DEBKAfile (Hebrew: תיק דבקה) is a Jerusalem-based English language Israeli open source military intelligence website with commentary and analyses on terrorism, intelligence, security, and military and political affairs in the Middle East. The word "Debka" refers to an Arab folk dance.[1]
The site started in the summer of 2000, and is operated from the Jerusalem home of journalists Giora Shamis and Diane Shalem.[1] It has been awarded Forbes' Best of the Web award.[2] Forbes identifies the best part of the website as being its archives, but decries the fact that "most of the information is attributed to unidentified sources."
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," adding that Debka had partnered with the right-wing news site WorldNetDaily for a weekly subscription product.[3] Yediot Achronot investigative reporter Ronen Bergman states that the site relies on information from sources with an agenda, such as neo-conservative 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.[1] Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf calls Debka his "favorite alarmist Israeli website trading in rumors."[4]
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 would again strike the World Trade Center, and that it had warned well before the 2006 war in Lebanon that Hezbollah had amassed 12,000 Katyusha rockets pointed at northern Israel.[1]