Valleywag: Israel

Israeli politican: Yes, we can copy your website

Owen Thomas — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:00:00 PST

The campaign site for Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu," the Israeli candidate for prime minister, is a mirror-image copy of BarackObama.com, flopped to accommodate the right-to-left Hebrew script. Right down to the icons, it mirrors the website developed by Blue State Digital, reports the New York Times. The new-media touches may not all translate; Israel only has a couple thousand Twitter users, making it an unlikely get-out-the-vote mechanism. The imitation is meant as flattery: Netanyahu and Obama have met twice and are said to get along, and the Israeli candidate is campaigning on a similar theme of change.

Israeli hacker in jail ten years after U.S. military break-in

Jackson West — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:00:00 PDT

Ehud "The Analyzer" Tenenbaum, who became world-famous when he and a number of fellow Israeli and California teens successfully exploited a vulnerability in Sun Solaris to gain access to computers at Nasa, Andrews Air Force Base and the Department of Defense, is in jail. Earlier this month he was arrested in Montreal on suspicion of having helped defraud credit card companies of $1.8 million. Wired dug up a slickly produced, pretty entertaining video produced by the FBI a year after the intrusion.

I happened to be in Tel Aviv when Tenenbaum turned himself in to Israeli authorities on the day he was set to report for compulsory military service — he was treated as something of a national hero, a symbol of Israel's technology prowess, with even then Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu praising him as "damn good." Tenenbaum ended up with probation and community service instead of jail time. So it wasn't with much surprise when I read Tenenbaum's mother calling the arrest a frame-up by the FBI.

The truth? The prepaid credit card scam described is a classic modus operandi in Canadian tweaker circles, at least as described in Zero Day Threat. And Tenenbaum certainly had to chops to pull it off, with the cast of fellow suspects who've been released probably participating as mules to make transactions. So once again, I'm betting Canadian dollars to donuts from Tim Horton's on meth.

Iran's anti-Israel missile tech -- a primer

Paul Boutin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:00:00 PDT

Skip the politics, let's get to the tech: The Shahab-3 missiles that Iranian solidiers test-fired today — a blatant bring-it to Israel and America — could land a nuke in Tel Aviv. (The city's startup sector was recently dubbed the world's #8 tech hotspot by CNET, less than 240 milliseconds from Sand Hill Road and believe me, no packet loss from those guys.) The missile is based on North Korea's Nodong-1, an Iranian-funded adaptation of the Soviet Scud missiles that Saddam Hussein's troops lobbed at Israel in the first Gulf War. No, it's not true that these missiles are so old they use vacuum tubes instead of silicon chips. It's not true that their guidance systems are built from American GPS gear, as much as the Valley would like to take credit. What is true is that the Shahab-3's biggest vulnerability — a tendency to tumble out of control on the way down to the target — may have been fixed.

The Shahab-3 is just over 50 feet long and 4 feet thick. It weighs over 17 tons at launch. Don't let its stubby profile mislead you — it can be programmed to change course several times in midflight, making it hard to shoot down.

The weapon debuted 10 years ago, in a parade during Iran's Sacred Defense Week. The parade missile was reportedly decorated with signs reading, "Israel would be wiped from the map" and "The U.S. can do nothing." Since then, refinements to the design have increased its estimated range from 800 miles to as much as 1,250 miles, carrying a warhead up to 1,500 pounds — plenty of room for a nuke. Tel Aviv is only 650 miles from the Iranian border.

If you really want to go deep on the Sahab-3, there's lots more in a Federation of American Scientists report, and this encyclopedic Global Security entry includes several detailed diagrams. But take note: Even the FAS doesn't have new data from the past two years. (Photos by AP/Ruhollah Vahdati, AP/Sajjad Safari, AFP/Getty Images)

Sergey Brin's family got out of Soviet Union just in time

Jackson West — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:20:00 PDT

At Shimon Peres's Facing Tomorrow conference in Israel, Google cofounder Sergey Brin told the audience about his family's fight against anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union before emigrating. His father, Mikhail Brin, wasn't allowed to pursue his interest in physics because Jews were barred from the field over concerns that they would learn nuclear secrets — never mind the role Julius and Ethel Rosenberg might have played in giving the Soviets those very secrets. Eventually, Brin's mother Evgenya got a via to emigrate in 1979, right before the Iron Curtain officially dropped again. Of course, now that the country is open for business, Brin wants back in. (Photo by Jon Klinger)

Mayor wants Israeli electric car startup to setup shop in San Francisco

Jackson West — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:00:00 PDT

On our hunky God-mayor's "Gavin Newsom for Governor" tour that included stops in donor-rich New York and Los Angeles, a stop in Israel got the excitable pol talking about Israeli startup Project Better Place. The company's plan is to build a network of charging stations for a fleet of electric vehicles in Israel. Of course, there's no actual money behind bringing the idea to our shores yet, so you can probably expect it to become a reality about the same time San Francisco turns on the free Wi-Fi network Gavvy-Gav promised. Can't get enough of the hair? Video after the jump.

(Photo by Kevin Krejci)

Israeli military imprisons soldier who posted photos to Facebook

Jackson West — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:40:00 PDT

A soldier from an elite unit of the Israel Defense Force will be spending 19 days behind bars after posting photos of his base to Facebook, reports Ha'aretz. Those photos have presumably been taken down. But I turned up dozens of photos posted by soldiers in the IDF goofing off with their units, brandishing weapons and, in the case of the photo above, standing next to a multimillion-dollar American jet fighter — even though the Israel Air Force specifically ordered its members to remove any photos posted to the site. It looks like Facebook's problems with privacy aren't limited to accidentally letting your boss see you taking hits off a bong, but could potentially lead to military intelligence leaks as well.

Zuckerberg, Decker and Brin walk into a Jerusalem bar...

Jackson West — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:00:00 PDT

Israeli president Shimon Peres has invited a number of luminaries to celebrate the country's 60th year of independence, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo president Sue Decker and Google cofounder Sergey Brin. They'll be discussing technology as part of the Facing Tomorrow conference in May. Zuckerberg's Facebook has been drawn into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict already, and is also banned in nearby Syria, so at least he has some relevant geopolitical experience.

Who will also attend? Noted peace-lovers Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister last seen leading his country into Iraq under false pretenses, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, last seen making lewd comments to younger women — but before that, secretly bombing Cambodia. Forward-thinkers, all.

Oracle's Larry Ellison tours Israel with wife, entourage

Owen Thomas — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:20:01 PDT

"He only flies." So says a member of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's entourage, explaining why, in a fly-by tour of Israel, Ellison is traveling in-country by helicopter. Ellison, in Israel with wife Melanie Craft, the novelist, and flyboy son David. The Ellisons included a tour of Sderot, a town near the Gaza Strip that's been hit by rockets. Ellison reportedly promised to beef up the local community center's air-raid defenses. "Ellison expressed a desire to keep his trip as quiet and private as possible," writes Haaretz's Guy Grimland — perhaps because he doesn't want to remind customers in the Arab world of his Jewish roots. Sorry, Larry, can't help you there.