DEBKAfile () was a privately operated Israeli website based in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, providing commentary and analyses on

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

national security National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

and

international relations International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

, with a particular focus on the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

. It was available in both English and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

. DEBKAfile operated for over 20 years. The site is inactive since 24 Jule 2023, after founder died, but still online. The word "debka" refers to the Arab folk dance dabke.

History

The site started in the summer of 2000, and is operated from the Jerusalem home of journalists Giora Shamis and Diane Shalem, both of whom worked for more than 20 years covering foreign policy and intelligence issues for the London-based

Economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

. It has been awarded

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' Best of the Web award. Forbes identified the archives as the best part of the website, but warns that "most of the information is attributed to unidentified sources." The website was suspended in October 2014, following its own report of the illness of its chief editor. The website resumed coverage in December 2014. Another apparent pause in publication occurred after an August 24, 2022 article was posted and articles did not continue to resume regularly until December 2022. In September 2023, a note on the website indicated that it was closing down, following the passing of its founder Giora Shamis.

Criticism

Wired.com's Noah Shachtman wrote in 2001 that the site "clearly reports with a point of view; the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics".Debka: Conflict's Drudge Report?
Wired.com Noah Shachtman, October 5, 2001 '' Yediot Achronot'' investigative reporter Ronen Bergman stated that the site relies on information from sources with an agenda, such as

neo-conservative Neoconservatism (colloquially neocon) is a political movement which began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party alo ...

elements of the US Republican Party, "whose worldview is that the situation is bad and is only going to get worse," and that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider even 10 percent of the site's content to be reliable. The site's operators, in contrast, state that 80 percent of what Debka reports turns out to be true, and point to its year 2000 prediction that

al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...

would again strike the World Trade Center, and that it had warned well before the 2006 war in Lebanon that

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

had amassed 12,000

Katyusha Katyusha () is a diminutive of the Russian name Ekaterina or Yekaterina, the Russian form of Katherine Katherine (), also spelled Catherine and Catherina, other variations, is a feminine given name. The name and its variants are popular in c ...

rockets pointed at northern Israel.

References

External links

* * {{Twitter, name=DEBKAfile English
YouTube @realdebka
Internet properties established in 2000 2000 establishments in Israel Intelligence websites Israeli news websites Mass media in Jerusalem