Finally, An Investigation Into The Use of Pegasus

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Yom Shnee

Monday

11 Elul 5783

August 28 2023

Good News!

*The Israeli women’s gymnastic team won another gold medal in the world championships in Valencia yesterday–this time in the “ribbon” event:

Our team in their gold medal winning performance yesterday.

*“One year from now Israel will become the first country in the world to have a laser system to provide partial protection from all kinds of missiles. In two years, Israel will have full protection. Initially, the system will be deployed on the Gaza border.”

Yuval Steinetz, the Chairman of the Israeli anti-aircraft, anti-missile systems company Rafael.

The Opti laser prototype from Rafael.

We’ve been talking about the laser system for a long time. It now seems that we are finally getting closer to its deployment; however, it should be noted that Rafael has a large backlog (40 billion shekels) of orders from other countries for its systems.

The News on the Israeli Street

The war in Judea and Samaria.

An attempted attack by an Palestinian terrorist into the Nagohot community near Mt. Hevron was thwarted by security forces.

Shooting attacks:

Palestinian terrorists in a vehicle fired on IDF soldiers at the pillbox between Hermesh and Mevo Dotan south of Jenin. No Israelis were wounded. All three terrorists were hit. No further details at this time.

Palestinian terrorists fired on IDF soldiers near Yabad. No Israelis were wounded. An undetermined number of terrorists were hit.

IED, “rock”, Molotov attacks:

Palestinian terrorists attacked Israelis on Road 55 in the Nabi Elias Bypass, between Azzun and Upper Shomron (child wounded by “rock”), near Tekoa, at Singil, Al Abuv, and numerous other places in Gush Etzion and Samaria.

As we have often pointed out here at OneIsrael . . .

. . . the cost of living here in Israel is outrageously high. 

Just how high is it?

According to an OECD report based on the years 2020-2022, Israel is the most expensive country in the world:

Get out your magnifying glasses. Israel is the country farthest to the right on the this graph.

The top 10 in order: Israel, Switzerland, Iceland, United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg. According to the OECD data, it is exactly twice as expensive to live in Israel as it is to live in Brazil.

The data is based on “a representative basket of products”, but nobody in Israel needs a graph like this to tell us what we already know.

Whichever way you slice it however, this graph does inform us of the shameful situation here where the Israeli consumer is at the mercy of corporate monopolies and successive governments that only know how to spend.

TODAY’S BLOG

Finally, An Investigation Into The Use of Pegasus

As regular readers of OneIsrael know, Pegasus is the name of the secret wiretapping system that has been used by the Israeli police. It refers to the use of Ciphon malware to infect phones.

As we have discovered in recent trials–especially that of Netanyahu--the Israeli police have run amok wiretapping anybody and everybody’s phone and other communication devices.

Actually “run amok” is putting it mildly. It was revealed yesterday that between 2015-2021 between 1,086 and 1,800 phones were tapped and information was extracted.

Each wiretap was supposed to have been approved by a judge on the basis of a warrant–yet apparently very few were–and those that were approved by a judge were approved without any evidence to support them.

No one was immune from the egregious police invasion of privacy from political leaders to private citizens.

As was above suggested, one of the main targets of the police was PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

To try to gather incriminating information on him, virtually all of his advisors, friends, and family had their phones wiretapped (to what degree Netanyahu’s phone might have been wiretapped is unknown).

In the last election campaign, the new government pledged to get to the bottom of the Pegasus affair by forming an investigating commission; that commission was approved yesterday by the Cabinet.

What has been perversely laughable has been the outpouring of opposition to the commission from such entities as the Attorney General, the Israel Police, and the Shin Bet security service–all entities which were involved in the illegal wiretapping.

But all of these entities–as well as the rest of the leftist Opposition–shouldn’t worry too much. Almost certainly, the abominable Supreme Court/High Court of Justice is already writing a decision to nullify the Commission in order to protect its leftist allies.