Egypt arrests 4 citizens over spying for Israel

No honor among thieves: Egypt arrests 4 citizens over spying for Israel
© Associated Press Detainees allegedly set up offices in Egypt, Britain, Israel, Gaza to record conversations, collect information about tourists in Sinai. Egyptian authorities arrested four suspects on suspicion of spying for Israel and plotting to damage The Economy by Kidnapping tourists, a security official said. The official revealed Sunday that the suspects, all Egyptian nationals, set up offices in Egypt, Britain, Israel, and Gaza to allegedly record officials' phone conversation...

Egypt charges businessman for spying for Israel
Cairo -- Egyptian authorities have charged a local businessman and two Israelis for recruiting agents in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to spy for Israeli intelligence, a State Security prosecutor said Monday. Prosecutor Hisham Badawi told reporters that a businessman named Tarek Hassan was arrested in August and has now been charged with harming the country's national interests. Two other Israelis have been charged in absentia. Hassan allegedly received $7,500 dollars to search for potential age...

Egypt arrests 4 citizens over spying for Israel
An Egyptian security official says four locals were arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel and plotting to kidnap of tourists to harm Egypt's economy. The official revealed Sunday that the four suspects allegedly set up offices in Egypt, Britain, Israel, and Gaza to record officials' phone conversations and collect information about Japanese and Chinese tourists visiting the Sinai Peninsula. The official said those detained were responsible for supplying Israeli officers with the information...

Egypt Charges Another Suspect With Israel Spying
Cairo — Egyptian authorities have charged a local businessman and two Israelis for recruiting agents in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to spy for Israeli intelligence, a State Security prosecutor said Monday. Prosecutor Hisham Badawi told reporters that a businessman named Tarek Hassan was arrested in August and has now been charged with harming the country's national interests. Two other Israelis have been charged in absentia. Hassan allegedly received $7,500 dollars to search for potential ...

Egypt, Sudan and Libya to confer ahead of key vote
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Leaders of Sudan’s two Most Powerful neighbors will be meeting with the president in Khartoum Tuesday to discuss the future of the country ahead of a Referendum that could well split Africa’s largest nation in two. The meeting comes less than three weeks before the people of south Sudan vote in a Jan. 9 Referendum on the Secession of their mainly animist and Christian south from the Arab and mainly Muslim north. The southerners, embittered and scarred by ...

Cairo said no to nukes, cables reveal
Published: Dec. 20, 2010 at 10:05 AM India source of Bioterrorism? LONDON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turned down an offer for nuclear material that appeared on the black market after the Soviet Union collapsed, cables reveal. Cairo claims to be advocating a nuclear-free Middle East. Maged Abdelaziz, the Egyptian Envoy to the United Nations, told U.S. nuclear arms negotiator Rose Gottemoeller that Cairo was offered the material needed to produce a nuclear weapon. "(I)n an ...

Egypt turned down black market nukes - WikiLeaks
Egypt was offered Nuclear Weapons, material and expertise on the black market after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to a senior Egyptian diplomat. President Hosni Mubarak turned down the offer, but the incident raises new questions over what nuclear sales were made by the other states or groups in the chaos of the early 1990s in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Maged Abdelaziz, the country’s ambassador to the UN, made the revelation to America’s top negotiator on n...

Wikileaks: Israel fears regime change in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
Well, no kidding. Israel’s relationship with Egypt and Jordan is “fraying,” warned the US in a year-old Wikileaks cable released late Sunday night. “Israel enjoys peace with Egypt and Jordan, but not with its people,” said the cable, which was sent from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv in November 2009, in advance of a visit to Israel by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg. When Israel assesses US arms sales in the region, it approaches it from a worst-case scenario, believin

Egypt uncovers 'Israeli spy ring'
Egyptian officials have charged a local businessman and two Israelis with recruiting agents to spy for Israel. State prosecutor Hisham Badawi said Tareq Hassan was charged with harming Egypt's national interests. The two Israelis were charged in absentia. It comes a day after Egyptian sources said an alleged spy cell, with four Egyptians and two Israelis, had plotted to kidnap tourists in the Sinai area....

Wikileaks: Egypt turned down nukes; UPDATED
Another Wikileaks document dump discloses that after the USSR disintegrated, Egypt turned down the opportunity to acquire Nuclear Weapons. Secret U.S. State Department documents leaked by WikiLeaks have revealed that after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc a number of countries offered Egypt nuclear weapons, but President Hosni Mubarak had refused the offer. According to a report in The Guardian, the Egyptian ambassador to the UN revealed the story to the Deputy U.S. Foreign Minister in charg...

WikiLeaks: Mubarak refused black market Soviet nukes
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused offers to buy Nuclear Weapons on the black market following the dismantling of the Soviet Union, a US diplomatic cable leaked to the Guardian by Wikileaks revealed. The revelation was made by Maged Abdelaziz, Egypt's UN ambassador, to US nuclear Arms Control negotiator, Rose Gottemoeller, in May of 2009 on the sidelines of a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference in New York. RELATED: WikiLeaks: Iran recruiting Beduin to smuggle Gaza arms WikiLeaks: I...

Raymond Ibrahim: New book manifests wishful thinking about Muslim Brotherhoods power in Egypt
In a review of Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution by John R. Bradley in the Fall 2010 edition of Middle East Quarterly, Raymond Ibrahim identifies a chief error that analysts of the Middle East and Islam make all too often: assuming that people in Muslim countries want what Westerners want. Human nature, of course, is everywhere the same; but that doesn't mean that all people everywhere understand "freedom" or "peace" or "justice" in the same way. But Sharia i...

Netanyahu: Stalled peace talks are not catalyst for anti-Israel sentiments
PM says attacks against Israel aren't based on wars or settlements, but rather are attacks against the existence of the Jewish State; U.S. officials arrive in Mideast in bid to advance stalled peace process....

Obama presses region on Sudan referendum (AFP)
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama has written to regional leaders to rally support for a peaceful and timely Referendum on the independence of south Sudan, the White House said Sunday. Southerners are set to vote in a Referendum on January 9 on whether to remain united with the north or break away and form their own country. Sudan's neighbors can exact pressure on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The vote is a key plank of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) bet...

Mideast Peace: What If the Palestinians Turn to the U.N.?
Israel is worried, according to press reports in the country, that the United States will not "rush to Veto" a planned U.N. Security Council resolution condemning ongoing Israeli settlement construction. The resolution is being drafted by Arab countries exasperated by the failure of the U.S. to pressure the Israelis to halt construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the U.N. deems illegal. The draft may be introduced as early as this week, according to Israeli media, and the Israe...

Israeli ministers float limited West Bank pullout
JERUSALEM (AP) — With Mideast Peace Talks at an impasse, two senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party are shopping around a new idea: In the absence of peace, Israel should pull large numbers of Jewish settlers out of the West Bank while leaving its Soldiers in place. They believe the arrangement could relieve international pressure on Israel over settlements and give the Palestinians wider autonomy in an area they hope to make their future state, while leavi...

Eto'o wins record African award
Cameroon's Samuel Eto'o has become the first man to be named African Player of the Year for a fourth time. The striker, 29, enjoyed little success with his country in 2010 but helped his club Inter Milan become European and Italian champions last season. Eto'o also won the prestigious award in 2003, 2004 and 2005 while playing in Spain, latterly with Barcelona. He finished ahead of Ivory Coast and Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and Ghana and Sunderland forward Asamoah Gyan. The forward also sc...

Special Report: Why Egypt's power has dimmed
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent Cairo | Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:52am EST Cairo Dec 20 (Reuters) - At Bayoumy's, a dingy, smoke-filled tea shop in downtown Cairo, Egyptian football fans groaned at the "biased" referee as they watched their National Team lose 2-1 to the Gulf state of Qatar in a friendly last week. Once the television commentary had died away and people turned back to their backgammon games, some pondered an awkward question for Egypt, which prides itself on being the pre-emi...

Eto'o named African Footballer of the Year
Cameroon striker Samuel Eto'o was named African Footballer of the Year a record fourth time at the annual CAF awards ceremony in Cairo Monday. The 29-year-old native of central town Nkon finished ahead of first-time finalist Asamoah Gyan of Ghana and former winner Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast in a poll among national coaches on the continent. Eto'o, who won the most prestigious African football individual honour three years in a row from 2003, was voted the best player at the FIFA Club World Cup...

Iraqs Christian exodus and seasonal Bethlehem coverage
This entry was posted in Media Analysis: Regular briefings on trends in the news. Bookmark the permalink. Every year in the run up to Christmas, the Western media devotes some of its seasonal coverage to events in the town of Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus. Given the town’s West Bank location and the reality of its much-reduced Christian population, news items invariably use the annual Christmas Mass celebrations as a springboard to address other topics. As Just Journalism ...

The War Against Israel
[Editor's note: Below is the transcript -- and video -- of a distinguished panel discussing the threat that Israel faces at David Horowitz's Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, Nov. 18-21.] The first words I offer of this important serious panel are simply celebration of Israel — its history, its meaning, its presence, its Democracy, its gifts to the world, its humanitarianism, and its moral and Military alliance with the United States.  Nevertheless, unfortunately, we gather this Sab...

Muslim website targets for death Copts in Egypt, Europe and North America
The website purports to "identify and name all of the Coptics throughout the world who hope to defame Islam," by doing things like proselytizing. "Canadian-Arab Christians targeted on website," from The Canadian Press, December 21 (thanks to Fr. E.): More than 100 Canadian-Arab Christians are listed on an Al-Qaeda affiliated website, apparently targeted because of their alleged role in attempting to convert Muslims. Some of those named say concerned Canadian intelligence officials have contac...

Israeli air strikes target Gaza after rocket fire
Gaza | Tue Dec 21, 2010 2:21am EST Gaza (Reuters) - Israel carried out a series of Air Strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said, after Militants from the Hamas-ruled territory fired rockets into southern Israel. No one was reported killed in any of the strikes that targeted a Hamas Training Camp, where two gunmen were wounded, as well as Smuggling tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt and other, unpopulated areas, Hamas officials and witnesses said. An I...

Israeli air strikes target Gaza after rocket fire
Gaza (Reuters) – Israel carried out a series of Air Strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said, after Militants from the Hamas-ruled territory fired rockets into southern Israel. No one was reported killed in any of the strikes that targeted a Hamas Training Camp, where two gunmen were wounded, as well as Smuggling tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt and other, unpopulated areas, Hamas officials and witnesses said. An Israeli Military spokesman ...

Palestinians target Israeli civilians with rocket attacks, Israel responds
And Reuters would expect us to believe that Hamas is trying to "curb" the Rocket Attacks. "Israeli Air Strikes target Gaza after rocket fire," from Reuters, December 21 (thanks to JCB): GAZA (Reuters) - Israel carried out a series of Air Strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said, after Militants from the Hamas-ruled territory fired rockets into southern Israel. No one was reported killed in any of the strikes that targeted a Hamas Training Camp, where two ...