WikiLeaks Shows Israel Lied about Settlement Incentives

A State Department cable from a June 2009 meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implies that the State of Israel no longer provides incentives for illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.  But the recently passed budget for 2011-2012 shows that the Israeli government’s funding for their illegal settlement enterprise is humming along.

According to a cable published by WikiLeaks:

In response to a question about GOI incentives to settlers, Netanyahu’s adviser Ron Dermer said the Olmert government had already removed them. Netanyahu said this was an issue that Israel could discuss further with the U.S.

But last Wednesday, the Israeli Knesset passed a budget with a load of incentives for settlers:

The 2011-2012 budget, approved on Wednesday by the Knesset, allocates NIS 2 billion to settlements, their services and security, and hundreds of millions of shekels more hidden among the different clauses of the bill.

[...]

Most of the settlements have been defined as areas of first national priority, in which the Israel Land Administration subsidizes 69 percent of the cost of land, or second national priority areas, in which the subsidy reaches 49 percent of the price of the land.

The purchasers of flats in a national priority area can receive a subsidized loan up to NIS 97,000, whether the flats are located in a priority area within Israel or in the West Bank. The housing assistance budget comes up to NIS 87,368 million in 2011, and NIS 86,518 million in 2012.

 

 

The Hypocrisy of Fran Townsend

Fran Townsend, a former Bush administration advisor and now a CNN contributor

In the midst of the now-famous debate on CNN between Glenn Greenwald and Fran Townsend on WikiLeaks, Townsend claimed:

[The release of the State Department cables] was so vast, of what was public, whether or not it would be useful or no he made no distinctions about the harm he might be doing to foreign governments, to the U.S. government, to diplomats and soldiers around the world.

While Townsend is implying that WikiLeaks’ has caused harm to “diplomats and soldiers”–a claim that has no merit–she is at the same time an outspoken supporter of a designated terrorist group:  the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK).

Last week, according to Talking Points Memo (and pointed out by Mondoweiss):

A group of prominent Bush-era Republicans, including former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former White House adviser Frances Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, flew to Paris to speak in support of an Iranian exile group there — one that’s been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.

TPM explains the history of MEK:

The group, known as Mujaheddin-e Khalq or MEK, is a militant group that’s been violently fighting the Iranian government since the 1960s. It has ties to the regime of Saddam Hussein, which trained and outfitted the MEK and for whom the MEK fought in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. According to the State Department, which declared the group a terrorist organization in 1997, the group’s philosophy is a combination of “Marxism, Islam, and feminism.“

WikiLeaks does not have “blood on its hands,” as Townsend implied.  The MEK, on the other hand, does, according to the U.S. State Department–and has also caused harm to the very same U.S. “government, diplomats and soldiers” Townsend ostensibly looks out for:

During the 1970s, the MEK assassinated several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the violent takeover in 1979 of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Despite U.S. efforts, MEK members have never been brought to justice for the group’s role in these illegal acts.

In 1981, MEK leadership attempted to overthrow the newly installed Islamic regime; Iranian security forces subsequently initiated a crackdown on the group. The MEK instigated a bombing campaign, including an attack against the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister’s office, which killed some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei, and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar..

The MEK’s relationship with the former Iraqi regime continued through the 1990s. In 1991, the group reportedly assisted in the Iraqi Republican Guard’s bloody crackdown on Iraqi Shia and Kurds who rose up against Saddam Hussein’s regime; press reports cite MEK leader Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to “take the Kurds under your tanks.”

 

 

‘The Palestine Cables’: Other countries want to ’smoke out’ Israel on NPT and Mossad use of passports

This is the fourth installment of my new column on WikiLeaks and Israel/Palestine at Mondoweiss.  You can read all the installments here.

Whether it’s the Mossad’s use of foreign passports or the refusal to open up about its nuclear weapons program, Israel is developing a reputation as a rogue state.  Some of the nearly 2,000 secret State Department cables so far released by WikiLeaks and its media partners reveal that governments around the world are getting impatient with these practices.

Israel joins India, Pakistan and North Korea as the only states to possess nuclear weapons without being a party to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the key pillar in the international effort to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.

Some governments want to put an end to Israel’s official policy of “ambiguity” over its nuclear weapons program:

–In February 2010, an Egyptian military official “called on the United States to not ignore the Israeli nuclear program. He stated that Israel’s nuclear program only gave Iran justification for creating its own nuclear weapons. If Iran obtained nuclear weapons, it would only embolden Iran to use Hezbollah and Hamas with impunity.”  Juan Cole comments that this cable is proof that “Israel’s nuclear stockpile inspires neighbors with fear and trepidation, and impels them to try to get a nuclear bomb themselves.”

–An American Assistant Secretary of State, Rose Gottemoeller, held meetings with a number of foreign diplomats about the NPT in May 2009.  Canadian ambassador Marius Grinius, whose country is one of Israel’s staunchest allies, told Gottemoeller that “it was time for the [Conference on Disarmament) to 'smoke out' Pakistan, Iran and Israel on their positions [regarding the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty].”

–An April 2009 cable meant to prepare Dennis Ross for a visit to Egypt states that the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs “believes that a harder U.S. line in UN fora on Israel’s nuclear program would strengthen the U.S. position on demanding Iran cease working to develop nuclear weapons.”

–A February 2010 cable describes efforts by the French and U.S. governments to entice Egypt to get on board with efforts to stop nuclear weapons spreading around the Middle East.  One way to do that, the French government suggested, was to push “Israel to accept CTBT [Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty].”

Ire has also been directed at Israel because of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, using foreign passports:

–After two Israeli citizens were sentenced to jail in New Zealand on charges of attempting to obtain a false passport, a U.S. diplomatic cable reported in July 2004 that, “Prime Minister Helen Clark suspended high-level contact with Israel and announced a range of diplomatic sanctions, including placing Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) officials under ‘strict constraints’ in their contact with Israelis.”

State Department cables are also beginning to trickle out about the Mossad’s involvement in the January assassination of Hamas member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, again with the misuse of passports being an issue.

But it is the U.S. that is shielding Israel from accountability on both NPT and passport abuse.

Despite calling for a world free of nuclear weapons, in August 2010 the Obama administration said that “Israel has [the] right to nuclear capability for deterrence purposes.”  A December 2009 cable reports that a U.S. diplomat strategized with the Israeli government on a “potential strategy in addressing Egyptian insistence on pushing for the establishment of a nuclear weapon free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, as a way to divert attention from Iran to Israel.”

The U.S. also “declined a request from the United Arab Emirates to assist an investigation into the assassination of a top Hamas commander,” according to a February 2010 cable.

For more WikiLeaks news and analysis relating to Israel/Palestine, see:

–Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam: Wikileaks: State Department Lied, Denying Dubai Asked for Assistance in Tracking Mossad Assassins

–Asa Winstanley, New Left Project: Wikileaks: Insights on Palestine from the Cables

–Reuters:  UAE considered keeping Mabhouh hit under wraps, WikiLeaks cables reveal

The Convergence of Islamophobia and U.S. Policy (Updated below)

Prominent anti-Muslim activists such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer like to run around castigating the Obama administration for submitting to sharia law or coddling Islamic terrorists.  But in reality, the right-wing movement to shut down Muslim-American political activity in the U.S. shares an agenda with the U.S. government.

Case in point:  Chip Berlet, a scholar on right-wing movements in the U.S., adds to the Washington Post‘s disclosure last week that “law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive”:

“Kill them…including the children.”

That’s how to solve the threat of militant Muslims?

This quote is from what one official involved in homeland security said was the theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat at an anti-terrorism training in Las Vegas in October 2010.

Shoebat, according to the Post, “lectures to local police” and spoke at “the first annual South Dakota Fusion Center Conference in Sioux Falls this June.”

Despite the U.S. government’s insistence on “winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim world,” having government agencies hire Islamophobic activists like Shoebat serves an important agenda that right-wing activists also promote:  stoking fear and hatred of Muslims in the service of maintaining the U.S. war machine in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.  It’s the same agenda that leads the FBI to entrap young Muslim men in the U.S. and to then trumpet their arrest as another victory in the “war-on-terror.”

One part of how to shut the America public up about a never-ending war is to constantly demonize your “enemies” and to make people scared of them.  That’s why Shoebat is being hired by government agencies and that’s why the FBI is entrapping disaffected Muslim youth in the States.  And it’s also why the FBI is engaged in a witch hunt against anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists in the U.S.

The U.S. empire needs Islamophobia to function.

UPDATE:  The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) just put out a press release “urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Defense Department (DoD) not to use anti-Muslim extremists to train counterterrorism officials.”  This follows a similar CAIR statement that called for a “review [of] Justice Department policies on the reported use of anti-Muslim extremists to train counterterrorism officials nationwide.”

The U.N. Flotilla Report Goes Down the Media’s Black Hole

The return of the Turkish Mavi Marmara to Istanbul and efforts to end the Israeli-Turkish diplomatic chill has produced a number of media reports that mention the May 31 Gaza-bound aid flotilla.  But news outlets are continuing to frame the events aboard the flotilla ambivalently, and there is a media blackout of mentioning the one independent report on the Israeli raid that has been released.

The Associated Press:

The ship was part of an international flotilla carrying supplies to Gaza in a campaign to breach the blockade on Gaza when Israeli troops intercepted the convoy. Eight Turks and an American-Turkish teenager were killed in the violence that erupted on board the Mavi Marmara…

Israel insists commandos opened fire in self-defense after meeting what they called unexpected resistance when they boarded the Mavi Marmara

The New York Times:

Israel has refused to apologize, saying that the ship was warned to stay away and that Israeli commandos fired in self-defense after the activists aboard the ship fired first.

In both of these accounts, media outlets–reflecting their slavish devotion to “objectivity”–have avoided explicitly blaming either Israel or the activists for the 9 people that were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara.  But by quoting what Israel says and omitting what the activists and the United Nations report on the raid state, mainstream media has de facto created the impression that Israel bears little blame.

The U.N. report, which has gotten little media attention, was written by three human rights experts who found that the raid was “disproportionate” and “betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality.”  It debunked Israel’s claims of “firing in self-defense,” finding that “live ammunition was used from the helicopter onto the top deck prior to the descent of the soldiers” onto the ship.  Some more excerpts from the U.N. report that you won’t find in corporate media:

Israeli soldiers continued shooting at passengers who had already been wounded, with live ammunition, soft baton charges (beanbags) and plastic bullets. Forensic analysis demonstrates that two of the passengers killed on the top deck received wounds compatible with being shot at close range while lying on the ground: Furkan Doğan received a bullet in the face and İbrahim Bilgen received a fatal wound from a soft baton round (beanbag) fired at such close proximity to his head that parts such as wadding penetrated his skull and entered his brain. Furthermore, some of the wounded were subjected to further violence, including being hit with the butt of a weapon, being kicked in the head, chest and back and being verbally abused. A number of the wounded passengers were handcuffed and then left unattended for some time before being dragged to the front of the deck by their arms or legs…

In boarding the Mavi Marmara, both from the sea and from the air, the Israeli forces met a level of resistance from some of the passengers on board that was significant and, it appears, unexpected. However, there is no available evidence to support the claim that any of the passengers had or used firearms at any stage. In the initial phases of fighting with the Israeli soldiers on the top deck, three Israeli soldiers were disarmed and taken inside the
ship. At this point, there may have been a justifiable belief of an immediate threat to life or serious injury of certain soldiers which would have justified the use of firearms against specific passengers..

The circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution. Furkan Doğan and İbrahim Bilgen were shot at near range while the victims were lying injured on the top deck. Cevdet Kiliçlar, Cengiz Akyüz, Cengiz Songür and Çetin Topçuoğlu were shot on the bridge deck
while not participating in activities that represented a threat to any Israeli soldier. In these instances and possibly other killings on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces carried out extralegal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law, specifically article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Extra legal and summary executions, combined with the fact that the U.N. team found that the Israelis fired first, belie the claim that Israel acted in self-defense and with justification.  Israel’s willing media partners should, at the very least, include the conclusions of the U.N. report in their articles on the Mavi Marmara.

 

 

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Promises 3700 Files on Israel

The Arabic-language news outlet Al Jazeera aired an interview last Wednesday with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.  Some excerpts from this translated version:

When will you publish the files related to Israel on your website?

We will publish 3700 files and the source is the American embassy in Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Netanyahu was traveling to Paris to talk to the US ambassador there. You will see more information about that in six months.

Do these Israeli files speak about the July 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon?

Yes there is some information about that and these files were classified as top secret.

Is there any relation with these files and the assassination of Hamas military leader Al Mabhoh in Dubai?

Yes there are some indication to this and may be some special reports published by newspapers. Mossad agents used Australian, British and European passports to travel to Dubai and there are diplomatic files about that…

The English-language Jerusalem Post adds in this intriguing tidbit:

“The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even The New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US,” [Assange] added.

Lawrence Swaim of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation had interesting insights on this interview.  He told me that the most interesting answer Assange gave was when he said that he needs “more journalists including Arabs to read and analyse and put everything in the context for the benefit of the readers.”  Swaim comments:

This indicates the increasing collaboration of Assange with established media. And the more he collaborates, the more selectivity in releasing date will occur, and the more political that selectivity will become. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing–I think it’s a great thing. And the selectivity was inevitable, since a cold drop of thousands of piece of data on the internet wasn’t really working for Assange. The point he is trying to make–about systemic evil in government–was getting buried in plain sight under the weight of a great deal of useless material.

Assange is simply saying at this point that he’s going to release stuff about Israel, a great deal of which originates with the Israelis themselves. Therefore he is in a position to retaliate if the US keeps using CIA assets and allies to imprison him by releasing things that will embarrass Israel. He may not have had that it mind at the beginning, but that’s the way it’s shaping up. But Assange is playing a dangerous game. He’s too high-profile now to be assassinated, but the US security establishment may decide they need to punish Assange as an example. Thus they may keep trying to run him to ground while drafting new law preventing the free flow of information to and in the internet. But that way, they will recieve very strong opposition from hacktivists.

‘The Palestine Cables’: Gaza is a burning issue from Egypt to Latin America to Pakistan, to John Kerry being ’shocked by what I saw’

This is the third installment of my new column on WikiLeaks and Israel/Palestine at Mondoweiss.  You can read all the installments here.

Forsaken by the “peace process,” ignored by mainstream media, denied justice two years after Israel committed what many rights groups called war crimes– still, the plight of Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip remains a burning issue around the world.  Cables from the trove of State Department documents WikiLeaks has been releasing show that global civil society’s outrage at the brutal 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza has resonated with governments everywhere, and that Gaza remains a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the Israeli occupation.

–A cable from February 2010 states that Egypt’s government has voiced concern over “intense domestic and regional criticism of perceived complicity in the Israeli blockade of Gaza” because of its “counter smuggling efforts, including the construction of a subterranean steel wall along the Egypt-Gaza border.”

–The General Intelligence Chief in Egypt, Omar Soliman, told a U.S. diplomat in April 2009 that “‘incidents like Gaza…inflame public anger’” and that Operation Cast Lead “put ‘moderate (Arab) regimes’ in a corner.”

–The undersecretary for Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs told a U.S. diplomat during a February 2010 visit that the “‘humanitarian situation in Gaza,’” which is not a punishment of Hamas, but of the Gazan people, fed Turkish popular anger against Israel.”

–A document prepared for a U.S. Senator’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia in March 2009 states that, “Saudi and Arab public opinion have reacted strongly to the Israeli offensive on Gaza, creating intense pressure on Arab governments to act. The Saudis fear instability and increasing Iranian influence could result, and believe that there is a limited window of opportunity for action.”

–Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamist group that operates out of Pakistan, “purportedly raises funds for the Palestinian people in response to Israel’s attacks on Gaza,” according to an August 2009 cable.

But as the international coalition that made headlines last May when Israeli naval forces raided their flotilla and killed 9 people showed, the issue of Gaza doesn’t only resonate in the Arab and Muslim world.

–When Assistant Secretary Thomas Shannon visited Spain in January 2009, “Gaza crept into discussions of Latin America,” according to a State Department cable.  While that cable doesn’t go into more detail about the content of the discussions about Gaza, it likely reflects the intense Spanish and Latin American solidarity with the people of Gaza.  In a February 2009 cable, Benjamin Netanyahu told a Congressional delegation that “there were larger demonstrations against the Gaza operation in Madrid and London than in the West Bank.”

–U.S. Senator John Kerry told Qatar’s prime minister in February 2010 that he was “‘shocked by what I saw in Gaza.’”

The two-year anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza is approaching, and the situation in the Strip has not changed much. But friends of the Palestinians can surely take solace in the fact that governments around the world are beginning to take notice of Palestinian conditions as a result of popular pressure.  The WikiLeaks cables show further that Israel may have gone too far during those “22 days of death and destruction.”

For more WikiLeaks news and analysis relating to Israel/Palestine, see:

–Foreign Policy’s Mideast Channel, Matt Duss:  “Linkage and its discontents: What WikiLeaks reveals about Israel-Palestine”

–The Angry Arab News Service, As’ad Abu Khalil:  “Why Israel has not figured in Wikileaks yet”

–The Guardian, Ian Black:  “WikiLeaks cables: Syria believed Israel was behind sniper killing”

–AFP:  “WikiLeaks: Fatah asked Israel to attack Hamas”

The Think Tank of the Obama Left is Helping…Netanyahu

This post originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

Larry Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and (get this) a fellow at the liberal, Obama-connected Center for American Progress, has been in Israel lobbying for Jonathan Pollard’s release. The Times:

Lawrence J. Korb… who supports clemency for Mr. Pollard, accompanied Mrs. Pollard in the meeting with Mr. Netanyahu on Monday.

Mr. Korb told reporters here on Tuesday that he had told the prime minister that to “get the ball rolling,” Mr. Netanyahu should ask for Mr. Pollard’s release publicly and “not as a quid pro quo, but as a matter of justice.”

In addition, Mr. Korb said, Israel should acknowledge that it was wrong to have recruited a spy against its closest ally and, etc…

Spencer Ackerman gets the story here: Why in the world is a liberal thinktanker going to bat for a rightwing spy?

But it goes deeper than that: Does this not reflect how the Israel lobby has captured the Democratic Party?  To have an Obama-connected think tank fellow in Israel, with a right-wing Likudist, pushing for the release of someone who betrayed the US?

Israeli Intransigence Lets BDS Into the Mainstream

The world is fed up with Israel, with its continued colonization of the West Bank, its continued ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, its suffocating siege of Gaza and its crackdown on nonviolent Palestinian popular resistance.  This major Human Rights Watch report exposes the infrastructure of Israeli apartheid.

Israeli intransigence on the settlements issue has provided an opening for some more mainstream endorsements of the the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Human Rights Watch report states:

The United States should consider suspending financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of the Israeli government’s spending in support of settlements and the discriminatory policies documented in this report, since the US’s $2.75 billion in annual military aid to Israel substantially offsets these costs.

And a week and a half ago, twenty-six former European Union leaders penned a letter that called for sanctions against Israel.

The ground’s shaking.

 

 

 

How the U.S. Government Promotes Islamophobia

I often focus on organizations and individual right-wing activists outside the U.S. government that have stoked anti-Muslim sentiment here.  But the U.S. government itself is just as culpable in promoting a McCarthyist climate of fear where every Muslim-American is considered a “terror threat” and Islam is turned into the new bogeyman of the day.

The latest installment in the Washington Post‘s investigative series by Dana Priest and William Arkin, “Top Secret America,” provides a look into how the U.S. government is mired in the deep swamp that is Islamophobia in America (emphasis mine):

Seeking to learn more about Islam and terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies…

Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.

“Alabama, Colorado, Vermont,” said Montijo, a former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los Angeles Police Department investigator who is now a private security consultant. “California, Texas and Missouri,” he continued.

What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.

“They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House – not on my watch!” he said. “My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders.”

With so many local agencies around the country being asked to help catch terrorists, it often falls to sheriffs or state troopers to try to understand the world of terrorism. They aren’t FBI agents, who have years of on-the-job and classroom training…

Amazingly, the Center for Security Policy, a neoconservative think tank, is also being listened to by the U.S. homeland security apparatus:

A book expanding on what Shoebat and Montijo believe has just been published by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based neoconservative think tank. “Shariah: The Threat to America” describes what its authors call a “stealth jihad” that must be thwarted before it’s too late.

The book’s co-authors include such notables as former CIA director R. James Woolsey and former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, along with the center’s director, a longtime activist. They write that most mosques in the United States already have been radicalized, that most Muslim social organizations are fronts for violent jihadists and that Muslims who practice sharia law seek to impose it in this country.

Frank Gaffney Jr., director of the center, said his team has spoken widely, including to many law enforcement forums.

“Members of our team have been involved in training programs for several years now, many of which have been focused on local law enforcement intelligence, homeland security, state police, National Guard units and the like,” Gaffney said. “We’re seeing a considerable ramping-up of interest in getting this kind of training.”

The fact that Gaffney speaks with law enforcement on how to combat “terrorism” is disturbing.  Matt Duss of Think Progress explains that Gaffney is a person who thinks that “Obama is a Muslim, question[s] whether Obama is an American citizen, [and] believe[s] that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s new logo is a sign of the president’s ‘submission to sharia.’”  Gaffney is not an expert on Islam.  In fact, Gaffney did not consult a single Islamic scholar on his “report” on shariah law, and only started studying the religion three years ago.

What’s more, as I explained here, the Center for Security Policy’s general counsel is David Yerushalmi, an advocate for criminalizing Islam and who once wrote that “blacks [are]…the most murderous of peoples.”

Another recent instance of the U.S. government promoting Islamophobia was the arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud in Oregon, which in reality was, as Glenn Greenwald put it, the FBI successfully thwarting its own plot.

The next day, this happened:

U.S. investigators said a fire at an Islamic center in Oregon on Sunday was arson and warned they would tolerate no retribution for an attempt by a Somali-born teenager to detonate what he thought was a car bomb.