Dave Bender: Compelling Photography: Monday, November 20, 2006

Monday, November 20

This Just In: Hava Nagila - In Thai

I think that the Thai producers who translated the lyrics of Hava Nagila were reading the page upside down...

Report: Palestinians in El Al bomb plot (UPDATED)

German authorities have broken an Islamic terror cell that was planning to bomb an El Al jet at Frankfurt airport, according to Die Welt's Tuesday edition. An airport employee was to reportedly have taken part in the suitcase bomb attack, the Federal Prosecutor's Office announced on Monday.

Frankfurt Airport

An unnamed informant alerted security officials of the plan; six cell-members have already been questioned.

Cell members had reportedly planned to bribe an airport employee into aiding them in perpetrating the attack, to have taken place during the world football championships in the city in the summer of 2007.

Map of Islamic terror attacks.

From Ynet News:

An El Al spokeswoman in Israel said the company does not respond to reports about security matters.

"Tagesspiegel" (Berlin) reports:

Members of the terror cell are "mostly" from Jordan, originating in "Palestine." The other members are also from Arab countries. They all lived in the German states Rheinland-Pfalz and Hessen. The police searched nine residences.

Nach Angaben der Zeitung "Tagesspiegel" (Dienstag) kommt die Mehrheit der Verdächtigen aus Jordanien. Es soll sich um Männer palästinensischer Herkunft handeln. Auch die anderen Beschuldigten stammten aus arabischen Ländern. Die Bundesanwaltschaft bestätigte lediglich, dass es sich um Ausländer mit Wohnsitz in Rheinland-Pfalz und Hessen handelt. Dort wurden auf Anordnung des Bundesgerichtshofs neun Wohnungen durchsucht.

Mag: Israeli spies report Iran testing nuke triggers (UPDATED)

Bush: I would understand if Israel chose to attack Iran
Ahmadinejad: Israel “is weak and it has many problems”
Iran Urges Summit With Iraq and Syria

From The New Yorker:

As the C.I.A.’s assessment was making its way through the government, late this summer, current and former military officers and consultants told me, a new element suddenly emerged: intelligence from Israeli spies operating inside Iran claimed that Iran has developed and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb. The provenance and significance of the human intelligence, or HUMINT, are controversial.

“The problem is that no one can verify it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We don’t know who the Israeli source is.
The briefing says the Iranians are testing trigger mechanisms”—simulating a zero-yield nuclear explosion without any weapons-grade materials—“but there are no diagrams, no significant facts. Where is the test site? How often have they done it? How big is the warhead—a breadbox or a refrigerator? They don’t have that.”

Source: Christian Science Monitor
And yet, he said, the report was being used by White House hawks within the Administration to “prove the White House’s theory that the Iranians are on track. And tests leave no radioactive track, which is why we can’t find it.” Still, he said, “The agency is standing its ground.”