10/20/05 AIA Staff

The logo of HAMAS from the Russian based website

On October, 18 the Kremlin's press-service published the message of President Vladimir Putin to the Israeli and Palestinian colleagues. In both documents the need is marked to accept aspiration of Russia for active participation in the further settlement of the Middle-Eastern conflict. Putin reminds of his April's initiative to convene the conference devoted to this problem in Moscow.
In a conversation with the AIA Israeli section expert, a high-ranking representative of the Israeli Staff on Struggle Against Terrorism (LUTAR) accused the Kremlin of a policy of double standards. As he said, on the one hand Putin calls for settlement of the conflict and emphasizes "inadmissibility of terrorist actions " (in his message to the President of Israel), but on the other hand Russia permits to the members and activists of radical Middle-Eastern organizations, such as Hezbollah, HAMAS, the Palestinian groupings of "Islamic Jihad" to continue operating freely on its territory. LUTAR's expert noted that these organizations conduct struggle not only against Israel, but also against the official Palestinian leadership to which Moscow traditionally renders public support.
As a solid proof of his words, AIA's interlocutor told about the October report of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S,) which functions at the Heritage Center Of Israeli Secret Services (MALAM). This report is devoted the Internet infrastructure of HAMAS. The report proves that the majority of the major websites of this organization functions on the basis of the Russian Internet servers, and uses the Russian Internet companies. Moreover, MALAM even found out even that a representative of HAMAS supervising the Internet issue operates in Russia…

Ex-Directors of Mossad Preserve the Heritage 

The Heritage Center of the Israeli Secret services (MALAM) is located to the north of Tel Aviv, near Glilot military base. This center was established in the summer of 1985 with an active participation of the third head of the Israeli Mossad Meir Amit (1963-68). He holds the post of the president MALAM, and its chairman is the previous chief of Mossad Efraim Halevi, who headed this intelligence structure in 1998-2002.
Initially the center was planned as a memorial complex, to commemorate the memory of the employees of the Israeli secret services, who died protecting the country. Numerous monuments were erected there; museum and library were created. Gordon Thomas, the author of a monumental book Gideon's Spies about the secret services of Israel, marks, that the memorial
complex of the center "immortalizes memory of 557 men and women of the intelligence community, 71 from them served in Mossad". In the book it is marked that private files of all the Israeli agents and counterspies that died performing confidential missions are kept in the archives of the Center.
In time the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (MAMLAL) headed by the Colonel (res.) of the military intelligence Reuven Ehrlich was established on the basis of MALAM. The materials of this Center are published in MALAM's quarterly, which is distributed among the representatives of academy, experts, former and working employees of the secret services. The reports of the Center are devoted to the actual daily problems of terrorism are periodically published in the Internet. They are based on documents of the Palestinian organizations, acquired by the Israelis as a result of army and General Security Service (SHABAK) operations. MAMALAL's experts are paying significant attention to monitoring Arab mass media, in particular, the Islamic one.
On some of the issues the Center cooperates with the Staff on Struggle Against Terrorism, which is a part of the Israeli National Security Council.

The Israeli Intelligence Informs

Starting from last year MAMALAL specifically traces the activity of Internet sites connected with the radical Islamic organizations. The analysts of the center use the data of http://www.whois.net and www.haganah.org.il. The latter is managed by Aaron Weisburd, web developer from New York City, and specializes on gathering information on the Internet - activity of radical Islamic movements.
Experts of MAMLAL note "the international and Palestinian terrorist organizations widely use the Internet as the important mean for transfer of messages encouraging terror". The main advantage of this communication consists first of all of the "absence of any control and restrictions of censorship". The Internet is used for contacts "between the organizations and their headquarters, and also local branches of the organizations and their target audience." According to the analysts of the Center the value of the Internet in the activity of the terrorist organizations increased considerably after September, 11. "The Internet allows them to overcome rather easily all the obstacles, administered by the governments of the different countries and in particular by the USA."
The First report MAMLAL on this subjects was published in August 2004. It concerned the websites of central grouping of Palestinian "Islamic Jihad". Two months later, another report, devoted to the Internet infrastructure of the largest Palestinian Islamic organization HAMAS appeared. Later the analysts of the center came back to this issue in their publications twice - in January and October, 2005.
MAMLAL's experts established, that HAMAS occupies leading position among the Palestinian organizations on the use of the Internet. From the last three reports follows that the majority of major HAMAS sites are on servers in the countries of the Eastern Europe, first of all in Russia, and use local providers.
It is noticed that Russia, by the estimation of HAMAS leaders, is one of the "steadfast" countries to the foreign pressure in everything connected to "grantings of services, closings of websites and blocking of messages with terrorist content." For this reason, all the most important sites of HAMAS function from its territory. The Russian authorities are really extremely "liberal" towards the existence on their territory of such powerful mechanism of propagation of the radical organization, which is added to the Western lists of terrorists. Even when in October, 2004 the authorities ordered closing of the major Internet - forum of HAMAS, the server for which is rendered by Moscow's Company DataForce, no practical measures on performing of this decision were taken. This forum, without any obstacles, continues to function - www.palestinianforum.net.
The Eastern European Internet infrastructure has for HAMAS such a great value that the leadership of this organization appointed special representative in the region for supervising the activities on this direction. On MAMLAL's data his name is Amur Aitashev. He operates from the territory of Russia and reports to the high-ranking HAMAS operative Nizar Al-Hussein. In his turn Nizar supervises the activity of all the major websites of the organization. He conducts his activity from Beirut and belongs to the Lebanese branch of HAMAS. A propaganda bureau of the Syrian headquarters of the organization supervises his activity. In the last report of the MAMALAL it is marked: "The leadership of HAMAS operates its Internet - infrastructure from Lebanon for political reasons. Thus, the Syrian fingerprints disappear…"

The Kremlin's Double Game

The abovementioned facts testify to the double standards, or of the double game of Moscow. Each and every time Russia reacts extremely rigidly to the appearing of an independent site devoted to a situation in the Chechen Republic on the servers of any European country. If the authors of the new project express solidarity with the Chechen resistance or the Caucasian radical Islamic movement, Moscow using any methods achieves its closing. In such a cases the Kremlin puts massed political pressure on the countries of Europe, in particular the Baltics, in parallel undertaking hacker attacks against an these websites. Such a hearty reaction to the Chechen websites drastically contrasts with the "liberalism" shown by the Russian authorities towards Internet – infrastructure of HAMAS.
At the same time, it is obvious that propaganda activity from territory of Russia of the largest oppositional movement of Palestine causes huge damage to the legally elected president Abu-Mazen. From the beginning of 2005 more and more publications on sites of the "Palestine-info" group were directed not as much against Israel, but against an official Palestinian leadership. On the background of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, propagandists of HAMAS in every possible way tried to attribute the main merit over achieving this to their organization. And they obviously did this in a counterbalance to the party in power - the FATAH headed by Abu-Mazen. In the view of the upcoming elections to the municipalities of large Palestinian cities (December, 2005) and to the Parliament (January, 2006), activity of the Internet - infrastructure of HAMAS from Russian territory endangers a secular wing in the Palestinian national movement. It concerns as the public opinion on the West bank of Jordan and in Gaza, and the international coverage of pre-election campaign (in the CIS and in particular in Russia the websites of HAMAS publish material in Arabic, Russian, French, Persian and Urdu languages).
The Federal Security Service (FSB) supervising political activity in Russia of the natives of the Muslim countries must know all about that. The analysts of other state structures, in particular of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, should understand that so non peculiar to Moscow liberalism in the field of freedom of speech, in the case of HAMAS contradicts strategic interests of a leadership of Palestine. As well as during the Soviet times, the Kremlin expresses public support only to the leaders of the FATAH movement. However, on a background of HAMAS' achievements at January municipal elections and before the elections in December - January, 2006 Moscow, by its actions, reserves an option of official recognition of Islamic opposition to Abu-Mazen. Probably it is not casual, that during the meeting with the Russian journalists in April, the leader of HAMAS Khaleed Mashaal has especially noted that to spite of the Israelis and Americans, the Kremlin did not included his organization into the list of the terrorists…