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This article by Byron Acohido served as the basis for Mark’s Wise As A Serpent column on page 21 of the November 2010 Levitt Letter.

By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY

For generations, U.S. consumers have relied on banks to bear the primary responsibility for keeping their hard-earned cash deposits out of the hands of thieves. Now, banks want consumers to share the load.

About 80% of U.S. households have come to do their banking over the Internet, banking consultancy Novantas says. Many consumers believe online banking is every bit as safe as branch banking. But that’s clearly not the case, banking and tech security specialists say.

Cyber-attacks against individual online accounts have become so sophisticated and pervasive that the American Bankers Association (ABA) is now asking consumers to “partner” with banks to keep cyber-robbers in check.

The banking industry wants consumers to monitor their online accounts for unauthorized transactions on a “continuous, almost daily, basis,” says Doug Johnson, the ABA’s vice president of risk-management policy. That’s because PCs and smartphones have become “the online bank branch for a lot of individuals,” he says. “The customer needs to really recognize that security is most effective when they work in partnership with their financial institution.”

This shifting burden has come about because of developments that the banking industry did not anticipate a decade ago, when it began promoting personal computers as convenient venues for consumer banking. Ambitious online attacks soon followed. Banks have spent heavily to shore up cyber-defenses, and they’ve kept a policy of reimbursing individual online account holders who can verify that they’ve been ripped off, Johnson says.

Even so, cyber-robbery has evolved into a multifaceted, multibillion-dollar global industry that shows little sign of cooling. Last year, the number of malicious software programs designed to pilfer online bank accounts — referred to as banking Trojans — rose to 65,098 in December, up from 4,295 at the start of 2009, according to Panda Security, a Madrid-based antivirus software supplier.

Writers of malicious software code are prolific, always focusing on new ways to get past the latest defenses erected by banks and antivirus companies, says Panda Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll.

A 2009 ABA survey of 170 U.S. banks revealed that 85% of big banks are incurring losses stemming from cyber-attacks on consumer online accounts. Banks responding to the survey rated the “threat level” of online attacks at 2.58 on a scale of zero to five; that’s up from a 1.84 rating in 2007.

“Every single bank I’ve talked to in the last six months, big and small, has seen these attacks,” says Avivah Litan, banking security analyst at research firm Gartner. “It’s an arms race. There are solutions — until the next kind of attack comes along. And if you’re caught in the middle, you’re screwed.”

Successful robbers are patient

Janis Stuart, a retired San Diego personal trainer, barely dodged one recent cutting-edge attack. Returning from an out-of-town trip in April, Stuart booted up her desktop PC and began checking e-mail. She found a notice from her community bank advising her that all future e-mails would be sent to a new e-mail address, as per her online instructions. Stuart never requested such a change.

“My immediate reaction was that they had confused accounts, and this was a big mistake,” she recalls. Stuart drove down to the branch office. A clerk informed her that $5,836.66 was about to be transferred from her savings account to a woman Stuart had never heard of, in the form of a bill-payment check. Payment was stopped.

Stuart says bank officials advised her that she most likely had a computer infection that allowed an attacker to gain access to her account, change the e-mail address and set the bill payment in motion. The bank authorized the transfer because the thief knew the answers to Stuart’s “secret questions” — such as her mother’s maiden name and the city of her birth — and because a similar bill-payment check had been sent from Stuart’s account to the same woman 12 months earlier. That initial check was never cashed, Stuart says.

It was a ruse that allowed the attacker to remain undetected while establishing the woman as an approved recipient of bill-payment checks from Stuart. After waiting a year, the attacker triggered the second payment. “It was a fluke that I caught it in time before the money disappeared,” says Stuart. “I was very upset.” Stuart says she “felt the bank was somehow responsible” for enabling an intruder access to her account.

Stuart’s experience illustrates a prerequisite for accomplished cyber-robbers: patience. The cyber-underground has advanced to the point where very powerful hacking tools and tutorials are readily available for free, and a highly efficient and organized support infrastructure has been established to help thieves. Taking full advantage of such tools takes time.

Chasing thieves’ technology

Instead of holding up a bank branch at gunpoint, modern-day cyber-robbers do their homework.

“To maximize their effectiveness and streamline their ability to move money quickly, criminals take the time to learn your online banking platform and do account reconnaissance,” says Terry Austin, CEO of Guardian Analytics, which supplies fraud-detection systems.

First, they acquire valid account log-ons, often by purchasing them from specialist data thieves. Next, they quietly access accounts, making note of high cash balances and access to credit lines. They also familiarize themselves with the bank’s protocols for authorizing the creation of new online accounts and approving cash transfers.

They look for coding security holes — and invariably find them in the Web browser, the tool banks rely on to run programs that serve as a virtual bank teller. But Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Apple Safari are designed to let users navigate the entire Internet; they weren’t meant to execute secure financial transactions. Cyber-robbers craft banking Trojans that inject software code into the Web browser, letting the attacker take control of online banking sessions, alter what the account holder sees and make stealthy transactions.

“With the exception of some rare cases, the current online banking systems are at least one full generation behind the current techniques employed by cyber-crooks,” says Costin Raiu, Kaspersky Lab research director.

Cyber-robbers also take great care in setting up “drop” accounts — online accounts they control, usually at the same bank as victims — poised to receive cash transfers. They typically recruit “money mules,” accomplices who execute the final, riskiest step of withdrawing cash from drop accounts and forwarding proceeds to the ring leaders.

Mules are recruited through work-at-home advertisements on employment websites and, increasingly, on popular social networks. Typical pitches promise high earnings for minimal work involving accepting deposits and handling cash transfers. Kaspersky Lab researcher Dmitry Bestuzhev recently tracked down one Facebook-based mule recruiter who had 224,000 friends. “Who knows how many of them accepted the offer to be a money mule?” Bestuzhev says.

In one caper recently investigated by SecureWorks, the attacker embedded a banking Trojan in the victim’s Web browser by getting the person to click on a corrupted Web link in an instant message. The Trojan watched for when the victim next accessed his online bank account and sent a copy of the user name and password to the attacker. It also automatically injected a spoofed bank form into the legitimate banking Web pages.

The bank form asked for the last four digits of the user’s debit card number, ostensibly to complete a security update. The victim complied and filled out the form. The attacker now had a key piece of information necessary to execute large cash transfers.

On a Wednesday shortly before noon, the attacker logged on and began a series of transactions. He changed the e-mail address associated with the account, so notices of any questionable transfers wouldn’t reach the account holder. He next accessed a credit card line of credit and transferred the maximum loan amount into checking.

He then emptied the account of more than $20,000, via a series of transfers into a drop account. To execute the transfers, the thief had to answer this question: “What are the last four digits of your debit card account number?” It took four days for the bank to reimburse the victim.

Such attacks are likely to continue to be commonplace, says Joe Stewart, senior threat researcher at SecureWorks. “Cybercriminals can steal credentials for thousands of accounts at a time with very little effort,” he says. “They have access to more accounts than they could possibly ever use, and most of those are personal accounts.”

Consumer distrust increases

To slow down cyber-robberies, banks increasingly are asking “knowledge-based authentication” questions at key junctures of online banking sessions, says Johnson, the bankers association risk expert. Such questions, derived from data amassed by the big three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion and by data aggregators LexisNexis and Axiom, ask about obscure personal details such as the name of one’s mortgage holder or father-in-law, a previous address, even the color of one’s car.

“The questions are going to get more difficult over time,” Johnson says. “The threat is real, and (banks) are providing the tools to help customers protect themselves.”

Citibank and Bank of America rank third and seventh among the top 10 most frequently attacked banks in the world, according to Kaspersky Lab. Each uses a variety of security systems and relies on consumers to help protect their online accounts.

“It is paramount that our customers know how to protect themselves,” says Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke. “We recommend that customers always protect their passwords, ensure the bank has up-to-date contact information and review their accounts on a regular basis.”

Litan, the Gartner banking security analyst, says banks need to move away from technologies that rely on common Web browsers, which is where banking Trojans thrive. Handheld optical readers, a more advanced technology, are available from Gemalto and Cronto. These devices must be used to take a picture of a visual cryptogram — a secure image produced by the bank — as part of authorizing any cash transfers.

Mandatory use of a verification device that operates separately from the browser would enable banks to ensure “secure transactions no matter what is on the customer’s PC,” says Paul Beverly, executive vice president at Gemalto.

But Litan says banks are a long way from even thinking about widely distributing such devices to consumers. “They don’t want to get into the business” of providing hardware to customers, she says.

Banking and security experts say the only thing that will change the banking industry’s current approach is widespread consumer backlash. Stuart’s reaction to her brush with a near robbery could be a harbinger. The experience prompted her to get offline and revert to branch banking.

“It’s inconvenient not to be able to check my account whenever I feel like it. I have to go by the bank and ask for printouts,” says Stuart. “But at this point, I distrust the system of online banking.”

By Ethan Bronner, www.NYTimes.com

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian leadership, near despair about attaining a negotiated agreement with Israel on a two-state solution, is increasingly focusing on how to get international bodies and courts to declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

The idea, being discussed in both formal and informal forums across the West Bank, is to appeal to the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and the signatories of the Geneva Conventions for opposition to Israeli settlements and occupation and ultimately a kind of global assertion of Palestinian statehood that will tie Israel’s hands.

The approach has taken on more weight as the stall in American-brokered peace talks lengthens over the issue of continued settlement building.

“We cannot go on this way,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a former peace negotiator who is a part of the inner ruling circle of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which oversees the Palestinian Authority. “The two-state solution is disappearing. If we cannot stop the settlements through the peace process, we have to go to the Security Council, the Human Rights Council and every international legal body.”

In an interview, she said that the P.L.O. was holding high-level discussions on these options this week.

Israeli officials reject the move as unacceptable and a violation of the 1993 Oslo accords that govern Israeli-Palestinian relations. It would also pre-empt any efforts by Israel to keep some settlements and negotiate modified borders. But the Israelis are worried. No government in the world supports their settlement policy, and they fear that a majority of countries, including some in Europe, would back the Palestinians.

The Israelis say that what is really going on is a Palestinian effort to secure a state without having to make the difficult decisions on the borders and settlements that negotiations would entail. They are pressing the Obama administration to take a firmer public stand against the new approach, but Washington has made no move to do so.

“A lot of members of the international community believe that since the Palestinians are the weaker party, if they get more support it will help them in the direct talks with us,” a senior Israeli official said. “But it works in the opposite direction. This would kill a negotiated settlement.”

Abraham H. Foxman, the American national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has been in Israel this week talking to its leaders. He said in an interview that all agreed on the importance of a robust American position against the Palestinian effort.

“This is part of the delegitimization campaign against Israel,” he said. “The Obama administration needs to have the same public moxie on the declaration of a pre-emptive state as it has had on Israeli settlements. All the exit doors have to be closed for the Palestinians so they have no choice but to negotiate.”

Israel and the Palestinians began the direct talks at the start of September. But a freeze on West Bank settlement construction by Israel ended four weeks later, and the Palestinians said they would not return to the table without an extension. The Arab League, whose backing is crucial to the talks, agreed on Oct. 8 to give the Americans and Israelis a month to come up with a way to stop settlement construction.

The Israelis say settlement construction should be part of the mix of issues in the talks, not a precondition. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working on a second shorter building stoppage in exchange for American guarantees. One that has been discussed is an American promise to work vigorously against an external declaration of Palestinian statehood.

The Palestinians’ approach is often referred to as a unilateral declaration of statehood. But they declared their state more than 20 years ago and realize that simply restating the declaration will have little effect. Instead, they are pursuing what might better be called a multilateral declaration.

“We don’t have strong cards but we want to convince the world to take a position and gain recognition of a Palestinian state,” noted Hanna Amireh, another member of the P.L.O.’s ruling circle, in an interview in his Ramallah office. “We feel we need to go beyond the United States to the world.”

One effort under way is at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. On Wednesday, the court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, heard arguments from eight people — four on each side — on whether the Palestinian Authority could be recognized by the court in its charges against Israel’s conduct in the 2008-9 Gaza war. The court permits states only to bring cases.

Al-Haq, a Palestinian legal group, repeated its standing argument that for the purposes of the court, Palestine should be considered a state because it engages in international relations and tries its own people in a legal system, and because the international legal system bears a special responsibility for Palestinians.

Arguing against was Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, who said granting the Palestinians statehood even for the criminal court violated their treaties with Israel. He said in a telephone interview from The Hague that the underlying purpose of the Palestinians was to strengthen their case for statehood recognition.

“If they win here, the big story that will come out of this is that one of the main legal bodies in the international community, the International Criminal Court, acknowledges that the Palestinian Authority already constitutes a state,” he said.

The Palestinians want the world to declare their state on the territories that Israel conquered in the 1967 war — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Half a million Israelis now live in those areas, and Israel could find itself, in effect, in daily violation of another member state.

Certain countries sympathetic to the Palestinians, however, might not agree to a declaration of their statehood. For instance, China, Russia and Spain are all facing independence movements within their borders. When Kosovo declared its independence two years ago, many states declined to recognize it because of the potential for setting a precedent of legitimizing secession.

If the Palestinians were to go to the United Nations Security Council, they might well face an American veto. Therefore they might start in the General Assembly, where there is no veto and where dozens of countries would be likely to support them.

While that would be less binding, it would also provide a kind of symmetry — dark or poetic, depending on one’s perspective — with Israel. It was in the General Assembly in November 1947 that the Zionist movement achieved success through a resolution calling for the division of this land into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. Israel has long viewed that vote as the source of its international legitimacy.

Declassified docs show U.S. officials urged Clinton, Bush to strike al-Qaeda

By Michael Isikoff National investigative correspondent
NBC News

photo: This image provided by the U.S. Navy shows damage sustained by the USS Cole after the suicide bombing on Oct. 12, 2000

Newly declassified documents show the frustrations of top White House counterterrorism officials over the U.S. failure to respond to al-Qaeda’s October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole despite evidence that Osama bin Laden was reading poetry about the murderous attack and publicly taking credit for it.

The lack of U.S. response to the Cole attack — under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — has re-emerged as a painful issue this week, as crew and family members gather at the U.S. naval base in Norfolk, Va., to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombing, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and injured 38.

“I just felt, for sure, you know, they’re not going to go ahead and just kiss off the lives of 17 U.S. sailors,” John Clodfelter, who lost his son, Kenneth, in the attack, told NBC News. “In fact, they didn’t do anything … to go after those that attacked the Cole.”

At 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, the Cole — a billion dollar destroyer armed with the most advanced weapons in the U.S. naval arsenal — was docked off the coast of Yemen for refueling when it was approached by a small skiff packed with explosives and manned by two suicide bombers. The resulting explosion was a chilling precursor to the attacks on Sept. 11. It ripped a 60-by-40-foot hole in the ship’s hull, trapping the bodies of many of the dead crew members in the wreckage.

In the days after the attack, President Clinton vowed retribution against the terrorists. “You will not find a safe harbor,” he proclaimed. “We will find you and justice will prevail.”

But in his final months in office, Clinton never retaliated against al-Qaeda, frustrating some of his own counterterrorism advisors. Clinton later told the 9/11 commission he was never shown hard proof that Osama bin Laden’s operatives were behind the attack.

But two senior investigators — one with the FBI and another with the Naval Criminal Investigative Task Force — recently told NBC News there was actually compelling evidence that al-Qaeda was responsible for the bombing almost immediately. Two of the Cole bombers arrested by Yemeni security forces confessed their role and told investigators they were working for two top al-Qaeda operatives known to U.S. intelligence — information that was quickly made available to FBI and naval investigative agents.

‘Significant information’
“Within two weeks we had significant information (that) we felt … was solid evidence that the attack was linked not only to al-Qaeda but to Osama bin Laden,” said Mark Fallon, chief of the U.S. Navy investigative task force, in an exclusive interview with NBC News. By January, after those confessions were verified in questioning by FBI Agent Ali Soufan, the case against bin Laden and al-Qaeda was “rock solid,” Fallon added.

Video: Isikoff: Cole attack ‘seminal event’ prior to 9/11

If there were any lingering doubts before Clinton left office in late January 2001, they were erased in the early days of Bush’s presidency. In their first months in office, Bush administration officials ignored repeated assertions from White House counterterrorism officials that bin Laden was taking credit for the bombing and using it as a propaganda and recruitment tool, the newly obtained documents show.

Those communications were first mentioned in a little noticed footnote in the 9/11 commission report. But NBC News recently obtained from the National Archives newly declassified notes of commission staffers who were given access to verbatim copies of the internal emails sent by two top White House counterterrorism officials, Roger Cressey, former director of transnational threats, and his boss Richard Clarke, the chief counter-terrorism advisor under Clinton who stayed in the same job during the early years of the Bush presidency.

Those notes, which include extensive quotes directly from the emails, reveal how Cressey, who is now an NBC News terrorism analyst, and Clarke repeatedly tried to call the attention of top Bush White House officials to bin Laden’s role in the attack to prod them to approve a new, more aggressive strategy aimed at striking back at al-Qaeda. But those warnings were all but ignored until the attacks of Sept. 11.

On March 2, 2001, for example, Cressey sent an email to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Steve Hadley, titled “re Bin Laden on the USS Cole.” The email reported that at a wedding reception for his son at a camp known as Tarnak Farm in Afghanistan (and broadcast on Al Jazeera), bin Laden had “read (a) new poem … about the Cole attack.” In another email to Hadley on March 22, pushing him about the need for a new aggressive strategy against al-Qaeda, Cressey wrote: “The investigation continues on the law enforcement side, but we know all we need to about who did the (Cole) attack to make a policy decision.”

Two days later, Clark emailed national security officials reporting that Yemen’s prime minister had briefed the State Department’s top counterterrorism adviser about his country’s investigation into the attack. Titled “Yemen’s View on the USS Cole,” the email quoted the Yemeni prime minister as saying “We are not saying publicly, we are being very careful, but we believe 99 percent that it’s (bin Laden).”

That same day, Cressey emailed Rice and Hadley and identified Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, known to investigators as al-Qaeda’s “maritime commander,” as a “Cole plotter” who had gone “underground.”

90-minute video
And on June 21, Clarke wrote yet another email entitled “Al Qida (sic) Video claims responsibility for Cole attack.” The email reported that a 90-minute video showing footage of the Cole attack had “surfaced” in the Gulf. One of the quotes on the video, according to Clarke’s email: “Thanks to Allah for the victory on the day we destroyed the Cole.”

Clarke and Cressey were pushing for a full-fledged military and diplomatic response aimed at forcing the Taliban government in Afghanistan to cease giving al-Qaeda a safe haven. “DOD should be ready to hit Taliban command/control, terrorist infr (tunnels, bunkers),” Clarke wrote in a June 30, 2001 email to top national security officials.

“The argument we in our office were trying to make is that, this should not be forgotten,” Cressey said in a recent interview when asked about the newly declassified emails. “Bin Laden issues a videotape, he reads a poem … he’s rubbing it in our faces. He’s directly challenging the United States and he’s gloating about it. … And so what we were trying to do was to tee up this issue for a decision and to say, ‘let’s make a choice. Do we respond? Do we hold these people accountable? … We owe that to the families of those who lost their loved ones in the Cole.”

But just as the Cole slipped off the agenda during the late days of the Clinton administration, it fell by the wayside during the early days of the Bush presidency. “We would have meetings at the (White House) counterterrorism security group where we would talk about the Cole. But that really was preaching to the choir. … We would then bump it up — and inevitably it would run into other issues.

“There was the policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan. There was the issue of how to negotiate possibly with the Taliban — to try and persuade them to remove bin Laden, extradite him to the United States. There were the other issues of China, Russia, arms control, the Middle East peace process. And as you saw how the new administration, like any administration, comes in to pursue their policy agenda, something like the USS Cole gets pushed further and further down … the list.”

Rice, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the declassified emails this week.

But Rice told the 9/11 commission that “there was never a formal, recorded decision not to retaliate specifically for the Cole attack,” according to the commission’s report. “Exchanges with the president” and among his top national security advisers “had produced a consensus that ‘tit for tat’ responses were likely to be counterproductive,” the panel’s report quoted Rice as saying.

Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the panel that “too much time had passed” for the Bush administration to respond to the attack and Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary, thought the Cole attack was “stale,” the 9/11 commission said. Hadley had said the administration’s “real response” would be a new more aggressive strategy against al-Qaeda — one that had yet to be approved prior to the attack on 9/11.

The failure by both the Clinton and Bush administrations to respond had consequences in the fateful months before 9/11 — and some of them resonate today amid new evidence that al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate is resurgent and threatening new attacks on the U.S. homeland.

“The attacks on the USS Cole galvanized al-Qaeda’s recruitment efforts,” concluded the 9/11 commission. The propaganda video that bin Laden instructed be made about the bombing was widely distributed in the Arab world and struck a nerve, causing “many extremists to travel to Afghanistan for training and jihad.”

Cressey agrees that the Cole bombing emboldened bin Laden and places the blame on both the Clinton and the Bush administrations.

“Think about the optics,” he said, “You had a billion dollar warship nearly sunk, with 17 Americans killed. You had the United States not doing anything publicly about it. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were able to issue a series of videotapes crowing about their achievement. So, if I’m an impressionable young man who aspires to conduct jihad, and I see what al-Qaeda did and they weren’t held responsible, hell yeah, I’m going to go toward them. And that, in effect, is what happened.”

photo: Ten years after the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole left 17 sailors dead, survivors of the attack and relatives of those who died gathered in Norfolk, Virginia to mark the anniversary.

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY and BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press

BEIRUT — Welcomed by thousands of Shiite supporters throwing rose petals, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to pull Lebanon firmly into his country’s fold Wednesday, Oct. 13, in a visit that underscored the growing power of Tehran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.

Ahmadinejad’s first state visit is a bold demonstration by Shiite-dominated Iran that it is undeterred by U.S. attempts to isolate it and roll back the clout Tehran has built up around the Middle East through its alliances with militant groups like Hezbollah and its accelerating nuclear program.

The first visit by an Iranian president in seven years, it also underlines the eroding position of the West’s allies in the deeply divided country. A fragile unity government that combines a Western-backed coalition with Hezbollah and its allies is in power, but many fear it could soon collapse because of their rivalries.

While he was greeted with joy by many Shiites, Ahmadinejad’s dramatic arrival only exacerbated fears among many Lebanese – particularly Sunnis and Christians – that Iran and Hezbollah are seeking to impose their will on the country and possibly pull Lebanon into a conflict with Israel.

Standing alongside Lebanese President Michel Suleiman at a news conference, the Iranian leader sought to depict his country as an ally of the entire nation, not just the Shiite Hezbollah movement.

“We seek a unified, modern Lebanon, and we will stand with the people and government of Lebanon – and with all elements in the Lebanese nation – until they achieve all their goals,” Ahmadinejad said, adding that both countries oppose Israeli aggression.

“We completely support the Lebanese people’s fight against the Zionist enemy,” he said.

The U.S. and Israel expressed concern over Ahmadinejad’s two-day visit, saying support for Hezbollah militants undermines Lebanese sovereignty.

“We reject any efforts to destabilize or inflame tensions within Lebanon,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. “We would hope that no visitor would do anything or say anything that would give cause to greater tension or instability in that country.”

Allies of the Western-backed, mainly Sunni parties that hold a slim majority in parliament also showed their worry.

A group of 250 politicians, lawyers, and activists wrote an open letter to Ahmadinejad, criticizing his support of Hezbollah.

“Your talk of ‘changing the face of the region starting with Lebanon’ and ‘wiping Israel off the map through the force of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon’ … makes it seem like your visit is that of a high commander to his front line,” the letter said.

In Tripoli, a mainly Sunni city in the north, posters have gone up in recent days showing Ahmadinejad’s face crossed out, above the words: “No welcome to the rule of clerics.”

While Ahmadinejad was formally invited by Suleiman and was to meet on Thursday with the head of the pro-Western bloc in the government – Prime Minister Saad Hariri – the splashiest welcome came from Hezbollah, Iran’s stalwart ally.

Hezbollah boasts widespread support among Shiites, virtually runs a state-within-a-state in Shiite areas and its guerrillas are Lebanon’s strongest armed force. Iran, whose ties to the group date back nearly 30 years, funds Hezbollah to the tune of millions of dollars a year and is believed to supply much of its arsenal.

Iran also helped rebuild homes in southern Lebanon’s Shiite heartland after the widespread destruction caused in Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel.

For Ahmadinejad’s arrival, thousands of Lebanese – mainly Hezbollah supporters – lined the highway from the airport into Beirut, waving Lebanese and Iranian flags while loudspeakers blasted anthems and women in the crowd sold Hezbollah flags and balloons to onlookers.

Trailed by heavily armed security in bulletproof vests, Ahmadinejad smiled and waved to the crowds from the sunroof of his black SUV as he headed from the airport to the presidential palace to meet Suleiman.

“Ahmadinejad has done a lot for Lebanon, we are here to thank him,” said Fatima Mazeh, an 18-year-old engineering student who took the day off from classes to join the crowds. “He’s not controlling Lebanon. Everyone has a mind and can think for himself. We are here to stand with him during the hardest times.”

Ali Chehade, a 32-year-old math teacher, told his kids to take the day off for the visit.

“Ahmadinejad is a big leader in the region because of his words about the resistance,” he said, referring to Iran’s support for what Hezbollah touts as its armed resistance to Israel.

Ahmadinejad is to make public appearances expected to draw giant crowds in two Hezbollah strongholds – one in south Beirut later Wednesday, another the following day in Bint Jbeil, a border village that was bombed during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. The village lies barely two and a half miles from the Israeli border.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the Ahmadinejad visit is intentionally provocative.

“It is quite clear that he is the bearer of a violent message. He comes to a highly volatile region with the intention to play with fire,” he said.

The visit suggests that the 5-year-old, seesawing competition over Lebanon may be tipping toward Iran and its ally Syria, away from the United States and its Arab allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Worsening the danger of the rivalry is the country’s sectarian divide – Sunni Muslims general back the pro-Western camp, Shiites the Iranian-Syrian one, with Christians divided.

Hezbollah’s other patron, Syria, also has been reasserting its role in Lebanon this year, with a prominent visit in June by Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Syria’s nearly 30-year domination of Lebanon was broken in 2005, when it was forced to withdraw its military, and the pro-Western coalition came to power. But the coalition suffered a heavy blow in 2008, when Hezbollah fighters soundly beat Sunni gunmen in street clashes that erupted in Beirut. The unity government was later formed, giving Hezbollah a virtual veto power over Cabinet decisions.

A tenuous peace has held since. But there are fears it could be broken soon. A U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri – the current prime minister’s father – is expected to indict members of Hezbollah as soon as this month, raising concerns of possible violence between the Shiite force and Hariri’s mainly Sunni allies.

Ahmadinejad’s visit is his first to Lebanon since he became president in 2005. The last Iranian president to visit Lebanon was Mohammad Khatami in 2003. That trip marked the first visit by an Iranian president to Lebanon since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Israel Today

Earlier this year, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest, sold its holdings in Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest non-government defense company. “Deutsche Bank no longer has a stake in Elbit Systems,” said CEO Josef Ackermann.

Elbit makes drones and other high-tech equipment, including surveillance cameras and radar used on Israel’s security barrier, which was erected to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of the country. The bank was pressured to divest by two groups—International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Catholic non-governmental organization Pax Christi—on grounds that the barrier is illegal according to international law.

According to the two groups, Deutsche Bank sold 50,788 shares of Elbit, worth $2.6 million. The bank was among the top 10 holders of Elbit shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Elbit Systems has a total worth of more than $2 billion.

“The entire move is based on anti-Israel politics,” said an official in the Israeli Defense Ministry.

At the same time, the bank gave Elbit Systems a “Buy” recommendation.

By James Zumwalt, www.HumanEvents.com

Islamic extremists quote the Koran to justify violence. They believe the words in the Koran are not open to interpretation by man. As the words are Allah’s, communicated to the Prophet Mohammed through the Archangel Gabriel, they have only the meaning Allah—and not man—intended.

Yet many words and phrases in the Koran are open to interpretation due to man’s imperfection in understanding Allah’s intent. Resolving this interpretation is difficult, as no single authoritative, spiritual leader exists for all Islam. While Muslims rely on the Koran for spiritual guidance, a schism within Islam after Mohammed’s death left Sunnis and Shias adhering to different beliefs and interpretations due to these ambiguities.

But these ambiguities provide the vehicle by which Islamic extremists issue their violent interpretations of Allah’s words. Lost upon followers in accepting them is, in offering their interpretation, the extremists violate their own basic tenet that the Koran’s words are those of Allah alone. If, as Islamic extremists suggest, the Koran is given Allah’s interpretation alone, upon what basis do they claim the right to interpret Allah’s message?

It is interesting to examine an origin of modern day Islamic extremist thinking, which, ironically, was triggered in the U.S. by an act of kindness seeking to include a visiting Muslim scholar.

Egyptian educator Sayyid Qutb came to the U.S. in 1948 to study the educational system. Invited to a church social dinner and dance, he fumed as he watched women dancing suggestively close to their male partners. A confirmed bachelor unable to find a woman of sufficient “moral purity and discretion” to marry, Qutb—in an article very critical of America’s immorality—recorded his observations: “The dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire.”

Qutb’s revulsion over America’s animalistic sexuality dominated many of his later writings, which claimed only Islam offered salvation from the West’s decay. Returning to Egypt in 1950, he went on to lead the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood—before being executed in 1966 for plotting against the government. His writings and ideas ultimately were an inspiration for Osama bin Laden, shaping al-Qaeda.

It is interesting to compare Qutb’s criticism of Western moral decay to the debauchery of the afterlife the Koran promises loyal followers. What Qutb witnessed in America was quite tame in comparison.

Mohammad Asghar is a former Muslim who left Islam only after coming to understand its true teachings. In an interview with FrontPageMagazine a few years ago, he shared insights, described in the Koran, as to what believers and martyrs are told they can expect in Heaven’s “Gardens:”

“Everything in the Gardens will be for the enjoyment of their residents. In them, their male residents will have companions who will provide them with immense pleasure without feeling shame… Bashful with dark eyes and virgins … will provide them constant company and sex. Those men who will not have interest in sex with the female Hurs (maidens), Allah has made arrangement for them as well: they shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth… Allah will make them drunk, so that they can serve their clients to their entire satisfaction… The male residents of the Gardens and their virgin companions will be doing only one thing: sex.”

The wives of Muslim men who make it to Heaven, Asghar says,

“will chase their husbands to satisfy their sexual needs. Orgies will always take place in the Gardens. With their male residents’ desire for sex always remaining present in them due to the presence in their midst of, perhaps, naked Hurs, they will have nothing to do, but to have sex with them with no barriers to shield their activity from the next copulating man and Hur. Fathers will be having sex with the Hurs before the eyes of their sons and daughters, and sons will be having sex with the Hurs before their fathers and mothers… Muslims believe in every word of the Koran, as it is from Allah. Many of them wish to die as martyrs so that they can drink and have sex with the Hurs. Not to make them wait, until the Day of Judgment, to enjoy the bliss He has promised to Muslims, Allah transports the martyrs to the Garden as soon as they lay down their lives in His cause.”

The Koran’s sex theme spills over to Hell and the fate of non-believers. Asghar reports there is an interpretation that even sinners will have sex “while burning in the fire of Hell.”

The Koran explains Allah uses deception, when necessary, to dupe mankind. It would appear in preaching their violent interpretations of the Koran, so too do Islamic extremists.

By Ludwig Schneider, Israel Today

There is only night or day. Everything else, whether dawn or twilight, leans towards either day or night. The same thing applies to our attitude toward Israel. We either bless Israel or we curse it (Numbers 24:9). It is not possible to be indifferent toward Israel.

In other words, there are just two camps. One teaches that God has abandoned the nation of Israel and set up the Church in its place. This is known as Replacement Theology. The other says that God will never abandon His people Israel. Both camps cite the Bible, but the former ignores the context.

For example, opponents of Israel refer to Jeremiah 7:29: “The Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.” The rejection of Israel was an issue even in the prophet’s time, as God bemoans in Jeremiah 33:23-24: “Have you not observed what this people have spoken, saying, ‘The two families [Judah and Israel] which the Lord chose, He has rejected them?’”

Friends of Israel on the other hand quote Judges 2:1: “I brought you…into the land (Israel) which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said [or promised], ‘I will never break My covenant with you.’”

God confirms this in Jeremiah 31:37- 38: “Thus says the Lord, ‘If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done.’”

The Bible is full of promises from God that He will not reject His people Israel, but also of warnings that He will reject Israel. Which is right? What is relevant for the times we are living in now?

The answer is in the timing—whether God has rejected Israel temporarily or permanently. The early Christians in Rome also had a problem with this issue, for Paul responds to the question as to whether God has rejected His people Israel with a clear, “May it never be!” (Romans 11:1). However, a few verses later, he writes that God has rejected His covenant people for a limited time through the “partial” hardening of their hearts. Why? So that during this period, salvation may come to the gentiles (11:25-29).

This rejection, however, is temporary; it will only last “until the fullness of the gentiles has come in”—i.e., until the full number of the chosen gentiles has entered the Church of God. Then “all Israel will be saved.” At that point, God’s permanent covenant with His people Israel will be restored. The bottom line: When God speaks of His rejection of Israel, this is only a temporary state.

Indeed, the “stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22). While Peter correctly interprets this as referring to Jesus (Acts 4:11), it also refers to the nation of Israel in the End Times.

Zechariah 8:23 clearly indicates that the Jewish people have not been permanently rejected and will still play a role in salvation history: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew[!] saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’” At this time Israel will move out of the state of temporary rejection and will once again, in the sight of the whole world, become God’s eternal covenant nation.

Whenever Israel was disobedient to God, He rejected His people for a period of time—temporarily—in order to reinstate them after they had repented. He has not rejected Israel forever, for “the Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name” (1 Samuel 12:22).

The Lord also says: “I have chosen you and not rejected you” (Isaiah 41:9); “Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My covenant with them” (Leviticus 26:44). Here God confirms His eternal covenant with Israel, which was not annulled by His temporary rejection of the nation.

This is why He is leading Israel back again into the Land of the fathers; “and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them” (Amos 9:15). Just as God keeps His oath regarding His people Israel, so He also keeps His word to the Christian household of faith.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS: The Bible says Israel will never again be uprooted from the Promised Land

By Sara Lehmann, www.JewishPress.com

Non-Jews are no strangers to Israel’s policy of inclusivity in its government. What is strange is finding a non-Jewish Knesset member (MK) who is more Zionistic than most of his fellow parliamentarians. Ayoub Kara, a Druze Likud Knesset minister, is proud to consider himself one of the most right-wing members of the Knesset.

Kara, who was appointed deputy minister of the development of the Negev and Galilee by Prime Minister Netanyahu, was first elected to the Knesset in 1999. He was appointed Speaker of the Knesset, served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Workers and later as chairman of the Anti-Drug Committee.

In a unique position to reach out to others, Kara spoke with the mufti of Turkey following the flotilla incident in an effort to mend bridges. He defended Israel as “the most humanitarian country in the Middle East” and urged the mufti to preach brotherhood “because there are no winners in war, and the way of peace and dialogue is preferable to the miseries of war.”

Kara lives in the Druze town of Daliyat al-Karmel near Haifa with his wife and five children.

The Jewish Press: Can you explain the history and attitudes of the Druze people?

Kara: The Druze descend from Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. Both Jethro and Moses are prophets of the Druze, and we share the same book of religion as the Jews. The Druze believe, through the prophet Jethro, that the land of Israel is for the Jews and should be defended for the Jews.

Around a hundred years ago, when the Jews wanted to make a state of their own, the Druze helped them. They defended Jewish kibbutzim and gave the Jews in the North guns. They even cooperated with the Druze in Syria to support the Jews. There are around two million Druze in Israel living in the North, in the Galilee, the Carmel, the Golan Heights, and we serve in the Israeli army. Unlike the Palestinians, we have no aspirations for our own state.

Do Druze in other countries share the same beliefs regarding Israel?

This is the philosophy of most Druze, but they’re scared to speak out about it. The Druze are afraid of the Muslims. Privately they say they share a historical religion with the Jews, but out loud most of the Druze don’t speak like that. There is no democracy and free speech in Arab countries and many of the Druze are pressured to convert to Islam. In Israel it’s different because we have freedom to say we’re Druze, and we even have a Druze flag next to the Israeli flag. We can’t do this in Arab countries. I was in Lebanon and Syria, and I know how the Druze there feel. They feel like outsiders and are scared of the Muslims.

To what extent has your family been involved in Israel’s struggle for survival?

Before 1948, my grandfather helped the Jews and paid a big price. His son, my uncle, was the first Druze to be killed by the Arabs in 1939. He was an officer on the side of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, and he was killed by Arabs in Acco [Acre] because they said that he supported the Jews. My father fought with Tzahal (IDF) in 1948 in the Galilee. Another uncle of mine was killed by Arabs at that time. And my two brothers were killed in the Lebanon War in 1982 near Beirut.

I was also severely injured in the Lebanon War, and my parents died soon after from heartbreak. I returned to my village near Haifa and started my own family after that. I need peace. I don’t like war, but I speak about my tragedy because it’s important to hear how my family paid such a price to defend Israel. I believe the ultimate importance for me, more than anything, is that I live in a democratic state with human rights. In all the surrounding Arab countries there are no human rights, no courts, no justice.

You serve as deputy minister of the Galilee and Negev. What do you consider the most significant challenges you face in these areas?

The big problem in the Galilee and Negev is the migration of people from these areas to the center of Israel. They move there to study and work because we don’t have companies and business in the north and south to provide work for the young people. And when they move to the center, that means the Arabs gain in these areas. President Peres keeps talking about demographics as the reason to give the Palestinians another state. In the future a new Peres could come and say we have to give the Arabs in the north and south another state. I am afraid of that because there will be more Arabs than Jews.

What efforts are you making to combat this problem?

I am trying to introduce new initiatives in the government. One is in the area of education. We now offer soldiers who finish the army the opportunity to study for free in the Galilee and Negev, and we’re also building a big college for medicine in the Galilee. We are trying to build new big roads for people to commute more quickly from the center [of Israel]. We support companies who come to these areas and provide incentives for them. We allowed Intel to open a big factory in the Negev with many rights from the government. This is our opportunity to change the demographics. If we don’t pursue this we will find ourselves with more Arabs than Jews in these areas. In 1948 there were 20,000 Bedouin in the Negev. Now, with no immigration, there are 200,000 Bedouin.

You spoke out very strongly against the Gaza Disengagement. Do you think the Israeli public has learned anything from the results of that withdrawal?

I think the Jewish people are very naïve. I was against the withdrawal from Lebanon and was alone in my opposition. I said that Hezbollah will be motivated from this. In 1982 most of the public in Lebanon were more liberal—Christian, Druze, and secular Muslims—and we were mostly at peace with them. I told [then-prime minister Ehud] Barak that it was important for us to support this group. But we withdrew quickly, and Hezbollah gained power in this area as a result of the withdrawal.

The same thing happened when Sharon withdrew from Gaza. I led the opposition to this plan in the government, but when I spoke out I was accused of opposing peace and supporting war. I tried to stop the Disengagement through the finance committee in the Knesset, but I was told if I don’t agree with them they will throw me out of the parliament. Now it’s different. More than 90 percent now understand that what happened in Gush Katif and South Lebanon was a mistake. They know that if there are any withdrawals in Yehudah and Shomron, the same thing would happen and there would be an Iranian ascendancy in those areas.

But we have the Supreme Court and other liberals in Israel who think we are negotiating with people who have the same mentality as Jews, Europeans, or Americans. But in the Middle East, the Arabs tell you what you want to hear and not what you have to hear. The Jews did not understand this until now.

I don’t want Israel to make another mistake. This is my state. For me the religion is not important—Druze, Jewish, or Christian. I am an Israeli patriot.

Yet you serve as a deputy minister in a Likud coalition whose prime minister endorsed the two-state solution and is in direct talks with the Palestinians. Do you see this as a contradiction?

I support Netanyahu and am one of his close friends. I don’t think Netanyahu would give up any land, but he’s realistic and knows he would look bad to the world if he opposes Obama. Obama has an agenda to give a state to the Palestinians. But he doesn’t live here. We do. When they pushed us on Gush Katif, we gave them land; and when we were attacked afterward, I didn’t see the U.S. come to defend us.

It’s very popular to say two states for two people, but when you speak about this you have to have a partner and leadership to give them a state. Who would lead this state? Abbas and Fayyad cannot cross the border of Hebron. If there were an election in the West Bank, Hamas would win. And Abbas and Fayyad don’t lead in Gaza. They are not relevant there. If they crossed the border into Gaza, Hamas would kill them. That’s why I laugh when they talk about two states.

In all history, there was never a Palestinian state. I don’t support the two-state solution. We have to look at the Palestinians’ intentions. Most of the Palestinians don’t believe Israel should exist. The state of the Palestinians is Jordan. More than 90 percent of Jordan is Palestinian. If they want us to go back to the 1967 borders, then Jordan should lead the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria civilly, not in defense, while Israel should [maintain its presence] in the big cities and all the areas in between. And Egypt should retake control of Gaza. We should end any relationship with Gaza. We don’t have any other solution for Gaza. De facto, we have another state there.

But what if Egypt doesn’t want a relationship with Gaza?

So what? We are being pushed to give another state and we don’t want that either. If they want us to move to the 1967 borders, then they have too also. Egypt has problems with the Muslim Brotherhood, but we have our problems too. If the Egyptians kill a few thousand people in Gaza in broad daylight, no one would say anything; but if Israel kills one Palestinian, it makes news around the world. If we do not give Gaza to Egypt, there’s no other solution. The same thing with Jordan and the West Bank.

We need real peace in the Middle East, but I am not going to agree with Obama’s plan. No Obama and no Osama can push us to enable Iran to come into Jerusalem.

By Ian Black, www.Guardian.co.uk

Lebanon looks set to allow the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to make a highly controversial visit to its border with Israel this coming week.

The U.S. has been leading diplomatic efforts to persuade the Beirut government that Ahmadinejad’s presence in strongholds of the Shia movement Hezbollah in south Lebanon will pose a security risk that could provoke serious violence. But the signs are that the trip will go ahead, diplomats said.

According to some reports Ahmadinejad will symbolically throw stones across the border fence into Israel, which he regularly attacks as an illegitimate entity, as well as questioning the truth of the Nazi Holocaust. Israel is also concerned by Iran’s nuclear energy program, which it claims is intended to produce nuclear weapons which would challenge its own undeclared atomic arsenal.

The reported two-day itinerary for Ahmadinejad’s first state visit to Lebanon includes Kana, where he is to lay a wreath on the graves of Lebanese killed by Israeli forces. Another likely stop is Bint Jbeil, the scene of heavy fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in the 2006 war.

Posters welcoming Ahmadinejad in Arabic and Persian have already appeared in the area amid reports that the Iranian leader, with a business delegation in tow, will bring investment, financing for oil exploration, and a controversial offer to sell weapons to the Lebanese army.

Iranian embassy officials in Beirut have refused to confirm details of the southern leg of the trip, but Hezbollah is said to be massing supporters to welcome Ahmadinejad as a hero of the resistance.

Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, has warned that the U.S. and Israel have no right to oppose the visit, which its TV channel al-Manar hailed as “a non-conventional bomb in the face of enemies wherever they are”.

Representations have been made to the Beirut government by the U.S., France and the UN. Britain believes a direct appeal to cancel the visit to the border would be counterproductive as it could be seen as infringing Lebanese sovereignty. But it and other western governments have urged the exercise of caution in a highly volatile area.

Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, raised the issue with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman at the UN in New York last week. U.S. officials also stress that Iran is undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty by backing Hezbollah. The Shia organization has refused to yield its largely-Iranian supplied weaponry to the Lebanese armed forces and is listed by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

Israel is urging that the visit should be cancelled as it will undermine regional stability as well as strengthen the axis between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

The well-informed Beirut daily an-Nahar reported that Ahmadinejad’s visit would go ahead despite objections. But observers in Beirut said one possibility was that he would only visit Iranian-financed reconstruction projects and not go right up to the Israeli border for the stone throwing — on obvious security grounds. Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, insisted on Tuesday that it was natural for the president to visit such projects.

Ahmadinejad is due to meet Suleiman, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, Speaker Nabih Berri, and Hezbollah leaders.

Supporters of Hariri’s March 14 group have attacked the visit as a bid to underline Iran’s ability to disrupt regional peace efforts. Hariri’s bloc is also concerned about Hezbollah maneuvering around the tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of his father Rafiq.

Israeli officials say they fear the visit will go ahead and are ramping up border security following an armed clash in August that left five dead. Aluf Benn, a respected liberal columnist with the Haaretz newspaper, has suggested that Ahmadinejad be abducted and tried in Israel for incitement to genocide and Holocaust denial.

By Giulio Meotti, www.CommentaryMagazine.com

Fertile, warm, and humid is the plain leading to the town of Sderot. The houses are yellow and white on the Negev, the desert dreamt by David Ben Gurion, the founder of modern Israel. Before the road leading into the town, there is a cafeteria full of Israeli soldiers in transit to military bases. It’s the border with Gaza and the Hamas rockets.

A few kilometers from here lies Havat Shikmim, the ranch of former prime minister Ariel Sharon. Once protected and fortified, the place is now neglected. The Hamas rockets have fallen near the grave of Sharon’s wife, Lily, and the flowers placed by the general have been burned by Islamist hatred. Hamas claims ownership of the Sharon ranch, which is located near Huj, an Arab village destroyed in the war of 1948.

Sderot was once famous for having one of the highest unemployment rates in Israel. Today, this poor town of North African and Soviet immigrants boasts the sad record of having received the highest number of rocket attacks by Hamas. It is now the place most at risk in Israel. But severe risk also marks other southern cities, such as Ashdod, Beersheba, Netivot, and Ashkelon–the latter provides much of Gaza’s electricity but nevertheless is bombarded by Grad missiles. The fact that a large part of the country is living much as those in Sderot do—running for shelter and fearing for their lives—creates a whole new sad reality: a sense of solidarity.

Bulldozers are hard at work in Sderot. Every street is dotted with concrete huts: the bus shelters have them, the souk (market) has them, and now the cranes and bulldozers are all over town making good on the government’s promise to put a missile-proof security room in every Sderot home. A few days ago, another rocket fell into the city. The militants of the terrorist movement have been improving their missiles. The people in Sderot used to call them “toys made in the kitchen.” Then the rockets began to kill and produce an array of disabled citizens. They are no longer considered “toys.”

Sderot is preparing for the next war against Hamas. “There are 5,000 additional shelters under construction in Sderot,” says Noam Bedein, director of the Sderot Media Center. Five thousand new shelters are a huge number for a small town of just 20,000 inhabitants. That’s why Sderot was dubbed “the world capital of bomb shelters.” In the courtyard of the police station are stored the remains of the launched missiles. The red ones were launched by Hamas. The yellow rockets came from the Islamic Jihad. Since the war ended in January 2009, hundreds of new rockets have fallen into the Negev desert and its kibbutzim.

In Sderot you have only 15 seconds to find a shelter once the alarm warns that Hamas has just launched a rocket. Gaza is less than a mile from here. In Sderot, many motorists do not wear seat belts so that they can rush out of their cars when the alarm sounds. The school on the hill bears the marks of shrapnel bombs, and the army has nestled the building under huge slabs of steel. “People abroad do not realize what is happening here,” says the mayor of Sderot, David Buskila, an Israeli of Moroccan descent, as are most of those who came to Sderot in the 1950s to found the city.

Dr. Adriana Katz is an accidental hero of this endless war, because for years she has cared for the people here. “We just did a test for chemical warfare,” says Katz, who directs the trauma center in Sderot, where all the victims in shock arrive after the missiles fall. Katz belonged to the Meretz Party of Shulamit Aloni and Peace Now. “I needed time to understand that something bothered me. When the discomfort became pain, I immediately knew I had opened myself too much to the Palestinians. Then I realized the mistakes. Israel is a hard place, but special. We won’t run away.” Every week, her trauma center receives around 150 to 170 people for medical treatment.

When the situation is critical, the children of Sderot are sent by relatives to live elsewhere in Israel. The young mothers buying socks with their children still keep an eye out for the nearest bomb shelter. They still hurry home as quickly as possible. The 24,000 residents of Sderot have come out of their bomb shelters—but slowly, hesitantly. And the signs of a new tranquility, made possible by the Gaza operation against Hamas, are seen everywhere. At night, groups of men are talking in fast-food restaurants and cafes. This was unimaginable a year and a half ago. People are still driving with the windows down so that they can hear the alarm if it sounds. In such a case, the driver must get out and lie on the ground, even if it’s raining. “A lady stopped the car without getting out and now must undergo rehabilitation because she was injured seriously by the rocket,” says Katz. “I refuse to lie down on the ground. It’s like an instinct that prevents me—it’s too humiliating.”

Usually Hamas terrorists fire rockets on Sderot during the morning, when there is the maximum concentration of Jewish children going to school. Many Holocaust survivors in the city must take sedatives and tranquilizers. In Sderot there are large stocks of medicine for shock treatment. It is estimated that more than half the population of Sderot suffers from stress or other psychiatric syndromes. After years of missile fire on the city, groups of children are in “regression”; they do not want to sleep alone, receive low grades at school, and fear leaving home.

But this is Sderot, the involuntary capital of torn psyches: the tranquilizers Lorivan, Clonex, and Valium are in plentiful supply; the antidepressants Seroxat, Cipralex, and Cymbalta are for deeper treatment, and severe psychoses are treated with the neuroleptics Zyprexa, Geodon, and Clopixol.

The new gas masks just distributed to the population have a benign name: Candy. The mask first appeared in 1991, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq rained rockets on Israel. In February, Israel announced a new anti-missile system known as Iron Dome. It’s the great hope of Sderot, but some analysts have serious doubts that it can protect the city. The project has cost a billion dollars—to ward off the $25-a-piece rockets of Hamas. Iron Dome takes 30 seconds to intercept a rocket, which is probably too long for the kibbutzim in the Negev and the towns in the north of Galilee. To make matters worse, Hezbollah and Hamas now have new Iranian missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

In Sderot there is a park named after a four-year-old boy, Aphik Zahavi-Ohayon, Hamas’s first victim in the city. At Givat, “the hill,” you can see Beit Hanoun. It’s Hamas territory, just half a mile away. Yet houses with red roofs, tidy and comfortable, are under construction in this hill—the most frightening face of the new Sderot’s “normality.”

The mayor of Sderot explains that “there is a real possibility that we will pass on to a new conflict against Hamas. In the future we expect a new missile wave. We have built 2,500 new shelters. New shelters will be finished for schools by the beginning of the school year. I hope to see better days, although I’m not sure.”

Yet the people of Sderot did not abandon their homes. The few families who left did so because they could afford to leave this trenched city. “People try to learn again to live, they drive with the windows closed because it is too hot,” says Dr. Katz. “Many find it difficult to separate from the vault and they sleep in the shelters. In many houses the shelters are used for games by the children.” In Katz’s clinic, you will find a shelter that looks like an anonymous waiting room: a table and a small sofa with a blanket thrown over. “An alarm can bring you back to the fears, the insomnia, and my clinic is filled with people in anguish,” says Katz. “There is a poor seller of melons that can no longer shout on a megaphone to sell his wares, because it is too similar to ‘Tzeva adom,’ the siren alarm, and someone passed out when they heard him.”

In this atmosphere of surreal “peace,” people wait. “Here we are sitting on a barrel of explosives,” says Katz. “The only question is when you blow up.”

Few can understand better the plight of Sderot than their counterparts in Kiryat Shmona, the town near the border with Lebanon. The higher you climb in Galilee, the more palpable become the security needs of Israel. The road to Kiryat Shmona, “the city of eight,” built in memory of the Jewish pioneers who came up here to defend the kibbutzim, is scorched by bombs and fires. Even the water reservoir Eskhol, named for an Israeli prime minister, is a treasure protected by an electrified fence, cameras, and armed guards. The terrorists can poison even the water.

There is silence in Kiryat Shmona. The local Israelis call it the “so called” silence because it is more the faint vibration of a war to come—the calm before the storm. As in Sderot, many houses in Kiryat Shmona are equipped today with new shelters. Row houses are interrupted by new buildings, where families can escape in case of rocket fire. The greatest fear of the 20,000 inhabitants is that the alarm will sound when their children are just down the street.

In the summer of 2006, Hezbollah launched thousands of missiles on roofs and roads. Most of the 200 public shelters of Kiryat Shmona have been restored, ready for use again. Hezbollah has just staged a new show of force in southern Lebanon against a UNIFIL contingent of international forces, triggering many accidents, especially in the area under Italian command. The “Party of God” wants to show who controls the territory, because the struggle against Israel is never finished. Kiryat Shmona can become again the first target of Shia rockets. According to Jerusalem, Hezbollah controls 160 villages in southern Lebanon, ready to become strongholds in case of war, as they did in 2006.

More than 4,000 Katyusha rockets, which have a longer range and carry a bigger explosive payload than do Kassams, fell on Kiryat Shmona between 1968 and May 2000, when the IDF withdrew from Lebanon in full compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 425. During that same period, some 20 people, according to municipality statistics, were killed as a result of rocket attacks, and another 16 as a result of terrorist activities and infiltrations. Over the same period, rockets damaged more than 6,500 homes, in addition to factories, public buildings, schools, and kindergartens, as well as cars and other vehicles. Hundreds of people were physically and psychologically wounded. Three hundred thousand Israelis were forced to move to the south, and a third of the Israeli population hid in shelters. In many cases, the city could not afford to wait for the slow government bureaucracy to build the needed shelters but turned to private charity instead. Some shelters in Kiryat Shmona, which people here have dubbed Kiryat Katyusha, were made possible thanks to donations from the American Jewish community, and Livnot U’Lehibanot is the organization that collected money to renovate defensive structures for the population in the Galilee.

During the last war, local children drew pictures of beautiful domes that protected the city from the sky. That fantasy is almost a reality. Alan Schneider, director of the Bnai Brith World Center in Jerusalem, explains what his organization is doing to help the city: “We have funded an anti-missile system made by the Elbit Systems. It can provide precious information in case of attack.” The leader of Bnai Brith is expecting another round of attacks from Hezbollah: “UNIFIL’s mission has failed, and there is frequent passage of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah. So we fear the worst. Today the Lebanese terrorists have more weapons than they had before 2006.”

Not far from here stands Metulla, the city where in 1970, Arafat’s killers murdered Jewish students and tourists. During the last war, one third of the Israeli population fled. Today there is an unreal calm. It is impressive to see that the mountains, which had become black from bombs, are now green and that the traffic is again intense. There is no trace of the effects from the explosions in Kiryat Shmona. Yet the oldest trees of Israel—oaks, pines, and carob—which had grown like children, one by one, are no more.

Unlike before and during the war, you can now stand on a terrace overlooking the villages of Ataybeh, Markab, and Telkabe—all scenes of bloody battles. In these villages, Hezbollah is still hiding weapons and taking note of Israeli movements. Behind this green quietness there is the work of rearmament and reconstruction, even in the absence of yellow Hezbollah flags and posters that displayed the head of Israelis. “From those houses up there we never see a family, a child, nothing,” the locals explain. The houses are called the “eyes of Hezbollah.”

The Golan Heights are not far. The city of Quneitra lies low and close below the hills. Here you can physically feel the strategic fragility of Israel. If Jerusalem cedes the heights to Damascus, the Syrians will be able to look inside Israel. What would happen if, instead of the Assad regime, another government took power, one with Islamist genocidal ambitions toward the nearby Jewish state?

On the Golan there are no Palestinians, only Jews and Druze, who live together in harmony. Even the Golan “settlers” are different from those of the West Bank. They are nonreligious nationalists devoted to the defense of Israel. The Druze of the surrounding villages suffer the separation from relatives across the border, and often the families speak with megaphones, asking for news of their loved ones. The Golan is a place where signs of mourning remain intact. A local artist has made sculptures from pieces of missiles and tanks. There is the gaping mouth of a house gutted by bombs. A plaque commemorates the loss of a 20-year-old son. The memorial to the Egoz brigade, which patrolled the Israeli border with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, is not far away from 30 bronze plaques engraved with the names of the fallen.

In the settlement city of Katzrin, nobody is expecting Israel to withdraw from the Golan. The city is a pearl of modernity and Israeliness. Red-roofed houses are under construction. These abodes are cheap because their future was always uncertain. Trucks full of bottles of the famous wine of the Golan, boycotted by the anti-Israeli activists, are leaving all the time. The “settlers” are planting new vines. Before the 1967 war, the Jewish state had built a row of trees along roadsides to protect pedestrians from the Syrian snipers. Those trees are still there, silent witnesses to a truce always under discussion.

Back in Tel Aviv, the Indian conductor Zubin Mehta has just finished performing in honor of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Back in 1991, when Saddam Hussein launched his rockets on Tel Aviv, the orchestra was playing Bach when the sirens suddenly began to scream. Zubin Mehta and Isaac Stern put on gas masks. The missiles fell, but the music won. Twenty years later, Zubin Mehta is still in Tel Aviv, as Israel waits again for a new wave of rocket fire. From Sderot to Kiryat Shmona, the Jewish state faces a new terror assault. Its citizens are sheltering again. And the world that isolates and hates Israel deepens the awful wounds.