Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center


 * Not to be confused with the California-based "Terrorism Information Center".

The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), formerly known as the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, in honor of Meir Amit, is an Israeli-based independent research group with close ties to the Israel Defense Forces and the American Jewish Congress.

The center was established in 2001 by Colonel (Ret.) Dr. Reuven Erlich, a former IDF intelligence officer. The organisation has close ties with Israel's military leadership and maintains an office at the Israeli Defense Ministry. It has been described as the "public face of Israeli intelligence" and as a "pipeline" for the release of information that Israeli military intelligence does not want to be directly associated with. Several former members of the Israeli intelligence community (Mossad, Military Intelligence, the Shin Bet and Nativ) have criticized the "symbiotic" relationship between the center and Israeli military intelligence and the centre's establishment, arguing that the connection of military intelligence with a propaganda body would be detrimental to "objective" and "ideologically unbiased" analysis. Steven Erlanger wrote in The New York Times that a spokesman for the center had acknowledged that it receives some Israeli government financing.

The center's research staff, mostly former Military Intelligence officers, compile weekly reports that are published online at their website.

According to its website the center "is part of the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), an NGO dedicated to the memory of the fallen of the Israeli Intelligence Community."

The center states that its focus is on the Palestinian Authority relationship with terrorism, anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli incitement, "terrorism sponsoring countries (especially Syria and Iran)", Hezbollah, "global financing of terrorism", "links between Palestinian-Middle Eastern terrorism and global Jihad", "suicide-bombing terrorism and its source in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and the "involvement of women and children in Palestinian terrorism."

In 2010 the center published a research on Operation Cast Lead (Gaza War (2008-2009)) as a response to the Goldstone report. The study concluded that Hamas made use of civilian infrastructures and population (including children) as human shields.