IDF: ‘Snunit’ crash was likely due to rare phenomenon
Social media giants curb hate, but still fall short
The Grob G-120 “Snunit” accident last November in which a flight instructor and an IAF cadet were killed probably occurred because it stalled in a maneuver and the pilots lost control of the aircraft, the IDF said on Wednesday.
A final investigation report, which was submitted to IAF commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin, found that the stall happened during a maneuver that caused the instructor, Itay Zaiden, and the cadet, Lihu Benbassa, to lose control of the aircraft.
An IDF Spokesperson Unit statement said that the specialists’ team that investigated the accident found that a lack of knowledge regarding this phenomenon – a stall during a particular maneuver – led to the loss of control.
This phenomenon was not known to the IAF when it received the plane, nor during its years of service; thus, air force personnel were not trained or qualified to respond to it, the IDF said.
The team also noted that after reviewing the performance of this aircraft around the world, the phenomenon was not previously reported.
According to the report, there is a high probability that there was no technical fault with the plane, and it was serviceable during the entire flight.
The Snunit (Swallow) airplane has been used as a basic trainer aircraft in the IDF for almost 20 years, and is considered to be reliable and safe, the IDF said.
“The investigation crew conducted the thorough and complex probe in order to reach and understand the reason the accident probably happened,” Norkin said.
“To do so, we conducted several test flights in Israel and abroad on a Snunit to find out the aerodynamic phenomenon that was revealed.
“All accidents can be prevented, and we in the air force will study it thoroughly. I stand with the Zaiden and the Benbassa families, and we will accompany them in the future.”
Social media giants should incorporate a delay in livestreaming of events so that terrorists’ attempts to use their services to broadcast mass killings in real time can be caught and blocked, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said late Tuesday night.
“Yesterday was the second anniversary of the Christ Church Massacre – 50 Muslims were murdered at Christ Church in New Zealand. Those murders were broadcast live,” said Wiesenthal Center’s Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper. “There was the attempt on Yom Kippur in Germany, elsewhere, and in San Diego – part of the game plan of those extremists was to have the opportunity to broadcast live anything that they do.”
Cooper said they have been “begging Facebook and others to have a delay in broadcasts.”
His remarks coincided with the center’s release of its annual digital terrorism and hate report card and online study, which evaluates social media platforms’ policies on online hatred.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns have exacerbated this year’s outcomes, with people spending more time on social media,” the report said. “Over the past year, there has been an explosion of hate and lurid conspiracies proliferating across social media channels – led by Telegram – vilifying and threatening Jews, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and other minority groups.
“While some social media giants took unprecedented steps to curb misinformation and hate speech in the past year, too often those efforts have been strikingly selective, politically tainted, and grossly insufficient in addressing real-time hate and bigotry.”
Cooper, who has spearheaded the digital terrorism and hate project for nearly three decades, said it was “worrisome to see us moving in the wrong direction at this juncture in history. Social media giants, who for decades moved slowly and incrementally against online hate, suddenly entered the political arena, impacting on elections and Covid-related health issues.
“We call on the ‘Big Five’ social media giants to refocus on degrading the marketing capabilities of bigots, antisemites and terrorists – foreign and domestic.”
Cooper said there was a highly problematic double standard in how and when social media gatekeepers were intervening.
“If you suspend Donald Trump’s account, do the same for Iran’s godfather of terrorism and genocide-threatening Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. If you remove postings about COVID-19 that you deem dangerous, remove Louis Farrakhan’s canard urging African-Americans to not get vaccinated.”
He likewise slammed social media for allowing the Chinese
Foreign Ministry to broadcast the message that it is not mistreating or committing any broad crimes against the Uighur sect in Xinjiang.
According to the report, the “Big Five” – Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube/ Google – all received a B- in policing hateful and potentially terrorist content. The combined audience of those platforms could amount to almost six billion users.
Other major platforms like Telegram and Parler received a D- and a D, respectively.
The worst grades went to the networking sites AnonUp, Gab, and 8Kun, as well as the video platform Brighteon, all of which received an F.
While Cooper surveyed a wide variety of digital hate trends, he especially focused on anti-vaxxer, antisemitism and anti-Asian trends.
Part of what concerned Cooper was that the attack on the Capitol in Washington on January 6 “did not happen in a vacuum. The rhetoric that led up to it, the drumbeat on social media... created that environment, pushed those themes. What happened on January 6 basically was frankly predictable and could have been stopped.”
Cooper noted that there had been a “significant drop in Islamist terrorist activity on social media, but that it is expected to pick up again now that ISIS is finding traction in many places in Africa.”
The report also detailed a variety of graphics that groups in many countries are using to tie Jews explicitly or subliminally to some kind of conspiracy theory.
Iran has started enriching uranium at its underground Natanz nuclear facility using the advanced IR-4 centrifuge, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog said in a report reviewed by Reuters late Tuesday.
The development is not only a further breach of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with the P5+1 major world powers, but also reflects its recovery from a blow suffered on July 2, 2020.
Last summer, the Islamic Republic’s above-ground main advanced centrifuge assembly facility at Natanz was destroyed, with foreign sources validated by The Jerusalem Post reporting that it was caused by physical sabotage by the Mossad.
At the time, eight months ago, Israeli intelligence officials and nuclear experts told the that Iran would need one to two years to recover its advanced centrifuge enrichment capabilities.
The latest IAEA report on a new underground facility, which the ayatollahs ordered built at Natanz to replace the destroyed above-ground facility, reveals exactly how much they have rehabilitated since July 2.
“On 15 March 2021, the agency verified that Iran began feeding the cascade of 174 IR-4 centrifuges already installed at FEP (Fuel Enrichment Plant) with natural UF6,” the agency said in the report to member states dated Monday, referring to uranium hexafluoride, the form of uranium that is fed into centrifuges for enrichment.
Iran has indicated that it now plans to install a second cascade of IR-4 centrifuges at the FEP, but installation of that cascade has yet to begin, the report said.
Iran has already increased the number of IR-2m machines, which are far more efficient than the IR-1, installed at the underground plant.
“In summary, as of 15 March 2021, Iran was using 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges installed in 30 cascades, 522 IR-2m centrifuges installed in three cascades and 174 IR-4 centrifuges installed in one cascade, to enrich natural UF6 up to 5% U-235 at FEP,” the IAEA report said, referring to the fissile purity of uranium.
The Islamic Republic has recently accelerated its breaches of the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities, in an apparent bid to pressure US President Joe Biden as both sides are locked in a standoff over who should move first to save the deal.
Tehran’s breaches began in May 2019 after Washington’s May 2018 withdrawal from the deal and reimposition of US economic sanctions against Iran under Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.
Trump took these actions after months of attempted but failed negotiations with Iran and the E-3 (England, Germany and France) at placing limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program, restraining its destabilization of the Middle East and extending the 2015 deal’s nuclear limits.
After the July explosion, Iran last year started moving three cascades, or clusters, of different advanced centrifuge models to its below-ground FEP.
It is already enriching underground with IR-2m centrifuges. This violates the 2015 deal, which permits enriching there only with first-generation IR-1 machines.
Uranium enrichment underground, especially with advanced centrifuges, is highly sensitive because below-ground facilities are much harder to attack.
As such, there is a much greater fear that Iran could use underground facilities to break out to a nuclear bomb even in the face of the threat of a physical attack by Israel.