since it supposedly occurred behind the insurmountable veil of secrecy which covers all military force actions. But we may ask, why, if he was stationed at a military base near Nahal Oz beside the Gaza border, he would succumb to mortar attack? I should think if anyone, he would have been prepared for it. And we may assume that he was a non-Jewish member of the IDF, given that his hometown isn't one that has "Rightists buying housing in Druze town to boost Jewish population."

"Israeli President Shimon Peres (L) meets the family of Warrant Officer Lutfi Nasraladin, January 4, 2009"

Is it me, or does this scene look artificial and contrived---with no adults relating to each other, on any level? I bet this family is going to get more than the $2,500 handout given to the family of a suicide bomber. (What! That's not even a handbag!) If they're lucky, they'll get some of that good New York, 9/11 money---maybe $1.5 mil to start?

Likewise, the death of Muslim Hani al-Mahdi, along with the wounding of a dozen low-skilled Muslim workers at a construction site in Ashkelon is suspicious both for its isolated nature and its non-Jewish victims. It would be just as easy to plant a bomb at a construction site, and then claim one of the "new and improved" Grad rockets fired from Gaza had done the trick.

But the real giveaway for me is in the official pegging of the "Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack," label here. Hamas has no way of monitoring or recording what effects its direction-less and unguidable missiles achieve at such a distance. In this way, the vastly technologically superior Israeli projects his own state of awareness and oversight onto the enemy. Hamas appears glad to accept whatever responsibility Israel cares to bestow on it for the havoc and destruction visited upon southern Israel, such is the powerlessness and despair of the Palestinians.

The first Jewish victim was killed on the opening day of Israel's assault, Saturday, December 27, and in one of the earliest report I could find, still datelined Dec. 27, 2008, he is described thusly:
The Yeshiva World » Netivot Victim Identified as Beber Vaknin... The victim of the fatal Shabbos rocket attack in Netivot has been identified as Beber Vaknin, 58, a male, not a female as was reported by authorities earlier on motzei Shabbos. Vaknin, a bachelor, was unable to reach the bomb shelter on time. IDF Homefront Command officials report that Netivot officials have 30 second from the sounding of the siren until impact, twice the time of Gaza-belt and Greater Sderot Area residents who are located much closer to the Gaza border.
A report at 6:35pm GMT, on Sunday, December 28th, had this to say
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Rocket attacks plague Israeli towns
Beber Vaknin's heart was pierced by shrapnel from a rocket strike.
Israeli residents of communities close to Gaza have faced a wave of rocket fire from Palestinian militants in response to Israel's air strikes in the Strip.
Some 150 rockets and mortars have been fired, most of them on Saturday, since Israel launched its assault, killing one person and injuring about 12.
On Sunday residents of the southern town of Netivot buried Beber Vaknin, 58.
The metal worker was standing at the entrance of his apartment on Saturday when a rocket struck the third floor of the building across the street. Shrapnel pierced his heart.
Photos showed a hole in one of the building's walls, which was pocked with shrapnel marks.
The best image of Mr. Vaknin available on the web.

The second best image of Mr. Vaknin available on the web.
(Any reason why photos of the dead Jews, like Mr. Vaknin and Irit Shitrit are available only in such low-resolution? Not a very honorific way to handle the dearly departed, unless, of course, they weren't really departed.)

A video on YouTube records a newscast in Hebrew :YouTube - Deadly Qassam attack on the Israeli city of Netivot

The subtitled English translation of the Hebrew-speaking newscaster reads: "Beber Vaknin was an alone man, orphan of his parents and childless. From all others he is the first victim of the Qassams in Netivot. His funeral was short due to the security concern. His family members mourned the tragic way he was killed." Then a woman identified as Eti Amir, "sister of Berber Vaknin of blessed memory," speaks: "It hurts me, it goes to my heart that it happened to him and that I wasn't there next to him, to caress him in his last breath. It hurts me a lot, it drives me crazy when I'm thinking about it."


Do you see the unintended irony in her reference to her heart, and the crazy talk? But a major article in The Jerusalem Post reports that Vaknin had no sister:
Kassam shrapnel kills Netivot man In Netivot, 58-year-old Beber Vaknin was killed on Saturday and five people were wounded - one seriously - when their house was hit by a rocket. All the wounded were evacuated to Beersheba's Soroka Hospital. "After the first rocket landed, people wanted to see what had happened," one of Vaknin's neighbors told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday night. "He went outside to look around when the rocket hit, and he was killed by the shrapnel. The medics said the shrapnel pierced his heart." Vaknin was unmarried and held a clerical position in the southern town. "He was a solitary, elderly guy," the neighbor continued. "He has brothers, one here in Netivot, but otherwise, he didn't have any family." By Abe Selig, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 27, 2008 VIDEO
Unless there was a second rocket attack this story makes no sense, and it only makes sense that Vaknin didn't go to his safe room because no one anticipated Netivot being struck.

The following photograph was published in Time Inc., and it is described as being a "a hole in the 3rd-story wall" from an attack in Netivot. Apparently this is the attack that Israel claims took Vaknin's life, while he was standing in his doorway across the street.

A more logical argument would have Vaknin succumbing to a heart attack, or even a fatal injection into his heart muscle in order to cause death. As a low-key, life-long bachelor with few family connections nearby, he made for an ideal sacrifice.

Vaknin was the first rocket or mortar casualty in Netivot, supposedly representing a dramatic escalation in Hamas' ability to lob longer-range missiles into Israel---but here is the central absurdity, given the IDF's overwhelming military superiority and its total lockdown on the Gaza strip (is Hamas supposedly bringing in scores of these 122-millimeter missiles from Iran through tunnels under the Egyptian desert? Surely those tunnels should be the target of the IDF sorties then, using U.S.-made bunker-buster munitions if need be.)
Rocket kills Netivot man, six wounded - Haaretz - Israel News Residents of Netivot, which until now been largely left outside the cycle of violence, were united in their support of Israel's offensive. "We have the faith that the IDF will carry out its job," a resident said.
But that doesn't stop Israeli sources from reporting this absurdity with a straight face, and nowhere in the media is a skeptical report found.
Four Israelis Killed in Rocket Fire from Gaza
In the past two weeks, over 500 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, hitting targets surrounding the Gaza Strip, including Sderot, Ashkelon, and the Eshkol, Sha'ar HaNegev, and Sedot Negev Regional Councils. In response to the increased rocket fire, the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday began aerial attacks on Hamas military and political installations in the Gaza Strip in a continuing campaign that has been codenamed "Operation Cast Lead". Since the operation was launched on Saturday midday, Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have begun launching longer-range GRAD rockets – 122mm rockets that have the range and firepower of Katyushas employed by Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War. Rather than a range of 8-10 km of smaller Kassams, or 10-14 km of the newer and improved Kassams, the GRADS have a range of up to 40 km, giving them the capability of hitting larger population centers at a greater distance, such as Netivot, Ofakim, Kiryat Malachi, Kiryat Gat, Ashdod, Yavne, Gedera, and even the edge of Rehovot. A GRAD rocket landed in Netivot on Saturday afternoon, killing 58-year-old Beber Vaknin as he sought refuge in the doorway of an apartment building.
The Irish Times newspaper published the photograph above with the caption:
"A grief-stricken friend of Beber Vaknin, killed by a rocket fired by Palestinian militants on Saturday, during his funeral in the southern Israeli town of Netivot yesterday.
Photograph: Photograph: AP/Ariel Schalit"

Typical of a second-rate newspaper like the Irish Times to fail to get the name and identification of such a prominently featured mourner. It is sad the way the newspaper fails journalism and us.

The Washington Post, on the other hand, did a graceful front-page piece on December 29th, by Sudarsan Raghavan and Islam Abdel Kareem, Food and Medical Supplies Grow Scarce in the Gaza Strip, with the only cogently put explanation of Vaknin's death:
"Nearly 150 people gathered to pay their last respects to Beber Vaknin, 58, a reclusive bachelor. On Saturday afternoon, two hours after Israel launched its attacks on Gaza, he had stepped outside his apartment just as a rocket crashed into the building next door; the shrapnel instantly killed him."

"Some of those attending had mixed feelings about the attacks. They fondly remembered the days when they coexisted with Palestinians, often traveling to Gaza to eat lunch and visit friends.

"I don't feel great. I don't feel bad," said Tamar Vaknin, Beber's sister-in-law. "I say to myself, 'They are poor people'. It's a shame. I want things to be different."

"Others wanted Israel to escalate their attacks and invade Gaza again.

"I hope the Israeli army will not stop," said Mordechai Amar, 48, a family friend. "They should stop the terror. In order to win, you need the ground operation."

The funeral was kept short because everyone worried about incoming rockets."
Yeah, right. In the city that had never been hit before. Suddenly, everyone is up to speed.
_____________________________________________________

The second supposed Jewish fatality also occurred in a town never before struck by a Hamas rocket, but rather than being a town only 15 kilometers away from the Gaza border like Netivot, this virgin territory is a town 35 kilometers away---Ashdot. [for distances see: www.israelforum.com/board/archive/index.php/t-5...]

Haaretz reported that "Hamas missiles first hit near Ashdod on Sunday. Monday's attack marked the first time the city suffered casualties from missiles." So things are developing rapidly.

According to this map from the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Ashdot is not within range for the best 122-mm Grad rockets that Hamas currently possess.

But on a page at globalsecurity.org they just change the map ever so slightly. While they can't get the stories straight---is this new rocket with twice the range, of Iranian manufacture, or Chinese?---they still simply call it a "standard" 122-mm rocket, but which now miraculously has twice the range and can threaten twice as much of Israel! And Hamas doesn't unleash this new weapon system they had tucked away until after Israel launched its offensive. Then, these new rockets have the luck of the Irish, striking and killing multiple targets.



Israel states unequivocally that a rocket which landed near Gan Yavne on December 28 was the Chinese made WS 1-E, but globalsecurity.org states just as unequivocally, that "The WS-1 series weapon system did not enter PLA service, and has not received any orders from foreign customers," going on to add,
"The WS-1E is compatible with legacy 122mm rockets. Each rocket is 2.94 meters in length, weighs 74 kg, carries a18 or 22 kg warhead, and is capable of engaging targets located at ranges between 20 and 40 kilometers. The WS-1E is the 122mm multiple rocket system developed by SCAIC as a successor to the PLA’s current Type 81 122mm rocket system. It is similar to the Type 90 122mm rocket system, but did not enter production."
This is clear proof that the whole story of new rockets with a range between 20-km and 40-km is an an elaborate hoax put out by Israeli psychological-warfare operators, and the scores of actual missiles which may, or may not, have landed in these advanced areas, were launched by Israel itself, in a false-flag bid for sympathy and justification for attacking Gaza.

This leads me to believe that this story of an upgrade to Hamas', or the PTA's,"legacy" 122-mm rockets, with their new ability to target twice as deep within Israel, was long in the planning stages, including its development at the Sichuan Aerospace Industry Corporation, but likely to have been purely an Israeli or Western initiative---a psychological warfare conceit, which for some reason didn't pan out.

So whatever forced Israel's hand into launching its December offensive into Gaza, the intended extended-range missile product launch wasn't ready or in place. Combine these false-flag rocket attacks with four transparently faked deaths, two of whom would be impossible to reach without the new rockets, and these "truths" fall apart under the slightest examination. This is a clear and major defeat for Israel in the psy-opt war front.
Rockets fired from Gaza kill 2 Israelis within hour - Haaretz Israeli News Dec. 30, 2008
One Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed in a mortar strike in a western Negev base, and another was seriously wounded. Four others were lightly hurt in the attack. The other fatality occurred when a woman got out of her vehicle when she heard the early warning siren in the city of Ashdod, and sought shelter in a bus stop on the side of the road. She sustained critical shrapnel wounds, and later died.
Another passerby who also ducked into the bus stop for shelter suffered serious injuries in the attack. Three people were lightly hurt in Ashdod, which is situated some 35 kilometers from the Gaza border.
Hamas missiles first hit near Ashdod on Sunday. Monday's attack marked the first time the city suffered casualties from missiles, as Israel concluded a third day of aerial assaults on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.

see: Beber Vaknin, In Extremis

see: Israel's Transparent Bullshit Justification for Invading Palestinian Gaza

The Euphonic Irit Shitrit

The photograph above is captioned:
"The father and husband of 39-year-old Israeli Irit Shitrit mourn over her body during the funeral procession in the southern coastal Israeli city of Ashdod on December 30, 2008. Shitrit was killed last night during a Palestinian rocket attack on Ashdod. Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, said the Ashdod blast was caused by a Grad-type rocket with a range of 25 miles. (AFP/Getty)"
I think it is very telling that even the Israelis sought out some independently credible verification that the "blast" that supposedly took Ms. Shitrit's life was caused by a "Grad-type rocket," but since when is it the Red Cross's job to determine the range of missiles? Such criminal forensic is routinely done all over the world---usually by police or military investigators. That a Jewish human-rights organization is tasked with making a determination such as this is strange in the extreme.

This is the bus stop where Irit Shitrit supposedly died, and where her sister, Aylet, was seriously wounded, along with some four other, um, people---somewhere. Here the bus stop is put back in shape with a light, once-over cleanup with a squirt of Fantastic.

The jamd web site, where I found the following Getty image by the photographer with the great name, Uriel Sinai, Reference# 84142764 gets my amateur editorial use, baby, describes the picture as:
ASHDOD, ISRAEL - DECEMBER 30: (ISRAEL OUT) Israelis inspect a scene near a bus station where Irit Shitrit (39) mother of 4, was killed by a Hamas rocket strike yesterday, on December 30, 2008 in Ashdod about 30 KM south of Tel Aviv Israel. The Israeli Air Force continued its strike of the Hamas ruled Gaza Strip for a fourth consecutive day, killing 307 Palestinians in the air raids, as Israel prepared to launch a possible invasion. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
This had me very worried, because apparently, with some Hamas rockets, not the cute little ones that don't even blow up their own little tail fin parts---and a rocket that can't even blow itself up is hardly going to lead to anything other than over-acting; nor the kind that can blast through a foot of thick rebar-reinforced concrete, like the Dec 29, 2008 one that did in Hani al-Mahdi at a construction site in Ashkelon; no, I'm talking about the ones that spew out the deadly 100-meter spray of ball bearing shrapnel, which apparently this photograph intended to indicate pock-marked this Jungle-Gym. I didn't know how I could possibly counter an open air possibility such as this, where shrapnel could behave like fairy dust marking where, and only where it chose. Why Irit sought out a swing set for protection afforded me scant logical credit in the conflicted atmosphere anti-Semitism gave off.

So it was a gift from my higher-power, a source I tend to refer to as God on the good days, for giving me likes of this obscure Edi Isreal image with what might, but then again, might not, be Irit's blood stain, which would indicate she died within the confines of a metal-mesh open-air weather hut, avec bench. I am on a new kick now. I'm telling every Nevgav nut job I can that they should simply relocate to the leeward side of any building or structure that might offer protection against the consistently and only omni-directional attack pattern in history of warfare, and I mean that as, omni-omni---from only one direction and only on one plane, factoring in the 25-mile range and arc stuff and such. But I should cut Irit Shitrit some slack, since rockets only had made it as far as Ashdot on the day before, so this could very well have been only her first or second red-alert hussle. But again---if Gaza were to my left facing this picture, I would have squeezed down between that curb and that Lincoln. Only saying.

Benjamin Netanyahu came to pay a visit here with foreign journalists and his web site has this to say:
Beginning of tour - Ashdod 11:00

The tour began with an introductory meeting with the press representatives who assembled in the city hall of Ashdod. However, the tour had really begun a few moments earlier, when a siren was heard, followed by two 'Grad' missiles which smashed into a neighborhood in Ashdod and in the nearby village of Shetulim. Netanyahu thanked Ashdod mayor, Yehiel Lassry, who volunteered to guide the group from city hall to the location where the missiles had landed. Netanyahu emphasized the importance of this kind of tour on a day like today: "This is an opportunity to explain to a global public the kind of terror the citizens of Israel are currently living under", said Netanyahu, "we will now go to the site where they landed and then continue to Ashkelon, a city which has also been the target of more than a few attacks".

On a small hill in a public garden

The journalists hurried back to the bus, which followed Netanyahu's car to the place where the missiles had fallen in Ashdod. There, next to a bus station, Ashdod resident Irit Shitrit, was killed yesterday by a Grad missile as she ran to find shelter. Netanyahu stood on a hill not far from the deserted bus station.
Nothing in the quiet green garden hinted at the horror that had taken place there just a few hours earlier. "It gives you an understanding of what is going on here", Netanyahu told the journalists, "Tens of thousands of children in Israel are not going to school, hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians live under constant terror".One of the journalists made her way to the front of the group: "Hundreds of Palestinians are being killed now. Is the IDF operation proportional at all?". "While the terrorists hide behind civilians in order to increase the number of casualties", answered Netanyahu, "we are trying as much as we can to decrease the number of civilian casualties. Calculating events according to this standard will lead you to the conclusion that Britain was wrong and Germany was right in the Second World War, since the number of British bombing victims was much smaller than number of the Germans hit in retaliatory raids". From the hill, the group proceeded to the bus station where Shitrit had tried to find shelter. The small booth could not provide her sufficient protection from the powerful blast of the Grad missile. "Mrs. Shitrit sat here, the missile went through the metal and hit her", explained Netanyahu to the foreign journalists. "If a siren were to be heard now, we would have 40 seconds to get to a secure space. Since this bus station is not a secure space, as of now you will not be able to get to a secure space even if you were Olympic runners".
This is absurd on so many levels---first, because this city had never been under threat of rocket attack before---and I got to ask: What happened? If it were under legitimate threat, would the journalists caravan around at will? What prevented a siren going off and an incoming missile attack?

Actually, it's time that I demand somebody, like maybe the Chinese manufacturer, or the Islamisist importers, had better put on a display of these new rockets capibilities---their range, power and new-fangled directability. That's sometimes called a trade show gentlemen. I used to have friends who launched model rockets off in parks and I trust them more now than any Israeli sources.

And how about this conundrum: if Hamas isn't shooting off those new 25-mile range rockets, why don't they deny such? What is the interface between Hamas and western media (for whatever they're worth?)

A web site which attempts to debunk Israeli responsibility for what befell that Palestinian family on the Gaza beach one day in 2006, says of a slightly larger munition, a 155-mm tank shell, that it would leave a crater 4.5 meters wide and 1.75 meters deep, but in Ashdot, there is rarely scatter pattern even.

Rockets fired from Gaza kill 2 Israelis within hour
By Amos Harel and Yanir Yagana, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service, and Reuters
Two Israelis were killed Monday evening as Gaza militants pelted southern Israel with rockets and mortar shells, as Israel concluded its third day of aerial assaults on the Gaza Strip.

One Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed in a mortar strike in a western Negev base, and another was seriously wounded. Four others were lightly hurt in the attack.

The other fatality occurred when a woman got out of her vehicle when she heard the early warning siren in the city of Ashdod, and sought shelter in a bus stop on the side of the road. She sustained critical shrapnel wounds, and later died. Another passerby who also ducked into the bus stop for shelter suffered serious injuries in the attack.

Three people were lightly hurt in Ashdod, which is situated some 35 kilometers from the Gaza border.
Haaretz and Reuters got their facts wrong. It was Irit's sister, not some "passerby" who supposedly "suffered serious injuries in the attack." Surely that important fact adds to the human-interest drama of the story. I need to retrace Irit's sister Aylet's last name, which I have somewhere, so I can do some really deep Googleing on her. See hows she's mending and all.

Name of Ashdod Rocket Victim Released
Reported: 00:31 AM - Dec/30/08
(IsraelNN.com)
The woman killed in the Grad rocket attack on Ashdod Monday night was 39-year-old Irit Shitrit, a resident of the city.

According to Ynet, Irit and her sister had just finished a fitness workout and were driving home when the Color Red missile alert sounded. Following the instructions given out by security personnel, Irit got out of the car to seek cover when the rocket delivered its fatal blow. Her sister was also seriously wounded.

Their mother said that one of her daughters managed to notify her husband that they had been hit. Irit's husband was already in mourning. His mother died a month ago.
And from The Yeshiva World:
"Irit Sheetrit HY”D, 39, did the correct thing. She heard the siren, stopped her vehicle and headed to the bus stop for shelter. She was traveling together with her sister. The two spent the day together."

The sirens were heard in Ashdod at shortly after 9:00pm. Irit stopped and together with her sister, ran for cover, realizing they must find shelter. The 122mm Katyusha rocket slammed into the bus stop and she was gravely injured and died en route to Kaplan Hospital in Rechovot. Her sister remains in serious condition."
Here is Irit's sister Aylet at her funeral, we are told, her keens belying the seriousness of her medical, if not emotional condition.

My supposition is that the 39-year-old mother of four, Irit Shitrit, is yet another false flag victim rendered into a new identity in some upstate New York closed community of orthodox Hasidim, perhaps to undergo facial plastic surger,y but not necessarily so, awaiting a reconciliation with her family members after some determined period of time, sufficient to a "cooling-down" period, thereafter to live with "her little secret," in her community, which also shares in the little white lie with the graet big public relations value, which everybody is only too eager to keep along with her in Jewish solidarity.

The falsity and the mendacity is apparent to me in the photographs of her father, brother and husband who never show their faces in any of the images I have found---until I wrote that, that is! . Perhaps I am culturally deficient in some facet of the expression of Jewish grief, but I don't think so. I know cultures that have paid mourners putting on big shows at funerals, although I prefer buying six handsome ushers myself and then get to whispering. But what we see here is not the truth, it is the un-truth. The non-cola. This is the get real.


Boo, hoo, hoo, hoo.
This level of Jewish manipulation and control in the formation of reality is infinitely deeper and more malicious than the sort of agent provocateur behavior, which used to constitute the outside limit one hazarded. Like at the watchdog site, C.A.M.E.R.A, which poo-poos such talk like this:
"In perhaps the most absurd example of denying reality, Ahmed Yousef, an advisor to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, alleged that Israel employs collaborators to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians."
Its awful to come to the conclusion that every word out of these mouths is a lie. This certainly doesn't represent all Jews. It is only that fraction for whom any means to an end is suitable, laudable even. Evolved and evolving Jewish souls will have to separate out from this sort of madness by first calling it by it's correct name.

We all choose what truth to believe in. You could believe the statistics about casualties from Palestinian rocket attacks contained in this web site:
Rocket and Mortar Fatalities in Israel - The Israel Project
Total Deaths from Qassams and Mortars within Israel and in the former Israeli Settlements in Gaza including Israelis, Palestinians and Foreign Workers: 25 Total Deaths from Qassams and mortars within Israel: 17

What has occurred since July of 2006 likely has served Israeli purposes solely. Like the tiresome overacting this young woman affects. Is this one of Shitrit's four children? If so, how unbecoming. And since we are on to the tactic now, we're going to have to have open caskets, like the Palestinian infants and toddlers, whose ashen faces we see unenshrouded at funerals.

Actually, this body bag seems to have changed shape. It doesn't look like it contains a human form anymore. Is that the Rabbi checking below?


Wikipedia has the 10th protocol of the Elders of Zion, as "Staging catastrophes against one's own people, then claiming a moral high ground for leverage (False flag)" but that's not my reading of the forgery. However, like Machiavelli's tome, the Protocols should be required reading for every awakening individual who claims to understand human nature, as foul as that can be sometimes. The whole former structure of the clandestine and the covert is coming to an end now, I believe.

This crowd would constitute a conspiracy in my book. Lots of front-line Zionists banding together, justifying the ends.

Truth and justice will win out in the end. The web site, dictatorshipwatch.com, is so satirically wonderful that I shall forever love them. It took a rabid blog posting by a sweetheart named Katie at http://www.digitaljournal.com/blog/1665, and spins that little c**t on her ear, (if that's not mixing my metaphors.) But such efforts help us recognize the good Jews from the bad Jews---the perpetrators, and not the victims, as they style themselves.

It never occurred to me that when Israel withdrew its settlers from the Gaza strip, that they would lay waste to the infrastructure, leaving nothing behind, more than the outlines of the former crescent streets. Where I come from such a thing is profoundly immoral, akin to wasting food while others are starving. How would it have hurt the Israelis to have given their Semitic brothers and sisters those houses and developments? Might not such a thing be a bridge to peace? Do Jews really think themselves immune to karma? Do they ever analyze the fact they are hated so much as being a logical development?

I also learned where "Operation Cast Lead" came from:

The Hanukkah Massacre was dubbed “Operation Cast (or Solid) Lead”
so named after a Hanukkah poem by H.N. Bialik, national poet of Israel

“Teacher bought a big top for me,
Solid lead, the finest known.
In whose honor, for whose glory?
For Hanukkah alone.”

From now on, Hanukkah will always be associated in my mind with a tragic 2008 Massacre in which Israel again took a gamble that no power in the world would raise a finger to stop their 60-year long campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians but will let them have as many spins of the “solid lead” dreidel as they need to win all of Eretz Israel.

How is it that Jews can make even a toy seem like a guided missile?

Sunday, January 04, 2009

The Earliest Matthew Wald in the New York Times on Flight Control

The New York Times, Sept. 13, 2001, p. A5
"Controllers Say Flow of Information on Hijacked Planes' Course Was Slow and Uneven"
by Matthew L. Wald

Please note how the New York Times' method of pre-titling, and even "mid-categorizing" this piece, disrupts the Googling by creating intervening folders, which winds up abbreviating the actual title. I don't think that alone would explain why this earliest of Matthew Wald's articles has remained almost completely unknown for seven years. So be it. Now that it has finally reappeared it is with the force of a flung hatchet. Pay attention children. Play time is over. Thanks for nothing Pinch.

AFTER THE ATTACKS: MONITORING THE FLIGHTS; Controllers Say Flow of ...- Dec 28By MATTHEW L. WALD. Published: September 13, 2001. The controllers assigned to United Airlines Flight 175 on Tuesday suspected that it had been hijacked as ...
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03EEDF1038F930A2575AC0A9679C8B63 - 37k - Cached - Similar pages -


September 13, 2001 AFTER THE ATTACKS: MONITORING THE FLIGHTS; Controllers Say Flow of Information on Hijacked Planes' Course Was Slow and Uneven By MATTHEW L. WALD

The controllers assigned to United Airlines Flight 175 on Tuesday suspected that it had been hijacked as it flew off its assigned route. But they did not learn that another plane had been hijacked and had hit the World Trade Center until a minute or two before Flight 175 struck the center, people involved in the air traffic system said.

In contrast, controllers at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center had much more warning that something was wrong. Those controllers, who handled American Airlines Flight 77, which dived into the Pentagon, knew about the hijacking of the first plane to crash, even before it hit the World Trade Center, those involved said. That was more than an hour before they watched another hijacked plane, United Flight 93, cross their radar screen on its way to the Pentagon.

Advance knowledge made no apparent difference in the response; nobody intercepted the plane.

"We issue control instructions," one controller said. "Any procedures beyond that point don't lie with us."

Those procedures would, in fact, lie with the Air Force. The question of giving the Air Force notice of hijackings and authorization to shoot down civilian planes is likely to be a major concern for security officials in the next few days. A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said today that there was a policy for when a civilian plane could be shot down, but the agency would not discuss it. The military routinely refuses to disclose its rules of engagement. Nor was it clear today exactly when, or if, the Pentagon was notified on Tuesday.

As the crisis took shape, information flowed unevenly within the F.A.A. The agency has broken up air traffic up into sectors small enough for two controllers to handle, and grouped the sectors in different air traffic offices. Such compartmentalization allows the agency to handle several thousand flights simultaneously, but may also have prevented information from flowing quickly enough.

The F.A.A. has refused to give details, saying that the way the information flows within the agency is part of the F.B.I.'s investigation into Tuesday's attacks. But people involved describe a haphazard flow.

For example, at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center in Ronkonkoma, which handles long-distance traffic around the New York metropolitan area, the first inkling of a hijacking that most controllers had was when a supervisor came to the cafeteria and asked if he could change the television channel to CNN.

''Our TV's are always tuned to ESPN,'' one controller said.

The television screen showed one tower of the World Trade Center with a hole in it. "We didn't know what kind, what airplane. There were rumors it was a 737," the controller said. "We said, 'No way, it would be a much bigger hole.' We were watching, and we saw the second one go in."

In the darkened, windowless cavern that is the operations floor of the center, most controllers did not learn of the twin hijackings until their colleagues came up from the cafeteria.

At the control tower at La Guardia Airport, the first definitive information for controllers was the sight, viewed through binoculars, of the second plane plunging into the building. On the other hand, as soon as controllers in Boston heard that a plane might have hit the World Trade Center, they knew what had become of American Airlines Flight 11, which they had been tracking since it began behaving erratically, people involved said.

At the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, the air traffic office whose airspace American Flight 11 entered soon before its crash, a conclusive report of what happened to that plane reached the room only a minute or two before the United plane hit the other tower, controllers there said. ''We had 90 to 120 seconds; it wasn't any 18 minutes,'' said one controller, referring to the actual elapsed time.

Another controller said: "They dove into the airspace. By the time anybody saw anything, it was over."

After the two World Trade Center crashes, controllers at the New York traffic center were briefed by their supervisors to watch for airplanes whose speed indicated that they were jets, but which either were not responding to commands or had disabled a surveillance device called a transponder. Controllers in Washington got a similar briefing, which helped them pick out hijacked planes more quickly. Two of the four planes had transponders that had apparently been tampered with in flight.

In fact, though, transponder failure is an ambiguous sign, even if the plane then strays from its assigned altitude and course. Controllers do not assume the worst "if something weird happens with the airplane," said one; an electrical problem could be responsible and the pilot might be headed back to the departure airport. Standard procedure is to "give him room and watch what he does," another controller said.

Transponders are robot radios, carried in a plane's tail, that respond to queries from ground-based radar by giving the plane's identity and altitude. Ground radar can calculate, based on the timing of the transponder response and the direction from which it came, the plane's latitude and longitude. American Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, had had its transponder shut off, so controllers had less information on the flight. On United Flight 175, the second plane to hit the World Trade Center, someone changed the code that the transponder was sending, which had the effect of confusing the air traffic control computers. On the controller's screen, the data block, three lines of letters and numbers that give the plane's identity and other details, cut loose from the blip and drifted off.

Controllers also say they were told to watch for planes heading for Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. Unlike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Camp David would be hard to spot from the air, but it is clearly marked on charts, because the airspace below 5,000 feet is off limits to civilian planes. But because Camp David is close to Washington and a hijacked plane's target is unknown, it would be hard to say whether a plane headed toward that location actually intended to go there, controllers noted.