The Sunday Times is publishing proven fantasist Uzi Mahnaimi on yet another unsourced, headline-grabbing Israel story. This time, he says George Bush gave Israel the go-ahead to attack Iran. But don’t rush to reprint this story on your blog. The blogosphere is filled with deconstructions of his fantastic claims (one could even call them “lies,” particularly his most infamous lie, the claim that Israel was building a “genetic weapon” that would target only Arabs).

For instance: There was the “imminent” massive attack on Gaza we were promised … on June 17th, 2007.

ISRAEL’s new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there.

According to senior Israeli military sources, the plan calls for 20,000 troops to destroy much of Hamas’s military capability in days.

More than a year later, that “imminent” attack has become a bit less imminent.

Here’s another one: Israel is going to attack Iran with nukes. Read Joe’s Dartblog for a deconstruction of that one. Joe points out that Uzi wrote the same story twice before. Israel Matzav says he wrote it three times.

Allison Kaplan Sommer, a real reporter, wrote:

One thing is clear: Mahnaimi makes a regular habit of reporting that Israel is about to attack Iran. If his reporting was accurate, Iranian nuclear facilities would already be a smoking ruin – not once, but multiple times.

Notice the Mahnaimi patterns: He quotes “senior” sources, yet never names them. If he does name a source, that source inevitably turns out to have no contact with the current military establishment. He says an attack is going to happen within days or weeks. He adds the element of nuclear weapons strikes. Most of those are in his latest fantasy:

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.

Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.

“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.

Guaranteed this will sweep across the blogosphere as a legitimate story. But before you write that post, read up on your source. I’d love to know if there even is such a thing as an “amber light” status, because it sounds like b.s. to me.

Mahnaimi’s reputation got so bad the Times gave him a co-author. But Sarah Baxter is a political reporter who seems to have been assigned to Mahnaimi’s stories to add respectability to his reputation. She has no foreign reporting chops, unless you count things like this interview with John Gibson on Madeleine McCann. Adding her byline to Mahnaimi’s stories isn’t getting the result the Times wants. It’s making me (and probably others) think less of her. And adding to the skepticism about Baxter are stories like this, where she quotes secondary sources quoting unnamed sources, saying that the Pentagon has a “three-day blitz” plan for Iran. Secondary sources, quoting unnamed sources: Now there’s a well-sourced article for you—in Bizarro World.

The questions about Mahnaimi’s facts are numerous. You can’t turn around without finding someone easily debunking a Mahnaimi story. Here’s an in-depth debunking of Mahnaimi and Baxter, translated from the French.

Remember that before you reflexively quote this Times story as true. So far, the record on this “reporter” has been the complete opposite. The Sunday Times of London is not the paper that it used to be. If it ever was. Perhaps my British readers could vouch for the Times’ reputation back in the day. Because right now, it’s the paper the keeps publishing a reporter who should be writing fiction—not getting front-page headlines in the Times.

So what exactly is Israel getting for the truce?

Nothing.

Two mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip on Sunday afternoon landed near the border fence, on its Palestinian side, in the Kibbutz Nahal Oz area. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

Twenty-four hours earlier, the ceasefire reached between the Israel and the Palestinian factions was violated once again, as a Qassam rocket landed in an open area near a community in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council.

The Color Red alert system was activated at around 1:05 pm in Sderot and the Gaza vicinity communities. Several seconds later, an explosion was heard near one of the communities.

On Thursday, two Qassam rockets landed in the western Negev. There were no reports of injuries or damage. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah’s military wing, claimed responsibility, saying the rockets were fired in response to the assassination of Talal Abed just outside the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Wednesday.

Hamas is “arresting” the rocket cells. And yet, the rockets keep on coming.

What is Hamas getting for the truce?

Everything.

Time to regroup, rearm, and train.

In a nondescript Gaza Strip mosque, a group of Islamic Jihad fighters wearing black facemasks and combat vests proudly showed off Chinese-made machine guns and Russian rocket-propelled-grenades.

“It’s like rain coming down,” said one 25-year-old militant who identified himself as Abu Thabet. “You can get all kinds of weapons.”

Though they aren’t regularly firing rockets, Islamic Jihad members said they’re still making new ones.

“This cease-fire is a matter of rest,” said a 20-year-old fighter who gave his non du guerre as Abu Mohammed. “It’s a fighters’ break, to prepare for the next stage.”

Way to go, Olmert. Way to go, Barak. Way to protect Israel. Her sons will pay the bill for this “truce,” just as they’ll pay the bill for the prisoner swap with Hezbollah.

“On the Palestinian street there is now an understanding that without kidnapping soldiers, we can’t get prisoners released. Through negotiation, we haven’t managed to get prisoners released,” the Palestinian Authority’s minister for Prisoners Affairs, Ashraf al-Ajami, said over the weekend.

Oh, as for that prisoner swap? Hezbollah isn’t holding up its end of the deal.

State officials told Ynet that they believe the document would not suffice Israel’s demands. They said the Israeli government would have to decide whether to continue with the prisoner exchange, despite the fact that the evidence Hizbullah was asked to deliver was not included in the report.

But the deal will go on, anyway. You know it will.

A statement by the Prison Service said that “on June 29 the government resolved to approve the draft for the agreement to release the Israeli kidnapped soldiers in Lebanon, according to which kidnapped soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev will be returned to Israel in exchange for the return of Samir Kuntar and four other illegal Lebanese militants to Lebanon.” The statement also said Kuntar would be released this coming Wednesday.

Just a few minutes after the list’s publication on the Prison Service’s website, it was taken off for an undisclosed reason. Aside from Kuntar, the list includes Khader Zidan, Maher Qurani, Mahmad Srour, and Hussein Sleiman, all captured during the Second Lebanon War.

Olmert should be ashamed of himself. And yet, he is not. Word is he’s going to run in Kadima’s primary, even after more evidence of his corruption surfaced, and an indictment is expected within weeks. Try to imagine an American president holding onto power under this scenario. I can’t.

Israel’s political system is broken. They need to fix it. Where are the Israeli political reformers? Are they waiting for God to step in?

Not gonna happen.

A wedding hall ATM:

Guests at an Israeli wedding hall can now insert a credit card into a machine at its entrance, tap in a sum and leave a gift for the bride and groom.

“It’s new in Israel and the world,” Aya Alon Kaufman of the Gan Oranim hall in Tel Aviv said on Israel’s Channel 10. “It’s very convenient … guests can give a gift even if they forget their checkbooks.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Harry Diamond was credited with developing the proximity fuze for artillery shells. (.pdf)

About a year before Pearl Harbor, the United States became interested in the development of the proximity fuze. It was calculated (and borne out in combat) that a fuze which would explode a projectile near a plane, or at the best height above a target on the surface, would increase lethality by a factor of five or ten.
Initial work was at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Two or three months later, the National Bureau of Standards was brought into the program, and Harry Diamond was given responsibility for this phase of the Bureau’s work. Within about four months of the start of the program, Diamond’s group established feasibility of the radio proximity fuze through conclusive tests in bombs dropped at the Naval Proving Ground at Dahlgren, Va. Throughout World WarI I, this group acted as the central laboratory of Division 4 of the National Defense Research Committee, and Diamond was the central figure of the group. Much of the basic proximity fuze technology was developed under his direction.

This invention was extremely important to the ground war in Europe but was used effectively in a number of scenarios.

During 1943 approximately 9,100 rounds of proximity-fuzed and 27,200 rounds of time-fuzed 5-inch anti-aircraft projectiles were fired. Fifty-one percent of the hits on enemy planes were credited to VT-fuzed projectiles. The proximity Fuze equipped shells success in repelling air attacks against fleet units reached its peak when a task group in the Pacific reported the destruction of 91 of 130 attacking Japanese planes. This high level of effectiveness was to save many servicemen’s lives from the onslaught of Kamikaze attackers. Had not these Samurai minded pilots been removed from the air, they would have rammed their planes onto the decks of our navy vessels causing the death of many servicemen. The VT Fuzed shells were also used with great success in the Mediterranean and Atlantic theaters.

…

During 1944 the intense warfare in the European theater of operations necessitated the lifting of the ban against the use of the fuze where it might be recovered by an enemy. On 12 June 1944 the first V-1 “buzz bomb” fell on London marking the start of Hitler’s massive effort to level the city by rocket. The all-out valiant effort of the Royal Air Force was not able to devise a good defense against this new weapon.

The Combined Chiefs of Staff reluctantly agreed upon the necessity of using the proximity fuze in the defense of London. Large numbers of anti-aircraft guns were moved to the channel coast where they could fire at the bombs over water. Success in destroying the V-1 rocket bombs by gunfire increased proportionally with the increase in the use of VT-fuzed projectiles. In the last month of the terrifying 80 days, 79 percent of the bombs engaged were destroyed as compared with the 24 percent destroyed during the first week of the attacks. On the last day of large-scale attacks only 4 Of 104 bombs succeeded in reaching their target. Some of the 100 destroyed are credited to the Royal Air Force and to the barrage balloons, but the majority of the V-1’s were victims of proximity-fuzed projectiles. There was little profit to the enemy with such a small percentage of success so Hitler turned the weapon on the port of Antwerp, which at that time was vital to the Allied supply lines. In the autumn of 1944 the devastating damage wrought while the Allies were redeploying anti-aircraft guns threatened to close the port. As the number of guns firing the proximity fuze increased, the damage decreased and the Allies were able to move their guns closer and to assume the offensive against the aerial targets. The defense of Antwerp resulted in the Combined Chiefs of Staff removing all bans against the use of the fuze which was most fortunate for the allied soldiers fighting there.

And it was so recognized. (.pdf)

The War Department later described inventor Harry Diamond’s proximity fuze as “one of the outstanding scientific developments of World War II … second only to the atomic bomb” in military importance

I bring you this bit of history as an introduction to the recent announcement of 2007’s top army inventions.

Every spring, the U.S. Army designates a set of top inventions from the preceding year. Rather than radical, out-of-the-blue creations, the list tends more toward refinements on existing gear, but that doesn’t make them any less significant for the soldiers who use that gear in battlefield conditions.

The top inventions for 2007, honored in a ceremony last month, like last year’s bunch has an emphasis on ways to reduce the threat of, or the damage from, improvised explosive devices. This year’s group also recognizes a novel technique for saving the lives of severely injured soldiers.

One of these inventions is an improvement upon existing fuzing technology, the XM982 Excalibur precision-guided artillery projectile. (relevant pictures here and here.)

The targeting information of the shell is programmed by a setter immediately before firing and further information is transmitted in flight.

The recognition of these advances comes from soldiers in the field.

Nominations were submitted from across the Army laboratory community and evaluated by Soldier teams from the Training and Doctrine Command and Army divisions.

“The Army’s greatest inventions are chosen by our customers - Soldiers who use the equipment in war zones and whose lives depend upon having the best equipment,” said Dr. Joseph A. Lannon, Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center director.

“There is nothing more satisfying and motivating to our workforce than knowing they have made a difference to our Soldiers on the battlefield,” Lannon said.

The Army’s 10 greatest inventions program was initiated in 2002.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Got a question for Israel’s foreign media adviser?

Go here and ask it.

Mine’s already been asked. I would word it a bit differently: Why the hell can’t Israel manage her own PR better? The Arabs have been winning the propaganda war for decades.When is Israel going to fight back?

Oh, hell. I’ll go submit it anyway.