New York Post, New York Times, Washington Post, and Financial Times: “ISIS” Is Responsible for Russian Airliner Crash

By Jonas E. Alexis on October 31, 2015

“Hours after the crash, a branch of the Islamic State operating in Sinai claimed responsibility.”

…by Jonas E. Alexis

Gordon Duff began his recent article with the headline: “ISIS in Sinai, an Israeli group, claims shoot-down and posts video.” The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Financial Times have confirmed Duff’s suspicion.
They have recently reported:

“Hours after the crash, a branch of the Islamic State operating in Sinai claimed responsibility.”[1]

The New York Times added:

“There has been no indication that the branch has the kind of weapons needed to bring down a plane from a high altitude. The other possibility would be a bomb planted or carried onboard. There has been a violent insurgency in Sinai against the Egyptian government for several years.”[2]

The branch certainly could not forge those kinds of weapons, but we know that the U.S. has been delivering sophisticated weapons to them. In fact, we know that ISIS and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are two sides of the same coin. TheInternational Business Times reported last December:

“Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have been in regular contact with Syrian rebels, including Islamic State (ISIS) militants. Citing the UN report, Haaretz noted that there have been several instances detailed in the report that shows close ties between Syrian armed rebels and Israeli army.

“According to the UN report, a person wounded on 15 September ‘was taken by armed members of the opposition across the ceasefire line, where he was transferred to a civilian ambulance escorted by an IDF vehicle.’

“Moreover, from 9-19 November, the UNDOF observed at least 10 wounded persons being transferred by armed members of the opposition from the Bravo side across the ceasefire line to IDF.

“As per the details released by the Israel’s health ministry, so far some 1,000 Syrians have been treated in four Israeli hospitals. Besides the civilians, some are members of the secular Free Syrian Army rebel group.

“Israel initially had maintained that it was treating only civilians. However, reports claimed that earlier last month members of Israel’s Druze minority protested the hospitalisation of wounded Syrian fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front in Israel.

“A statement issued by a group of Druze activists accused the Israeli government of supporting radical Sunni factions such as the Islamic State (ISIS).

“Replying to a question by i24News on whether Israel has given medical assistance to members of al-Nusra and Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (ISIS), a Israeli military spokesman’s office said: ‘In the past two years the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.’

“The UN report also laid out instances where in Israeli army was seen interacting with armed rebels. In one incident, the report claimed that the IDF gave some boxes to the Syrian armed rebels.”[3]

The Syrian rebels/terrorists know pretty well that Israel is their best friend. Whenever they get hurt in the battlefield, Israeli hospitals always extend their arms and take them in.[4]

But instead of seeing this issue from a geopolitical and ideological perspective, a large section of the media blamed Russia for the crash:

“Russia has a dismal air safety record, with charter flights often under pressure to book to capacity on ageing jets in a bid to cut costs. Kogalymavia is a small regional carrier which flies mostly international charter services.

“Regional airlines in Russia are especially notorious and the crash is likely to raise renewed concerns about the safety of air travel in a country where experts have long sounded the alarm over the nation’s ageing fleet of passenger jets.”

Russia has built sophisticated weapons and has been using those weapons to battle ISIS in Syria, but Russia cannot have a good airline system? It is pretty hard to swallow.

The simple fact is that history is being repeated here. New World Order agents have committed similar crimes in the past. In 1954, Israel Military Intelligence planted bombs in Egypt in American and British-owned territories.[5] Why?

Because, according to Shabtai Teveth of Tel-Aviv University, “the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, ‘unspecified malcontents’ or ‘local nationalists’” would be responsible and this would force the United States go to war against Egypt.[6]

This incident, which happened during the guardianship of Israel’s Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon, became known as the Lavon Affair. The Egyptian Jews involved were caught and confessed that it was all a conspiracy. Israeli historian Benny Morris defensively writes,

“A bomb went off prematurely in the pocket of one of the group, Philip Natanson, as he was about to enter the Rio Cinema in Alexandria. Natanson was arrested and that night the Egyptian security police arrested the rest of the network:

“Dr. Moshe Marzuk [a surgeon at the Jewish Hospital in Cairo], Shmuel Azzar [an engineering professor from Alexandria], Marcelle Ninio, Victor Levy, Robert Dassa, Meir Za’afran, Meir Meyuhas, Eli Ya’akov and Azzar Cohen. Ninio attempted to commit suicide but failed.”[7]

Yet Prime Minister Moshe Sharett managed to spin the incident as a conspiracy against Jews, saying that it was a

“‘wicked plot hatched in Alexandria…the show trial which is being organized there against a group of Jews who have fallen victims to false accusations and from whom it seems attempts are being made to extract confessions of imaginary crimes, by threats and torture.’”[8]

One Jewish newspaper claimed that the Egyptian police force “seems to take its inspiration from the Nazis” and predicted that the arrest itself would cause “deterioration in the status of Egyptian Jews in general” and others such as Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post concurred.[9]

After the trial, however, it was clear that “the bombings had been carried out by an Israeli espionage and terrorist network. This was headed by Colonel Avraham Dar—alias John Darling—and a core of professionals who had set themselves up in Egypt under various guises. They recruited a number of Egyptian Jews.”[10]

Marzuk and Azzar were sentenced and hung, provoking an outcry in Israel.

“Israel reacted with a great show of grief and anger. So did some Western Jews. Marzuk and Azar ‘died the death of martyrs,’ said Sharett in the Knesset, whose members stood in silent tribute…Israel went into official mourning the following day.

“Israeli delegates to the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission refused to attend its meeting, declaring that they would not sit down with representatives of the Cairo Junta. In New York there were bomb threats against the Egyptian consulate and a sniper fired four shots into its fourth-floor window.”[11]

Six years later, though, the truth came out—it was really a Jewish conspiracy that had been “planned behind Lavon’s back.”[12]

“[It was] a frame-up—not, however, by the Egyptians, but by [Prime Minister David] Ben-gurion and his proteges. Giving evidence in a forgery trial in September 1960, a witness divulged en passant that he had seen the faked signature of Lavon on a document relating to a 1954 ‘security mishap…’

“[Lavon’s] signature had been forged, and the bombing had actually begun long before his approval—which he withheld—had been sought. He was a scapegoat pure and simple.

“But Lavon was not the only real victim. There were also those misguided Egyptian Jews who paid with their lives or long terms of imprisonment…the real victims were the great mass of Egyptian Jewry. Episodes like the Lavon Affair tended to identify them, in the minds of ordinary Egyptians, with the Zionist movement.

“When, in 1956, Israel invaded and occupied Sinai, feeling ran high against them. The government, playing into the Zionist hands, began ordering Jews to leave the country. Belatedly, reluctantly, 21,000 left in the following year; more were expelled later, and others, their livelihood gone, had nothing to stay for. But precious few went to Israel.”[13]

But this was nothing compared to what happened in June 8, 1967, during the Six Day War, a war between the Israeli army and the armies of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. During the conflict, Israel attacked the United States Navy Technical Research ship USS Liberty, hoping to blame their enemies and force the United States into war.

The attack cost thirty-four American lives and wounded hundreds of others. Once caught, the Israelis declared that the attack was a mistake, arguing that they could not positively identify the vessel. But the evidence stacked up against them.[14] Mearsheimer and Walt called the event a “tragic attack” in history.[15]

Bryce Lockwood, “a Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister,” was aboard the USS Liberty.

“For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy’s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile.

“And they’re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation. ‘They tried to lie their way out of it!’ Lockwood shouts. ‘I don’t believe that for a minute! You just don’t shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!’ Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.”[16]

United States officials largely accepted the claims that the attack was an accident. Yet Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Admiral Thomas Moorer saw no evidence for this whatsoever; documents show that the Israelis knew exactly who they were attacking. James Bamford writes,

“By 10:55 A.M., senior Israeli officials knew for certain that they had an American electronic spy in their midst. Not only was the ship clearly visible to the foes at El Arish, it had been positively identified by Israeli naval headquarters.”

Before the incident, U.S. Commander Pinchas Pinchasy “sent a report to the acting chief of naval operations at Israeli navy headquarters in Haifa. The report said that the ship cruising slowly off El Arish was ‘an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy, named Liberty, whose marking was GTR-5. Not only did the ship have ‘GTR-5 painted broadly on both sides of its bow and stern, it also had its name painted in large, bold, black letters: ‘USS Liberty.’”[17]

Everyone aboard the ship believed that the Israelis knew what they were doing.[18] Haaretz reported that

“the Israel Air Force warplanes and Israel Navy warships that attacked the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, at the height of the Six-Day War, were aware that the vessel was an American spy ship…The report stated that the U.S. National Security Agency—to which the intelligence gathering ship belonged—was able to intercept IAF communications according to which, at some stage, the pilots identified the ship as American but were nonetheless instructed to push ahead with the attack.”[19]

Some of these transcripts are in U.S. government archives and prove that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.

“Oliver Kirby, the NSA’s deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, is quoted by the Tribune as confirming the existence of the transcripts, saying he personally read them.

“‘They said, “We’ve got him in the zero,” Kirby was quoted as saying, ‘whatever that meant—I guess the sights or something.’ And then one of them said, “Can you see the flag?” They said “Yes, it’s U.S., it’s U.S..” They said it several times, so there wasn’t any doubt in anybody’s mind that they knew it.’”[20]

Kirby went so far as to say that the attack was “something that’s bothered me all my life. I’m willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew.”[21]

Yet in light of all of these facts, “the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel’s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.”[22]

Bamford notes, “Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel had attacked the ship and killed the American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson administration and Congress covered up the entire incident. Johnson was planning to run for president the following year and needed the support of pro-Israel voters.”[23]

“Tony” Hart, who was a First Class Petty Officer stationed in Morocco at the time of the attack, declared after much reflection on the incident, “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.”[24]

In other words, the lives of decent Americans are secondary when it comes to Israel.

[1] “ISIS claims credit for fatal plane crash in Egypt,” NY Post, October 31, 2015; Neil MacFarquhar and Merna Thomas, “Russian Airliner Crashes in Egypt, Killing 224,” NY Times, October 31, 2015; Erin Cunningham, “No survivors after Russian airliner crashes in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,” Washington Post, October 31, 2015; Kristen McTighe, “Russian airliner crashes in Egypt,” Financial Times, October 31, 2015.

[2] “Russian Airliner Crashes in Egypt, Killing 224,” NY Times, October 31, 2015.

[3] Johnlee Varghese, “UN Report: Israel in Regular Contact with Syrian Rebels including ISIS,” International Business Times, December 7, 2014.

[4] “Syrian in Israeli hospital: ‘Most fighters know they will get good care here,’” Jerusalem Post, September 15, 2013; Elhanan Miller, “Syrian rebel commander says he collaborated with Israel,” Times of Israel, August 13, 2014.

[5] Edward Tivnan, The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 43.

[6] Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion’s Spy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 81.

[7] Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services (New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1991), 111.

[8] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East (New York: Nation Books, 2003), 290.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 293-294.

[12] Ibid., 295.

[13] Ibid.

[14] See A. Jay Cristol, The Liberty Incident Revealed: The Definitive Account of the 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013); James Scott, The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009); James M. Ennes, Assault On The Liberty: The True Story Of The Israeli Attack On An American Intelligence Ship (New York: Random House, 1979).

[15] Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 42.

[16] John Crewdson, “New Revelation in Attack on American Spy Ship,” Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2007.

[17] James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 204.

[18] Ibid., 212.

[19] Yossi Melman, “Israeli Communications Said to Prove IAF Knew Liberty was US Ship,” Haaretz, April 10, 2007.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Crewdson, “New Revelation in Attack on American Spy Ship,” Chicago Tribune, October

2, 2007.

[23] Bamford, Body of Secrets, 229.

[24] Melman, “Israeli Communications Said to Prove IAF Knew Liberty was US Ship,” Haaretz, April 10, 2007.

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor on October 31, 2015

ISIS in Sinai, an Israeli group, claims shootdown and posts video.
Yesterday’s LEAK: McCain Plotted to Shoot Down Airliner in Middle East
(TRANSCRIPT BELOW)

UPDATES (1) IN RED BELOW

… by  Gordon Duff, VT Sr. Senior Editor

Read Next: Eternal Life is 15-25 Years Away… No, really, I’m serious.

[ Note: This story began with an airline crash and many suspicions.  Now we have a claim by ISIS in Sinai, a shadowy group organized by Saudi intelligence with full complicity of Israel, opening the border into Negev for a peek-a-boo war, like ISIS in Syria/Daar’a Province.

The video is not confirmed and is being carried by Iranian media and hosted by VT.  I just got off the phone with our resident airline security expert, Lt. Col. Stephen Avery.  He flew the Airbus 321 when a pilot and head of security for US Air.

He says the plane won’t do 31,000 feet, the wing and engines too small, one of the worst commercial airliners in history.  He claims it could never have reached this altitude without endless coaxing, which adds credence to the ISIS video.  We will keep updating…GD ]

Update on this plane

This  specific jet was involved in an actual tail strike earlier in a landing at Cairo (several years ago from Beirut to Cairo).  Significant damage occurred at that time. This aircraft the AB 321 is not liked by pilots due to its length causing tail strikes on takeoff and landings.  The tail could have come off as well if it was not repaired correctly earlier especially in Egypt. The pilots had to have had the power to max to gain that much altitude in such a short time, especially when it was full of passengers and their baggage and cargo! Probably max fuel needed going into the wind (hearsay).  Again I don’t know anything about turbulence, strong headwinds, etc. Again, pilots don’t like this specific model (AB 321) , but it looks great! J The 318, 319 and 320 are great aircraft though.  This is all hearsay and not verified.  This is just my two cents worth as a retired pilot.  s

____________

[ Update 1 : 2 pm EST –  Egyptian authorities are still reporting pilot contact regarding technical problems and request to land. Rescue teams had to hike 4 miles to the crash site.  They are reporting all bodies recovers and mostly burn from impact fires…JD ]

____________

[ Update 2 : 3:05pm EST – Moscow and Cairo have denied claims by the Daesh Takfiri group’s Egyptian affiliate to have downed a Russian aircraft that crashed in North Sinai with more than 200 passengers on board.

“Now in various media there is assorted information that the Russian passenger (plane)… was supposedly shot down by an anti-aircraft missile, fired by terrorists. This information can’t be considered accurate,” Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said on Saturday.

“We are in close contact with our Egyptian colleagues and aviation authorities in the country. At present, they have no information that would confirm such insinuations,” he added.

Meanwhile, Mohamed Samir, Egypt’s army spokesman, also refuted the claim by the Takfiri group, saying that “the army sees no authenticity” to the terrorists claims or videos.

“They can put out whatever statements they want but there is no proof at this point that terrorists were responsible for this plane crash” he said.

“We will know the true reasons when the civil aviation authority in coordination with Russian authorities completes its investigation,” he added.

_____________

[ Update 3 : 4:30 pm EST – There is input now from Egypt that refutes earlier statements that the pilot reported technical problems and wanted to land, so this has made it a messy day. Now the aviation minister refutes that categorically.

Both black boxes of the plane had been found, Mohamed Hossam Kemal, the civil aviation minister, told a news conference.

Kemal said communications between the plane and air traffic control before the crash had been normal and that nothing irregular had occurred before the accident.”The plane did not request a change of route,” he said.

We are also getting some on the scene reports:

“I now see a tragic scene,” an Egyptian security officer at the site told Reuters by telephone. “A lot of dead on the ground and many who died whilst strapped to their seats. “The plane split into two, a small part on the tail end that burned and a larger part that crashed into a rockface. We have extracted at least 100 bodies and the rest are still inside,” the officer, who requested anonymity, said.

We will continue to post new develops as we get them… JD ]

____________

Yesterday, we received warnings that an American plane would be shot down over Syria and blamed on the Russians accompanied by a transcript of the plans being made.  

Today a Russian airliner carrying over 200 passengers plunged to the ground after reading 31,000 feet, something atypical for airline crashes.  Planes seldom hit cruising altitude and develop mechanical problems.

The plane had just flown over Israeli/ISIS controlled territory when the mishap developed.  There are still mechanical problems with planes, this one an 18 year old, not that old, an Airbus 321 filled with Russian vacationers returning from Egyptian beaches to St. Petersburg.

However, there are lots of ways to bring down aircraft, hacks, little explosive devices and such and a recent history filled with games tied to aircraft crashes, particularly involving Malaysian Airlines as everyone is aware. From al Alam in Tehran:

According to Flight Radar 24, the jet was plunging at 5,760 feet per minute at 30,000 feet when it lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Here is the rub, bringing down aircraft filled with innocent civilians is a typical form of state terrorism.  America has used it against Iran, we are told Libya used it against the US (and Scotland) but that issue has never been settled to anyone’s satisfaction.  We lost a Polish president on a crash over Russia which Russia has been accused of causing though the political upheavals in the region would put my money on NATO as the culprit, opinion only.

Russia brought down a Korean airlines 747, we could go on forever, simply mentioning the crashes and “downings” that we are supposed to know of.

Never take an airline crash at face value.  Never take an airline crash near a combat zone at face value.  Always look for an angry nation state “player” looking for revenge, Israel certainly qualifies but with the current command bifurcation in the US, they aren’t above involvement either.

If one were to look at the airport personnel at Sharm el Sheikh, where the ill fated flight began, would one find penetration by foreign intelligence services or Egyptian personnel on the payroll of Saudi Arabia?

Let’s take a look at Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi king and Saudi foreign minister are continually either visiting Moscow or on the phone with Putin or Lavrov.  Yesterday’s conference in Vienna which put Iran and Saudi Arabia at the same table didn’t come up with a comprehensive settlement but the items that were settled went very much the wrong way for Saudi Arabia.

All of the groups the Saudis are supporting with cash and advanced weapons will be on the terror list and subject to obliteration by the 19 nation coalition.  When Saudi continues sending in weapons, and they will certainly do that, eventually they will run afoul of Russia for certain and, weak though this has become, public opinion around the world.

The holocaust in Yemen has already stained Saudi Arabia beyond redemption anyway.

Would they have plotted against Russia and brought down this aircraft?  The answer is a resounding yes.  Are there factions in Saudi Arabia that would use this against not only Russia but the current king who is seen as incompetent and sickly?  The answer again is yes.

The second player is Israel.  Russia has, during the last week, bombed Israeli backed terrorists on Golan Heights, right under Israeli air defenses, an area where the Israeli Air Force has openly attacked Syrian forces in the past, though inside Syria.

Now the rules have changed and the terrorists, mostly al Nusra, but some FSA “moderate terrorists” as well, though there has yet to be anyone to prove the FSA is still active inside Syria, are being bombed out of existence.  Their only choice is to flee to Israel across the demilitarized zone policed by the United Nations or to sneak into Jordan where the government there has begun only recently rounding up terrorists.

Is this enough to enrage Israel into another of its endless crazed “USS Liberty” type acts of state terror? Then again, did the plan crash on its own?

Today Russian investigators will be flooding into Cairo.  Those who waited with baited breath for the MH17 report to come from the Dutch, believing this would go somewhere and that NATO could engineer though state terror adequate moral highground to justify US military intervention in Ukraine, may have their day in reverse.

Now Russia gets to report and can take all the time they need.  Will Russia take advantage of this reversal of fortune?

____________

Report from Tehran first:

– See more at: http://en.alalam.ir/news/1754833#sthash.NYxwlmgW.dpuf

____________

…from Russia Today

Russian passenger aircraft with 220 onboard crashes over Egypt