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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
04ANKARA7211 2004-12-30 05:05 2010-11-28 18:06 SECRET Embassy Ankara
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 05 ANKARA 007211
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/14/2029
TAGS: PREL PGOV PINS ECON TU
SUBJECT: ERDOGAN AND AK PARTY AFTER TWO YEARS IN POWER:
TRYING TO GET A GRIP ON THEMSELVES, ON TURKEY, ON EUROPE
(U) Classified by Ambassador Eric Edelman; reasons: E.O.
12958 1.4 (a,b,c,d).
¶1. (C) Summary: PM Erdogan and his ruling AK Party seem to
have a firm grip on power -- if for no other reasons that
there is currently no viable alternative and inertia weighs
heavily in politics. Nevertheless, Erdogan and his party
face enormous challenges if they are successfully to embrace
core principles of open society, carry out EU harmonization,
and develop and implement foreign policies in harmony with
core U.S. interests. End summary.
¶2. (C) As PM Erdogan strode through the EU corridors of power
Dec. 16-17 with his semi-pro soccer player's swagger and
phalanx of sycophantic advisors, he may have seemed a strong
candidate for European leader of the year. A regional leader
to be reckoned with for a decade to come. The man who won
Turkey the beginning of accession negotiations with the EU.
Who broke loose three decades of frozen Turkish policy on
Cyprus. Who drove major human rights reforms through
parliament and through constitutional amendments. Whose
rhetorical skill, while etched with populist victimhood, is
redolent with traditional and religious allusions that
resonate deeply in the heartland, deeply in the anonymous
exurban sprawls. Who remains the highly popular tribune of
the people, without a viable or discernible political
rival...outside his own ruling AKP.
¶3. (C) In short, Erdogan looks unbeatable. But is he? And
is he willing to give relations with the U.S. the leadership
and momentum they need from the Turkish side?
¶4. (C) Erdogan has a two-thirds majority in parliament. Main
opposition left-of-center CHP amounts to no more than a bunch
of elitist ankle-biters. There is currently no serious,
broad-based political alternative, owing to Erdogan's
rhetorical dominance and control of the debate on social
questions close to the hearts of the center-right majority in
Turkey; other party leaders' political bankruptcy; and the
stultifying effect of current party and election laws on
entry for younger, untainted political aspirants. AKP argues
that the economy, at least from the perspective of macro
indicators and continued willingness of emerging-market
portfolio investors to buy the expectations and sell the
facts, appears to have stabilized. Moreover, the authority
of AKP's nationwide party machine is blurring with the
Turkish State's executive power at the provincial and
district level and with municipal functions to an extent not
seen since the days of the one-party state. These factors
seem set to continue for the foreseeable future.
¶5. (C) Yet Erdogan and AKP face politically fateful
challenges in three areas: foreign policy (EU, Iraq, Cyprus);
quality and sustainability of leadership and governance; and
resolution of questions fundamental to creation of an open,
prosperous society integrated with the broader world (place
of religion; identity and history; rule of law).
EU
--
¶6. (U) Erdogan indexed his political survival to getting a
negotiation date from the EU. He achieved that goal. The
Wall Street Journal and other Western and Turkish media have
opined that the EU owes Turkey a fair negotiating process
leading to accession, with the Journal even putting the onus
on the EU by asserting that while Turkey is ready the
question is whether Europeans are ready for Turkey.
¶7. (C) But there's always a Monday morning and the debate on
the ground here is not so neat. With euphoria at getting a
date having faded in 48 hours, Erdogan's political survival
and the difficulty of the tasks before him have become
substantially clearer. Nationalists on right and left have
resumed accusations that Erdogan sold out Turkish national
interests (Cyprus) and Turkish traditions. Core institutions
of the Turkish state, which remain at best wary of AKP, have
once again begun to probe for weaknesses and to feed
insinuations into the press in parallel with the
nationalists' assertions. In the face of this Euro-aversion,
neither Erdogan nor his government has taken even minimal
steps to prepare the bureaucracy or public opinion to begin
tackling the fundamental -- some Turks would say insidious --
legal, social, intellectual and spiritual changes that must
occur to turn harmonization on paper into true reform. The
road ahead will surely be hard.
¶8. (U) High-profile naysayers like main opposition CHP
chairman Baykal, former Ambassador Gunduz Aktan, and
political scientist Hasan Unal continue to castigate Erdogan.
But theirs is a routine whine. More significant for us is
that many of our contacts cloak their lack of self-confidence
at Turkey's ability to join in expressions of skepticism that
the EU will let Turkey in. And there is parallel widespread
skepticism that the EU will be around in attractive form in
ten years.
¶9. (C) The mood in AKP is no brighter, with one of FonMin
Gul's MFA advisors having described to UK polcounselor how
bruised Turkey feels at the EU's inconsistency during the
final negotiations leading to Dec. 17 (EU diplomats in Ankara
have given us the other side of the story). Gul was
noticeably harder-line than Erdogan in public comments in the
lead-up to the Summit, and was harder-line in pre-Summit
negotiations in Brussels, according to UK polcounselor.
There was noticeable tension between Erdogan and Gul in
Brussels according to "Aksam" Ankara bureau chief Nuray
Basaran. She also noted to us that when negotiations seemed
to have frozen up on Dec. 17, Erdogan's advisors got phone
calls from Putin advisors urging Turkey to walk. Basaran
says that at least some of Erdogan's advisors urged him to do
so.
¶10. (C) AKP's lack of cohesion as a party and lack of
openness as a government is reflected in the range of murky,
muddled motives for wanting to join the EU we have
encountered among those AKPers who say they favor pursuing
membership...or at least the process. Some see the process
as the way to marginalize the Turkish military and what
remains of the arid "secularism" of Kemalism. We have also
run into the rarely openly-spoken, but widespread belief
among adherents of the Turk-Islam synthesis that Turkey's
role is to spread Islam in Europe, "to take back Andalusia
and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683" as one
participant in a recent meeting at AKP's main think tank put
it. This thinking parallels the logic behind the approach of
FonMin Gul ally and chief foreign policy advisor in the Prime
Ministry Ahmet Davutoglu, whose muddy opinion piece in the
Dec. 13 International Herald Tribune is in essence a call for
one-way multi-cultural tolerance, i.e., on the part of the EU.
¶11. (C) Those from the more overtly religious side of AKP
whinge that the EU is a Christian club. While some assert
that it is only through Turkish membership and spread of
Turkish values that the world can avoid the clash of
civilizations they allege the West is fomenting, others
express concern that harmonization and membership will water
down Islam and associated traditions in Turkey. Indeed, as
AKP whip Sadullah Ergin confided to us recently, "If the EU
says yes, everything will look rosy for a short while. Then
the real difficulties will start for AKP. If the EU says no,
it will be initially difficult, but much easier over the long
run."
¶12. (C) AKP also faces the nuts-and-bolts issue of how to
prepare for harmonization. In choosing a chief negotiator
Erdogan will need to decide whether the risks that the man he
taps will successfully steal his political limelight outweigh
the political challenge his choice will face since it will be
the Turkish chief negotiator's responsibility to sell the EU
position to a recalcitrant Turkish cabinet. It is because
the chief negotiator is likely to be ground down between EU
demands and a prickly domestic environment that some
observers speculate Erdogan might give the job to his chief
internal rival Gul.
¶13. (C) At the same time the government must reportedly hire
a couple thousand people skilled in English or other major EU
languages and up to the bureaucratic demands of interfacing
with the Eurocrats who descend on ministries as harmonization
starts. If the government continues to hire on the basis of
"one of us", i.e., from the Sunni brotherhood and lodge
milieu that has been serving as the pool for AKP's civil
service hiring, lack of competence will be a problem. If the
government hires on the base of competence, its new hires
will be frustrated by the incompetence of AKP's previous
hires at all levels.
Questions About AKP Leadership and Governance
---------------------------------------------
¶14. (C) Several factors will continue to degrade Erdogan's
and AKP's ability to effect fair and lasting reforms or to
take timely, positive decisions on issues of importance to
the U.S.
¶15. (C) First is Erdogan's character.
¶16. (C) In our contacts in Anatolia we have not yet detected
that Erdogan's hunger for absolute power and for the material
benefits of power have begun to erode his grassroots
popularity. Others disagree. Pollster and political analyst
Ismail Yildiz has asserted in three lengthy expositions to us
late in Dec. that the erosion has started. We note that (1)
Yildiz expressed frustration to us that the AKP leadership
did not respond to his offer to provide political strategy
services; (2) he is currently connected to mainstream
opposition figures; and (3) he also runs a conspiracy-theory
web site. So we treat his view cautiously. However, judging
by his references and past experience in the Turkish State,
he appears to have maintained conncetions with the State
apparatus and to have a network of observers and data
collectors in all 81 provinces.
¶17. (C) Inside the party, Erdogan's hunger for power reveals
itself in a sharp authoritarian style and deep distrust of
others: as a former spiritual advisor to Erdogan and his wife
Emine put it, "Tayyip Bey believes in God...but doesn't trust
him." In surrounding himself with an iron ring of
sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors, Erdogan has isolated
himself from a flow of reliable information, which partially
explains his failure to understand the context -- or real
facts -- of the U.S. operations in Tel Afar, Fallujah, and
elsewhere and his susceptibility to Islamist theories. With
regard to Islamist influences on Erdogan, DefMin Gonul, who
is a conservative but worldly Muslim, recently described Gul
associate Davutoglu to us as "exceptionally dangerous."
Erdogan's other foreign policy advisors (Cuneyd Zapsu, Egemen
Bagis, Omer Celik, along with Mucahit Arslan and chef de
cabinet Hikmet Bulduk) are despised as inadequate, out of
touch and corrupt by all our AKP contacts from ministers to
MPs and party intellectuals.
¶18. (C) Erdogan's pragmatism serves him well but he lacks
vision. He and his principal AKP advisors, as well as FonMin
Gul and other ranking AKP officials, also lack analytic
depth. He relies on poor-quality intel and on media
disinformation. With the narrow world-view and wariness that
lingers from his Sunni brotherhood and lodge background, he
ducks his public relations responsibilities. He (and those
around him, including FonMin Gul) indulge in pronounced
pro-Sunni prejudices and in emotional reactions that prevent
the development of coherent, practical domestic or foreign
policies.
¶19. (C) Erdogan has compounded his isolation by constantly
traveling abroad -- reportedly 75 foreign trips in the past
two years -- with a new series of trips planned for 2005 to
Russia, "Eurasia", the Middle East and Africa. Indeed, his
staff says 2005 is the "year of Africa", but they provide no
coherent reason why. This grueling cycle of travel has
exhausted him and his staff and disrupted his ability to keep
his hand on the tiller of party, parliamentary group, and
government. He has alienated many in the AKP parliamentary
group by his habit of harshly chewing out MPs. Moreover, we
understand that MUSIAD, an Anatolia-wide group of businessmen
influential in Islamist circles who gave Erdogan key
financial support as AKP campaigned prior to the 2002
elections, is disaffected by Erdogan's unapproachability.
Judging by comments to us of insiders in the influential
Islamist lodge of Fethullah Gulen such as publicist
Abdurrahman Celik, the lodge, which has made some inroads
into AKP (Minister of Justice Cicek, Minister of Culture and
Tourism Mumcu; perhaps 60-80 of 368 MPs; some appointments to
the bureaucracy), has resumed the ambivalent attitude it
initially had toward Erdogan and AKP.
¶20. (C) Second is the coalition nature of AKP, the limited
number of ministers whom Erdogan trusts, and the efforts of
some -- principally FonMin Gul but from time to time Cicek --
to undermine Erdogan. No one else in AKP comes close to
Erdogan in grassroots popularity. However, Gul's readiness
to deprecate Erdogan within AKP and even to foreign visitors
(e.g., Israeli deputy PM Olmert) and his efforts to reduce
Erdogan's maneuvering room with hard-line criticisms of U.S.
policy in Iraq or EU policy on Cyprus have forced Erdogan
constantly to look over his shoulder and in turn to prove his
credentials by making statements inimical to good
U.S.-Turkish relations. We expect Erdogan to carry out a
partial cabinet reshuffle early in 2005, but he will be
unable to remove the influence of Gul.
¶21. (S) Third is corruption. AKP swept to power by promising
to root out corruption. However, in increasing numbers
AKPers from ministers on down, and people close to the party,
are telling us of conflicts of interest or serious corruption
in the party at the national, provincial and local level and
among close family members of ministers. We have heard from
two contacts that Erdogan has eight accounts in Swiss banks;
his explanations that his wealth comes from the wedding
presents guests gave his son and that a Turkish businessman
is paying the educational expenses of all four Erdogan
children in the U.S. purely altruistically are lame.
¶22. (S) Among the many figures mentioned to us as prominently
involved in corruption are Minister of Interior Aksu,
Minister of Foreign Trade Tuzmen, and AKP Istanbul provincial
chairman Muezzinoglu. As we understand it from a contact in
the intel directorate of Turkish National Police, a
continuing investigation into Muezzinoglu's extortion racket
and other activities has already produced evidence
incriminating Erdogan. In our contacts across Anatolia we
have detected no willingness yet at the grassroots level to
look closely at Erdogan or the party in this regard, but the
trend is a time bomb.
¶23. (S) Fourth is the poor quality of Erdogan's and AKP's
appointments to the Turkish bureaucracy, at party
headquarters, and as party mayoral candidates. A broad range
of senior career civil servants, including DefMin Gonul,
former Undersecretary of Customs Nevzat Saygilioglu, former
Forestry DirGen Abdurrahman Sagkaya, and many others, has
expressed shock and dismay to us at the incompetence,
prejudices and ignorance of appointees such as Omer Dincer,
an Islamist academic whom Erdogan appointed Undersecretary of
the Prime Ministry, THE key position in the government/state
bureaucracy. Dincer is despised by the TGS. Many
interlocutors also point to the weakness of Erdogan's deputy
party chairmen. The result is that, unlike former leaders
such as Turgut Ozal or Suleyman Demirel, both of whom
appointed skilled figures who could speak authoritatively for
their bosses as their party general secretary and as
Undersecretary of the Prime Ministry, Erdogan has left
himself without people who can relieve him of the burden of
day-to-day management or who can ensure effective, productive
channels to the heart of the party and the heart of the
Turkish state.
Two Big Questions
-----------------
¶24. (C) Turkey's EU bid has brought forth reams of
pronouncements and articles -- Mustafa Akyol's
Gulenist-tinged "Thanksgiving for Turkey" in Dec. 27 Weekly
Standard is one of the latest -- attempting to portray Islam
in Turkey as distinctively moderate and tolerant with a
strong mystical (Sufi) underpinning. Certainly, one can see
in Turkey's theology faculties some attempts to wrestle with
the problems of critical thinking, free will, and precedent
(ictihad), attempts which, compared to what goes on in
theology faculties in the Arab world, may appear relatively
progressive.
¶25. (C) However, the broad, rubber-meets-the-road reality is
that Islam in Turkey is caught in a vise of (1) 100 years of
"secular" pressure to hide itself from public view, (2)
pressure and competition from brotherhoods and lodges to
follow their narrow, occult "true way", and (3) the faction-
and positivism-ridden aridity of the Religious Affairs
Directorate (Diyanet). As a result, Islam as it is lived in
Turkey is stultified, riddled with hypocrisy, ignorant and
intolerant of other religions' presence in Turkey, and unable
to eject those who would politicize it in a radical,
anti-Western way. Imams are for the most part poorly
educated and all too ready to insinuate anti-Western,
anti-Christian or anti-Jewish sentiments into their sermons.
Exceptionally few Muslims in Turkey have the courage to
challenge conventional Sunni thinking about jihad or, e.g.,
verses in the Repentance shura of the Koran which have for so
long been used to justify violence against "infidels".
¶26. (C) The problem is compounded by the willingness of
politicians such as Gul to play elusively with politicized
Islam. Until Turkey ensures that the humanist strain in
Islam prevails here, Islam in Turkey will remain a troubled,
defensive force, hypocritical to an extreme degree and
unwilling to adapt to the challenges of open society.
¶27. (C) A second question is the relation of Turkey and its
citizens to history -- the history of this land and citizens'
individual history. Subject to rigid taboos, denial, fears,
and mandatory gross distortions, the study of history and
practice of historiography in the Republic of Turkey remind
one of an old Soviet academic joke: the faculty party chief
assembles his party cadres and, warning against various
ideological threats, proclaims, "The future is certain. It's
only that damned past that keeps changing."
¶28. (C) Until Turkey can reconcile itself to its past,
including the troubling aspects of its Ottoman past, in free
and open debate, how will Turkey reconcile itself to the
concept and practice of reconciliation in the EU? How will
it have the self confidence to take decisions and formulate
policies responsive to U.S. interests? Some in AKP are
joining what is still only a handful of others to take
tentative, but nonetheless inspiring, steps in this regard.
However, the road ahead will require a massive overhaul of
education, the introduction and acceptance of rule of law,
and a fundamental redefinition of the relation between
citizen and state. In the words of the great (Alevi)
Anatolian bard Asik Veysel, this is a "long and delicate
road."
¶29. (U) Baghdad minimize considered.
EDELMAN
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Cry from the heart of Israeli leftist, in 1968, still rings true
No! It rings false! When are these people going to get it that the world cannot continue to be silent for fear of the most dreaded word 'anti-Semitic' and let Jews commit horrific crimes upon humanity? Both the introduction by one Dan Fleshler (with whom I had a brief email exchange and the article itself lacks common sense. What Fleshler and the author of the article are demanding of the international community is a special treatment for Jewish crimes. The author complains bitterly that he stood up for justice and signed for petitions even when the people for who he was standing up were a far away people; i.e. not his own people. Right there is a clue that the man who considers himself to be on the left is very far from theft. For him, there is first and foremost his own people and then the rest of humanity and the Arabs of course deserve all kinds of brutality for having the sense to fight for their own land from invading European Jewry! People who regard themselves progressives do not distinguish between their own people and other people. Since he mentioned Che Guevara whom he appears to admire, Che fought alongside the Cubans, the people of Congo, the people of Bolivia; none of them his own people. This is one of the most pathetic articles that I read in a long time. If the man regarded himself to be on the left while leeching off the resources of stolen Palestine, who really needs people on the right? Right? Right!Cry from the heart of Israeli leftist, in 1968, still rings true
By Dan Fleshler | August 22, 2009
The good people of Ameinu have posted what is, in their words, “perhaps THE seminal article in response to the anti-Zionist Left, written by Amos Kenan in 1968. Mr Kenan recently passed away - but he leaves us this important piece.”
It was written before it was clear that Israel would be ruling over another people and building roads for Jews only and implementing other policies that people like me complain about, before the post-’67 occupation became an entrenched, maddeningly self-perpetuating phenomenon. The “left” he describes was still dominated by the authoritarian left (Soviets, Cubans) but the sentiments he identifies, and the thorough demonization of all things Israeli, are painfully familiar.
What it comes down to was a widespread refusal to accept not only Israel’s existence, but also the humanity of even Israelis in the left-wing opposition. That is also the worst thing about too many people in the current incarnation of the anti-Israel far left: they deny me my humanity, they cannot accept the fact that someone who cares as much about social justice as they do can feel a connection to Israel, warts and all, and will defend the notion of a Jewish homeland.
There is much to mull over in this article, too many allusions and arguments to sum up glibly. For me, the most memorable aspect is rather simple: a die-hard Israeli leftist who opposed the Zionist orthodoxy of his day understood that Israel WAS threatened with destruction, and –except for the Americans –no one seemed especially concerned about it. That perspective is denied and mocked by the current, increasingly fashionable anti-Israel narrative, which wrongly blames Israel for every war it has fought and every enemy combatant it has killed. One sees here, in poignant detail, an agonized version of the seige mentality that still controls Israeli decisionmaking, haunting someone who would have given up the territories in a second, but for the threats and the terrible international isolation.
Here it is, in full without further commentary (it’s a bit long, so be patient and wade through it):
A Letter to all Good People
By Amos Kenan
I am for Cuba. I love Cuba. I am opposed to the genocide perpetrated by the Americans in Vietnam. But I am an Israeli, therefore I am forbidden to take all these stands. Cuba does not want me to love her. Someone has decided that I am permitted to love only the Americans. I don’t mind so much that someone, especially the good people everywhere, have decided to outlaw me. I shall be able to get along without their help. But I do mind that I am not permitted any longer to love and hate according to my feelings, and according to my political and moral inclinations, and that I am refused invitation or even admittance to parties held by the good people. I am not permitted any longer to toast justice with a glass of champagne. I am not permitted to eat caviar and denounce the Americans. I am not permitted to stroll in the sun-drenched streets of Havana, arm-in-arm with my erstwhile good friends from St. Germain, Via Veneto and Chelsea, and celebrate the memory of Che Guevara, casting a threatening look at imperialism. I am also finally and absolutely forbidden to sign petitions of all sorts for human rights.
This situation drives me slightly out of my mind. Therefore I wish to relate a few confused, disconnected stories. Perhaps some good man will find the connection. One day an Israeli submarine sank in the Mediterranean with its 69 crew members. Its SOS was answered, among others, by the British, Turkish and Greek fleets. The Russian navy, which cruised very close to the location, did not join in the search. Moscow radio, in its Arab broadcasts, took the trouble to denounce the countries whose ships rushed to help the lost submarine. It is a sacred principle of seamen of all nations to hasten to the aid of distressed vessels. The Israeli submarine was not on a war mission, and Israel is not in a state of war with the Soviet Union.
I am not so naive as to believe that this is anti-Semitism, Soviet style. I have never believed that the Russians are guided, in their calculations, by such powerful and sincere emotions as anti-Semitism, which is common to both progressive and reactionary camps. I know that the Russians conduct a cool and considered pragmatic policy, and are guided by clear political considerations. This was a political move, carried out as a part of a political game. The meaning of this move can only be: Israel must be isolated from the civilised human community. The rules that apply to the civilised community, rules of honour, consideration and mutual aid, do not apply to me. I am out. There is only one more step to the conclusion: the shedding of my blood is no crime.
Forgive my brutal way of putting things. I cannot conceive of it otherwise. If this was a move in a game, the game must have an object. The object is the penetration of the Middle East, and let us assume, for the sake of arguments, that this is for the purpose of advancing world revolution and the overthrow of imperialism. The Middle East contains 100m. Arabs and 2.5m. Israelis. But it is not so easy, in our enlightened world, to wipe out 2.5m. people. A reason, and a justification, are needed. You cannot wipe out just like that. First of all you must outlaw. Therefore you must not invite an Israeli communist party to a convention of communist parties. Therefore you must not invite a leftist Israeli author to a conference of leftist authors in Havana. There are no more class distinctions. There are only national distinctions. Even an Israeli leftist is an imperialist. And an oil sheikh is a socialist. Therefore it is permissible to compare me to the Nazis. It is permissible to call me a Gauleiter. It is permissible to mobilize all of the world’s conscientious people against me—and without them you cannot do it—and all this because there is an object looming beyond the horizon, an object for the sake of which this tactic is justifiable and useful.
Until quite recently, I also belonged to the Good People. Meaning that not only did I sit in cafes and sign petitions for the release of political prisoners in countries not my own, not only did I join proclamations, after sipping my aperitif, for the release of the downtrodden from the yoke of imperialism in places I shall never reach; I also did something against what seemed to me to be oppression and injustice in my own country. During the 20 years of the existence of the State of Israel I helped with my pen, in my regular newspaper column, the fight against the injustices committed against the Arab minority. And not by the pen only, but also in demonstrations, and also when arraigned before a military tribunal. I am used to being called a traitor by local patriots. During the Six Day War, in June 1967, the battalion I served in was ordered to supervise the demolition of four Arab villages: I considered it my duty to desert from my unit, to write a report of this action, and to send the copies to the General Staff of the army, to members of the government and to Knesset members. This report has been translated and circulated in the world as a proof of Israel’s crimes.
But permit me to conclude the story. The action I undertook was in flagrant violation of any military law. I have no idea what would have happened to a Red Army soldier were he to violate national and military discipline in such a manner. After returning to my unit, I was ordered to present myself—I, in rank a private—before the general commanding all the divisions on that front. He told me that he had read my report, and considered it his duty to inform me that what had occurred was a regrettable error, which will not recur. Deep in my heart I disbelieved his statement that this was only a mistake. I was convinced that whoever ordered such an action did not expect such resistance from within—the men of my battalion refused to carry out the order—and was alarmed at the impression such an action might create abroad. But I was glad that he found it necessary to announce that this was only an error. I asked him how he intended to ensure that the ‘error’ will never recur. On the spot he signed an order permitting me free movement in all occupied territories, so that I could see with my own eyes that such an action had not recurred.
But since then, in all the peace-papers in the world, my report about the destruction of villages has been reprinted over and over again, as if it happened only yesterday, as if it is happening all the time. And this is a lie. It is like writing that witches have been burnt at the stake in England—omitting the date. I hereby request all those who believed me when I reported a criminal act, to believe me now too. And those who do not believe me now, I hereby request to disbelieve my former report too, and not to believe me selectively, according to their convenience. I should also add that the town of Kalkiliya, which began to be demolished during the writing of my report, is now in the process of being rebuilt, after the expelled inhabitants have been brought back.
This does not mean that other injustices are not perpetrated now. The less you fight me, the more you would help me fight them. Even the most leftist of men will not consent to be slaughtered when a sword is pointed at his throat. Even when the sword is a progressive one, it does not make it any the pleasanter. The trouble is that not a single serious person in the world believes today that Israel was really in danger of being annihilated. This is the optical illusion of 1968. The gigantic Goliath is threatening little David. The fact that Goliath is a giant, and that David is small, is only an optical illusion. If Goliath triumphs and tramples David under his feet, it is a sign that he really is a giant. But if little David beats the giant, people say: the giant David has trampled poor little Goliath in the dust. I claim that Israel played the role of David. And I claim that even now, after the stunning victory, it still is little David who has indeed beaten the stunned Goliath, but Goliath still is a menacing giant. Today, no less than in June 1967, Israel is in danger of annihilation. Unless the enlightened world mobilises now, immediately, perhaps it will be too late. But I am afraid that there are not many people in the world today who will be sorry if victorious David is destroyed. A bitter suspicion rises in me that even the most enlightened among the most progressive people still adhere to the Christian tradition that they imbibed with their mothers’ milk: Jew, stay on the cross. Never get off it. The day you get off the cross and hurl it at the heads of your crucifiers, we shall cease to love you. Today the Arabs boast of waging a revolutionary guerrilla warfare. They claim to have copied the Viet Cong method of warfare and to apply it in the Middle East. They march with Che Guevara’s picture. This makes me laugh. Just as Che Guevara’s picture hanging in the luxurious salons of Montparnasse made me laugh. I have always wondered whether Che Guevara had a picture of Che Guevara hanging in his salon. What is a Viet Cong? The Viet Cong is not white flags on buildings. The Viet Cong means fighting to the last man. The Viet Cong of the Middle East, whether those who demonstrate with Che Guevara’s picture like it or not, are we. We are prepared, at any moment to wage the battle to the death. After the death camps, we are left with only one supreme value: existence.
Our existence today, is inconvenient for those who work at the global balance of power. It is more convenient that there should be two camps, one white, the other black. We number, as I said before, only 2.5m. people. On the global map, what is the value of a few hundred thousand leftists, opposing the Eshkol government policy and striving for a genuine peace with the Arabs, who strive to liberate themselves from the one-way dependence on American power? Somebody has already decided to sacrifice us. The history of revolution is full of such sacrifices since the days of the Spanish War. At one time world revolution had been sacrificed on the altar of the revolution in one country. Today the calculation is somewhat subtler. Today they try to explain to us that there is an Arab socialism. That there is an Egyptian socialism, and an Algerian socialism. There is a socialism of slave-traders, and a socialism of oil magnates. There are all kinds of socialism, all aiming really at one and the same thing—the overthrow of imperialism, which happens to be one and indivisible. Once there was only a single kind of socialsm, which fed on principles, some of them moral. On the day that morality died there was born the
particular, conventional socialism, changing from place to place and from time to time, for which I have no other name but National Socialism.
I want to live. What can I do if Russia, China, Vietnam, India, Yugoslavia, Sartre, Russell, Castro, have all decided that I am made all of a piece? It is inconvenient for them to admit that there is an opposition in Israel too. Why should there be an opposition in Israel if in the Popular Democracies in Cuba or Algeria, there is only one party? And perhaps they do have pangs of conscience, but they have made their calculation, and found out that I am only one, only 10, only 100,000; and on the other side there are tens of millions, all led like a single man, in a single party, towards the light, towards the sun. And if so, who am I? I will tell you who I am: I am the man who will confuse and confound your progressive calculations. I have too much love for this vain world, a world of caviar, television, sunny beaches, sex and good wine. You go ahead and toast the revolution with champagne. I shall toast myself, my own life, bottle in one hand, rifle in the other. You send Soviet arms to Egypt. You isolate me. And in order to make it easier to isolate me, you change my name. My flesh, which you eat, you call fish. You don’t want to protect me— neither against the Arabs, nor against the Russians, nor against Dayan or Johnson.
Moreover, when I try to call on you and tell you that I am against Dayan, against Eshkol, against Ben-Gurion, and ask for your help, you laugh at me and demand that I should return to the 4 June borders, unconditionally. Hold it! I refuse to play this game. If you give me back the pistol with which I tried to kill you, I won’t kill you. Because I am a nice fellow. But if you don’t give it back to me, I shall kill you, because you are a bad fellow. Why were the 4 June borders not peace borders on 4 June but will become peace borders now? Why were not the U.N. partition plan borders of 1947 peace borders then but will become so now? Why should I return the bandit his gun as a reward for having failed to kill me? I want peace peace peace peace peace peace peace. I am ready to give everything back in exchange for peace. And I shall give nothing back without peace. I am ready to solve the refugee problem. I am ready to accept an independent Palestinian state. I am ready to sit and talk. About everything, all at the same time. Direct talks, indirect talks, all this is immaterial. But peace. Until you agree to have peace, I shall give back nothing. And if you force me to become a conqueror, I shall become a conqueror. And if you force me to become an oppressor, I shall become an oppressor. And if you force me into the same camp with all the forces of darkness in the world, there I shall be.
There is no lack in Israel of rabid militarists. Their number is steadily increasing, the more our isolation becomes apparent. Nasser helps Dayan, Kosygin helps Eshkol. Fidel Castro helps the Jewish chauvinists. Who of the world’s giants cares how many more Jews, how many more Arabs, bleed to death in the Sinai sands? There is no lack here of mad hysterical militarists. All those quiet citizens who went out to war with K.L.M. handgrips and in laundry trucks, who scribbled on their tanks: ‘We want Home’ . All those who fought without anger, without hatred, only for their lives, are becoming militaristic, convinced that only Israeli power, and nothing else in the world, will ever help us.
The only ones who are prepared to defend me, for reasons I don’ t like at all, are the Americans. It is convenient for them, for the time being. You are flinging me towards America, the bastion of democracy and the murderer of Vietnam, who tramples the downtrodden peoples and spares my life, who oppresses the Negroes and supplies me with arms to save myself. You leave me no other alternative. You don’ t even offer me humiliating terms, to be admitted through the rear door into the progressive orgy. You don’ t even want me to overthrow my government. You only want me to surrender, unconditionally, and to believe the spokesmen of the revolution that henceforth no Jewish doctors will be murdered, and that they will limit themselves to the declaration that Zionism is responsible for the riots in Warsaw.
Very funny. The truth is that I and Sartre, two people with the same vision, more or less, with the same ideal, more or less, and if I may be permitted to impertinence, with the same moral level, more or less, are now at the two sides of the barricade. We have been pushed to both sides by the cold calculations of the people who sent us, or abandoned us. But the fact remains—these are not Americans shooting Russians, or capitalists shooting socialists, or freedom-fighters shooting the oppressors. It is I, shooting Sartre. I see him in my gun sights; he sees me in his gun sights. I still don’ t know which of us is faster, more skilled, or more determined to kill or be killed. Neither do I know who shall be more lucky—the one who has no other alternative, or the one who acts out of choice. One thing is clear to me; if I survive, I shall mourn Sartre’s death more than he would mourn mine. And if that happens, I shall never be consoled until I wipe from under the heavens both the capitalists and the communists. Or they me. Or each the other. Or all destroy all. And if I survive even that, without a god but without prophets either, my life will have no sense whatsoever. I shall have nothing else to do but walk on the banks of streams, or on the top of the rocks, watch the wonders of nature, and console myself with words of Ecclesiastes, the wisest of men: “For the light is sweet, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun.”
An invention called 'the Jewish people'
Last update - 00:00 29/02/2008
An invention called 'the Jewish people'
By Tom Segev
Tags: Israel
Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.
According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.
If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, "And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them."
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Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.
The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as merchants.
We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.
Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a "Jewish and democratic" state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.
The mosquito from Kiryat Yam
On March 27, 1948, a meeting was held in Hiafa concerning the fate of the Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina in the Haifa area. "They must be removed from there, so that they, too, will not add to our troubles," Yosef Weitz, of the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal diary. Two months later, Weitz reported to the organization's director, "Our Haifa Bay has been evacuated completely and there is hardly a remnant of those who encroached our border." They were probably expelled to Jordan; some were allowed to remain in the village of Jisr al-Zarqa. The fate of the Arab al-Ghawarina Bedouin has recently made the headlines thanks to Shmuel Sisso, mayor of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam. He has filed a complaint with the police against Google. The reason is the addition that one of the site's surfers, a resident of Nablus, attached to the center of Kiryat Yam in the world satellite photo, stating that the city is built on the ruins of a village that was destroyed in 1948, Arab al-Ghawarina. Sisso's complaint says that this is slanderous.
The facts are as follows: The lands of the Zevulun Valley were purchased in the 1920s by the JNF and by various construction companies, among them one called Gav Yam. The Zionist Archives have the plan for the establishment of Kiryat Yam, dated 1938, and a letter from 1945 states that there were already 100 homes there. Government maps from the British Mandate period identify the territory on which Kiryat Yam was built by two names: Zevulun Valley and Ghawarina. Thus it appears that this was not a settlement but an area in which Bedouin resided.
The Web site of the Israeli organization Zochrot (Remembering) states that there were 720 people at the site in 1948 and that the area was divided among three kibbutzim: Ein Hamifratz, Kfar Masaryk and Ein Hayam, today Ein Carmel.
This story has been making the rounds on the Internet and drawing responses, which can be summed up as follows: "If Sisso is suing Google because they stated that he is living on a destroyed Arab village, the implication is that he thinks this is something bad." Sisso, a lawyer of 57 who is identified with Likud and was formerly Israeli consul general in New York, says, "I don't think there is anything bad about it, but other people might think it is bad, especially people abroad, and that is liable to hurt Kiryat Yam, because people will not want to invest here. Since we are not sitting on a Palestinian village, why should we have to suffer for no reason?"
Moroccan-born, Sisso arrived in Israel in 1955. "I wandered around the whole region and I saw no trace of anyone's having been here before us and supposedly expelled." He asked an American law professor how, if at all, Google could be sued for slander or for damages. This, he says, is the contribution of Kiryat Yam to the struggle against the right of return (of the Palestinian refugees).
It could turn out to be the most riveting trial since Ariel Sharon sued Time magazine, but mayor Sisso has no illusions: "Me against Google is like a mosquito against an elephant," he said this week.
Who America belongs to
Two professors, Gabi Shefer and Avi Ben-Zvi, were guests this week on Yitzhak Noy's "International Hour" current events program on Israel Radio. The anchor, sounding slightly concerned, asked whether the achievements of Barack Obama show that the United States no longer belongs to the white man. Prof. Shefer confirmed this: Obama is an immigrant, he said. Prof. Ben-Zvi asked to add a remark: Gabi Shefer is right, he said. They are both wrong. If Obama were an immigrant, he would not be eligible to be elected president. He was born in Honolulu, some two years after Hawaii became the 50th state of the union.
An invention called 'the Jewish people'
By Tom Segev
Tags: Israel
Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.
According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.
If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, "And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them."
Advertisement
Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.
The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as merchants.
We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.
Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a "Jewish and democratic" state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.
The mosquito from Kiryat Yam
On March 27, 1948, a meeting was held in Hiafa concerning the fate of the Bedouin of Arab al-Ghawarina in the Haifa area. "They must be removed from there, so that they, too, will not add to our troubles," Yosef Weitz, of the Keren Kayemeth (Jewish National Fund), wrote in his personal diary. Two months later, Weitz reported to the organization's director, "Our Haifa Bay has been evacuated completely and there is hardly a remnant of those who encroached our border." They were probably expelled to Jordan; some were allowed to remain in the village of Jisr al-Zarqa. The fate of the Arab al-Ghawarina Bedouin has recently made the headlines thanks to Shmuel Sisso, mayor of the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam. He has filed a complaint with the police against Google. The reason is the addition that one of the site's surfers, a resident of Nablus, attached to the center of Kiryat Yam in the world satellite photo, stating that the city is built on the ruins of a village that was destroyed in 1948, Arab al-Ghawarina. Sisso's complaint says that this is slanderous.
The facts are as follows: The lands of the Zevulun Valley were purchased in the 1920s by the JNF and by various construction companies, among them one called Gav Yam. The Zionist Archives have the plan for the establishment of Kiryat Yam, dated 1938, and a letter from 1945 states that there were already 100 homes there. Government maps from the British Mandate period identify the territory on which Kiryat Yam was built by two names: Zevulun Valley and Ghawarina. Thus it appears that this was not a settlement but an area in which Bedouin resided.
The Web site of the Israeli organization Zochrot (Remembering) states that there were 720 people at the site in 1948 and that the area was divided among three kibbutzim: Ein Hamifratz, Kfar Masaryk and Ein Hayam, today Ein Carmel.
This story has been making the rounds on the Internet and drawing responses, which can be summed up as follows: "If Sisso is suing Google because they stated that he is living on a destroyed Arab village, the implication is that he thinks this is something bad." Sisso, a lawyer of 57 who is identified with Likud and was formerly Israeli consul general in New York, says, "I don't think there is anything bad about it, but other people might think it is bad, especially people abroad, and that is liable to hurt Kiryat Yam, because people will not want to invest here. Since we are not sitting on a Palestinian village, why should we have to suffer for no reason?"
Moroccan-born, Sisso arrived in Israel in 1955. "I wandered around the whole region and I saw no trace of anyone's having been here before us and supposedly expelled." He asked an American law professor how, if at all, Google could be sued for slander or for damages. This, he says, is the contribution of Kiryat Yam to the struggle against the right of return (of the Palestinian refugees).
It could turn out to be the most riveting trial since Ariel Sharon sued Time magazine, but mayor Sisso has no illusions: "Me against Google is like a mosquito against an elephant," he said this week.
Who America belongs to
Two professors, Gabi Shefer and Avi Ben-Zvi, were guests this week on Yitzhak Noy's "International Hour" current events program on Israel Radio. The anchor, sounding slightly concerned, asked whether the achievements of Barack Obama show that the United States no longer belongs to the white man. Prof. Shefer confirmed this: Obama is an immigrant, he said. Prof. Ben-Zvi asked to add a remark: Gabi Shefer is right, he said. They are both wrong. If Obama were an immigrant, he would not be eligible to be elected president. He was born in Honolulu, some two years after Hawaii became the 50th state of the union.
Friday, July 24, 2009
haaretz-2009-07-24
Last update - 22:55 24/07/2009
Ahmadinejad caves to Iran hard-liners, fires VP for 'pro-Israel' remarks
By The Associated Press
Tags: Ahmadinejad, Israel News
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday caved in to an order from the country's supreme leader and dismissed his top deputy after remaining defiant for five days.
The official IRNA news agency quoted Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, a top
Ahmadinejad aide, as saying that Esfandiar Rahim Mashai is no longer the first vice president.
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The aide said that following the public statement of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's order to dismiss the president's choice, Mashai doesn't consider himself first vice president, Hashemi told IRNA.
Mashai stirred controversy among hardliners by once saying Iranians were
friends to the Israelis. Ahmadinejad resisted pressure to dismiss him for
weeks.
]]]
Last update - 19:30 24/07/2009
Iranian airliner skids off runway killing 17
By The Associated Press
Tags: Iran, Israel News
An Iranian passenger plane burst into flames and skidded off the runway as it was landing in a northeastern city, killing 17 people, said the state news agency.
Footage from Iran's PressTV showed the front end of the plane had been sheared off, leaving mangled wreckage where the cockpit had once been. The rest of the plane appeared largely intact, though it rested awkwardly on its tail.
The Russian-made Ilyushin plane from the privately owned Aria Arilines was carrying 153 passengers and flew from the capital Tehran to the northeastern city of Mashhad, 600 miles away.
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Local official Ghahrman Rashid told the state news agency that another 19
people injured in the crash and that all survivors had been evacuated from the scene.
On July 15, an Iranian passenger plane crashed soon after take off, killing 168 people aboard.
It was the latest in a string of deadly crashes in recent years that have
highlighted Iran's difficulties in maintaining its aging fleet of planes.
Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say.
U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall
]]]
Last update - 18:23 24/07/2009
U.S. to transfer $200 million to Palestinians
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Palestinians
The United States has transferred $200 million to the Palestinians to help ease their government's growing budget crisis.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary announced the aid in a video conference with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Friday.
Fayyad's budget deficit is growing and he has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from commercial banks to cover the government payroll. Fayyad says the reasons for the shortfall are the continued Israeli restrictions on the Palestinian economy and the failure of some donors, particularly Arab states, to make good on their pledges.
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Clinton said the Obama adminstration is making progress toward creating the environment for resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
]]]
Last update - 13:50 24/07/2009
Iran Ayatollah urges Ahmadinejad to sack 'friend of Israel' VP
By DPA
Tags: Ayatollah Khatami, Iran
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who led Friday prayers in Tehran, once again called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sack his acting president, Esfandir Rahim-Mashaie.
"I hope that the president will pay attention to critics and especially the demand by the supreme leader ?Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? and revise the appointment of his first vice-president," the ayatollah said.
Ahmadinejad appointed Rahim-Mashaie was last week as first vice-president, making him de-facto acting president until his own inauguration on Sunday.
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"The demand by the leadership should be implemented by the president at the earliest term without any hesitation," said the cleric, himself a supporter of Ahmadinejad.
Rahim-Mashaie's appointment led to widespread criticism even within pro-Ahmadinejad circles, owing to an earlier remark by the vice-president that Iran's political differences with Israel had nothing to do with Israelis and Jews.
His remark that Iran was also a friend of the Israeli people sparked particularly harsh protests and calls for his resignation. Rahim-Mashaie at that time served as vice-president and head of the tourism organization.
Parliament also demanded the vice-president be sacked, or they were to take the issue to Supreme Leader Khamenei who, according to constitution, has the final say on all state affairs.
Khamenei has reportedly informed the president already about his wish that Rahim-Mashaie should be replaced.
But Ahmadinejad has ignored the criticism against Rahim-Mashaie - who is also the father-in-law of his son - even though he himself is known for his harsh anti-Israeli stance.
"Rahim-Mashaie is one of the persons most loyal to the revolution and a servant of the people. He has been appointed as first vice- president and he will stay in this position," Ahmadinejad said.
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami also criticized the opposition's continued claims of fraud in the June 12 presidential election and their refusal to acknowledge Ahmadinejad's re-election.
The ayatollah especially condemned a call by former president Mohammad Khatami on holding a referendum on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's presidency.
"Hello, good morning, the referendum was made on June 12 and over 24.5 out of 40 million voted for Ahmadinejad and therefore the president's government is absolutely legitimate," Ahmad Khatami said.
He reiterated that both the leadership and the establishment were too powerful to be harmed by the protests.
He also criticized opposition groups of having sought support from outside Iran and Western media for their activities, saying these supports would eventually prove futile.
]]]
Last update - 09:53 24/07/2009
Nuclear Iran wouldn't pose existential threat to Israel
By Gabi Sheffer
Tags: iran, netanyahu, israel news
There is no need to hear the repeated declarations by Benjamin Netanyahu, his political allies, his aides (particularly Uzi Arad) and senior officers to know that the state of the Iranian regime and the perception of the looming Iranian nuclear threat has become a political tool for them.
They repeat the same mantras that the current Iranian regime will continue to rule, that it will become even more extreme, that Iran will attain a nuclear military capability, that it will not hesitate to use it directly or through terrorist intermediaries, and that it would set off reactionary nuclear armament in other Middle Eastern countries which, in their view, would cause a disaster.
Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and other politicians and generals in the West and Middle East have voiced more restrained fears. Most observers say that if the major powers do not take significant steps to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, even if the regime there changes in character, its nuclearization is irreversible. In addition, more liberal leaders in Iran would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against anyone they hate for political and religious reasons. At the top of the list, of course, are the United States and its allies, particularly Israel.
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These individuals offer a variety of possible actions, beginning with the vital, immediate need to use force against Iran, which would compel it to stop developing the atomic bomb; to continue with the need to combine diplomatic pressure with harsh sanctions; and to hold direct and indirect diplomatic contacts in order to persuade the Iranian regime to stop developing nuclear weapons. In the background, preparations are being made for military operations against various nuclear installations in Iran.
Undoubtably, it is important to force Iran - like any other state irrespective of the regime in place - to stop its nuclear program that will lead to it attaining the atomic bomb. Yet even if there are no diplomatic contacts, which the United States and other countries would like to have in order to stop Iran's nuclear program; even if the sanctions are instituted, if indeed they are enforced effectively they will not have an influence on Iran; and even if the threat of military action does not leave an impression on the religious leadership and politicians there, the most basic question must be asked: Does Iran indeed pose a real existential threat rather than an imagined existential threat against those states that are threatened by it, particularly Israel?
The answer is that there are three basic reservations regarding these much-talked-about concerns over Iran.
First, like other small states, Iran seeks to attain nuclear weapons in order to deter other nuclear-armed states from attacking it. So if Iran is not attacked, it will not attack.
Second, Iran's goal is primarily to boost its influence in the Muslim world.
Third, and most important, with the exception of two atomic bombs that were needlessly used by none other than the democratic and liberal United States - since Japan was very near surrender - no other country possessing nuclear weapons has used them.
The other reasons for not using nuclear weapons are numerous. The main reason is these states' fears, including Iran's, of a response by other nuclear-armed countries. Even if any country, including Israel, were to be attacked by an Iranian nuclear weapon, other countries would respond with force. This is not because of the damage that would be caused to the attacked country, but particularly due to the fear that they too would be harmed.
Other reasons for refraining from using nuclear weapons include moral considerations, fear of mistakenly striking allies in the region, concern over widespread destabilization and other related factors.
The conclusion is that even if Iran attains nuclear weapons, it does not pose a real existential threat to other countries, Israel included. It would behoove Israeli politicians and defense officials to take these considerations into account and cease disseminating statements about the existence of this threat and military operations against Iran.
Even if the Iranian threat is not completely imagined, it is completely weak and the Israeli public should understand this rather than allow itself to be dragged into supporting a destructive military operation.
The writer is a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Last update - 08:19 24/07/2009
Lieberman: Iran nukes could spark world-threatening arms race
By The Associated Press
Tags: Iran, South America
If Iran develops nuclear capabilities it will start an arms race in the Middle East that would threaten the world, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday.
Lieberman said at the start of his four-day trip to Argentina that Iran is the "biggest sponsor of world terror organizations such as Hamas, [Islamic] Jihad and Hezbollah."
"If Iran would achieve nuclear capacity, we'll see a crazy nuclear-armed race in our region that will be a threat not only to Israel but to the rest of the world," he told reporters.
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Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but Israel and the U.S. reject that.
Argentina is the second stage of a 10-day tour of four South American nations aimed at staunching Iran's growing influence in the region.
Lieberman also met with Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana to discuss preparations for President Shimon Peres' visit in November, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America. Argentine prosecutors say Iran and Hezbollah were behind the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in the city that killed 85. Iran has denied involvement.
There was also another bomb attack in 1992 against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people. The attacks remain unsolved.
During a Wednesday meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Lieberman asked Latin America's biggest nation to use its influence to help halt Iran's nuclear program. Lieberman noted that Brazil has good ties both with Muslim countries and with Israel.
The Iranian representative in Bolivia, Masoud Edrisi, accused Israel of using Lieberman's trip to try to undermine Iran's relations with Latin American nations.
"Its objective is propaganda against the good relations that exist between Iran and Latin America," Edrisi told The Associated Press.
Israel sees Iran as a major strategic threat, fearing it is developing a nuclear weapon and noting its development of long-range ballistic missiles. Concerns have been sharpened by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated references to the destruction of the Jewish state.
Israeli officials also have expressed concern over Iran's growing ties with leftist-led nations in Latin America. Iranian companies are building apartments, cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela and the two countries leaders have exchanged visits. Iran has also opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua.
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Last update - 08:04 24/07/2009
U.S.: We won't exert economic pressure on Israel
By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Tags: U.S., settlements
The White House on Thursday brushed aside any suggestion that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was planning to exert economic pressure on Israel to halt West Bank settlement construction.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that a remark made by deputy spokesman Robert Wood on Wednesday had been "misinterpreted."
"There had been some reporting after yesterday's briefing that I think represents some misinterpretation," he said. "There's been some reporting that the United States is contemplating financial or economic pressure against Israel. We are not contemplating such action. Clearly, this why [Middle East envoy] George Mitchell is in the region today, talking to all of the parties that we believe - about what they need to do to set conditions to resume negotiations so that all of these issues can be resolved through peaceful negotiations," Crowley told reporters.
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When Wood was asked Wednesday by one pf the reporters at the daily briefing whether the U.S. was ready to exert financial pressure on Israel, to convince Prime MInister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to freeze the settlements, Wood answered: "It's premature to talk about that," setting off speculation that the U.S. might be considering such an option.
Tensions between Israel and the U.S. have risen recently following the revelation that Israel planned to build some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting on Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."
Meanwhile, Mitchell was planning to arrive in Syria on Saturday, the State Department announced Friday, for his second visit in Damascus since he took up his post.
The Obama administration had a series of meetings with Syria and hopes the diplomatic outreach will encourage Damascus to play a positive role in both the Middle East peace process and also in Iraq.
Syria is seen as a major player in this process because of its support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, as well as the country's intermittent peace talks with Israel.
Turkey has said it is prepared to resume mediating indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel.
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Last update - 02:53 24/07/2009
Reform leader: Most U.S. Jews back settlement freeze
By Natasha Mozgovaya
Tags: israel news, reform judaism
WASHINGTON - The vast majority of American Jews back a settlement freeze, according to Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism. "American Jews don't like when their government is at odds with the government of Israel," said Yoffie, whose organization's 1.5 million members make it the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S.
But beyond that, he stressed in a telephone interview with Haaretz from his New York office on Monday, "there are very important strategic issues at stake here. Iran is a real threat, and we all, including the liberal camp, take it very seriously. In order to deal with this threat, you need the support and friendship of the government of the United States. And you need the support and friendship of the people of the United States."
That is why the current dispute between Israel and the U.S. over construction in the settlements and East Jerusalem is so disturbing, he said. "This is a time that requires smooth and strong relations with [the U.S.] government. It's a time for differences to be worked through. It's a time for compromise and moderation. It's not a time to be involved in a dramatic public dispute."
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"Settlement activity at the West Bank is not popular here," he continued. "It never has been. It's absolutely the last thing in the world you want to be involved in a public dispute over. Because not only you won't have the support of this government - you won't have the support of the American people either. Do you think nevertheless it was the right thing to accentuate solely this issue? Some claim this allowed the Palestinians and the Arab governments to sit and wait until the settlement freeze.
"Settlement freeze at the West Bank is something that we've supported," he replied, dodging the question. "I believe that it's possible to reach some kind of understanding on it - so whatever compromise or understanding is involved there, they need to do that."
At last week's White House meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and 16 Jewish leaders, Yoffie continued, "there wasn't a single person around that table - not one - who on substance supported settlement activity."
Some of the groups weren't invited.
"Every single mainstream grass-roots group with a significant constituency was invited. They broadly represent American Jewry. They raised issues having to deal with an impression of imbalance - these are legitimate concerns and I identify with some of those as well. But when it came to substance, not a single one told the president: 'You're wrong.' And that's because they know that's unpopular here. It's unpopular with government officials, it's unpopular with all Americans, and it's unpopular with American Jews. I understand and appreciate Israeli political realities, but American support is absolutely vital to assure Israel's strategic interests. And some accommodations have to be found."
Asked about reports of a growing distance between Obama and the Jewish community, Yoffie replied, "Absolutely not. If you look at the people surrounding the president and advising him - obviously Rahm Emanuel, obviously David Axelrod, Dennis Ross who just moved to the National Security Council, Dan Shapiro who works there, Hillary Clinton has a long record of strong commitment to Israel. To look at this team and to imply that they are going to abandon Israel - it's just absurd."
You were one of the pioneers of Jewish outreach to the American Muslim community. How optimistic you are about the president's effort, that some call naive?
Yoffie replied that outreach to American Muslims, whose leadership is "middle-class and professional," made obvious sense. "In terms of the Muslim world altogether - I share that skepticism. I don't want to bring this liberal naive 'let's all get along' approach to this, not at all. The Muslim world is huge and diverse. Of course, we should see if there are pockets of moderation, and [if] Sunni fear of Shi'a, and particularly Iran, might create an opportunity for an anti-Iranian coalition. And it could be eventually good for the prospects of the Arab-Israeli peace."
Outreach to Iran didn't seem too successful so far.
"I am really not an optimist in the short term," he agreed, though stressing that the Iranian situation is very fluid right now. "And if we look at what's happening on the Palestinian side and in the Arab world, [it] is not a reason for optimism about a secure peace in the near future. We want the president who wants to exploit the opportunities that may exist because of the Iranian situation, because of the Sunni fears. The Palestinian reality is not particularly encouraging either, but [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas is basically a moderate force and I think Americans are right to try and strengthen him. To just give up doesn't make sense, and it isn't in America's interest any more than it's in Israel's interest."
Do you believe Obama's plan will work?
"I think the status quo is deeply and profoundly problematic. I think there is some possibility he can make progress and move us forward - I'm not sure. I think he is wise and right to do so, and the alternative is doing nothing while additional settlements are built and the possibility of the two-state solution becomes impossible."
Asked about the American Jewish community, Yoffie said he did not think Obama's election produced "a major shift of opinion within the Jewish community. [The] American Jewish community is moderate and centrist; it always has been. They supported [the] two-state solution, on the other hand they are very and appropriately skeptical about the Arab and Palestinian intentions, they want to see facts on the ground. They want to see America active, but they don't want America to impose a settlement."
However, he continued, "I'm very very worried about the students. On campuses, you have outspoken leftist groups that tend to have there more influence than elsewhere because of the dynamics of how students operate, and these groups tend to be very anti-Israel."
"I don't think Jewish students are abandoning Israel," he continued, "but the groups on the left are coming forward and saying 'look, you have all this settlement activity. You have all these facts on the ground. There is no way to have a two-state solution, you have to have a one-state solution. One person one vote, one state, one people.' What's happening at the campuses can become a harbinger of what's happening at the general political culture. It's very important for us to counter that."
Yoffie also expressed concern about the recent ultra-Orthodox riots in Jerusalem: "It's distressing and it's worrisome and in some measure it's incomprehensible to American Jews. These stories don't do us any good in the broader community. Recent polls of how Americans look upon Israel are quite distressing."
The absence of full recognition for the Reform movement in Israel is "terribly frustrating" as well, he said, and most American Jews are concerned by "the absence of religious pluralism."
Nevertheless, "we don't want these matters to determine how American Jews look at Israel. We want to strengthen the ties of the American Jews to Israel and acknowledge that Israel is not a perfect place."
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Last update - 08:58 24/07/2009
Watchdog: British anti-Semitism doubled after Gaza war
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: anti-semitism, gaza war
"Britain is setting a shameful new record in anti-Semitic incidents this year," Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne said Thursday in reaction to a report by Britain's Jewish community which speaks of an unprecedented number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Semitism and provides security for the Jewish community in Britain, said that it had recorded 609 anti-Semitic incidents across the U.K. from January to June this year - over double the 276 for the same period last year, mostly connected to Israel's operation in Gaza.
Huhne added that "it is absurd that home-grown bigots should hold British Jews responsible for the actions of a foreign government. We cannot have overseas conflicts echoed on Britain's streets."
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The report names 2009 the worst year since CST's records began in 1984, with the number of incidents already exceeding that of the previous record year, 598 in 2006. Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza and southern Israel is cited in the report as the main reason for the record high, since it "produced an anti-Semitic reaction."
Of the incidents, 286 occurred in January, with over half of them (158) featuring direct reference to the fighting.
"This was by far the worst single month ever recorded, but the anti-Semitic surge continued," the report said. February saw 111 anti-Semitic incidents. Levels had returned to "normal" by May, with 51 incidents.
In response to the report, British Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said: "I am deeply concerned by the rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents as reported by the CST today. The British government is firmly committed to tackling and reducing all forms of racism including anti-Semitism. We simply cannot tolerate those who seek to use foreign conflicts to justify racism and criminal acts against any U.K. citizen."
"The U.K.'s Jewish community is an integral part of the rich fabric that makes up modern Britain and must be able to live their lives free from fear of verbal or physical attack. The Government was in regular contact with senior community figures and the CST during the Gaza conflict and remains alert to their concerns," he added.
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Last update - 09:12 24/07/2009
U.S. warns Israel: Don't build up West Bank corridor
By Aluf Benn
Tags: israel news, west bank
The U.S. administration has issued a stiff warning to Israel not to build in the area known as E-1, which lies between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Any change in the status quo in E-1 would be "extremely damaging," even "corrosive," the message said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed in the past to finally build the controversial E-1 housing project - as have several premiers before him, though none has done so due to American pressure. He opened his recent election campaign with a visit to Ma'aleh Adumim in which he declared: "I will link Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim via the Mevasseret Adumim neighborhood, E-1. I want to see one continuous string of built-up Jewish neighborhoods."
He has also warned in the past that failure to build in E-1 would allow the Palestinians to create territorial contiguity around Jerusalem.
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Just before his government was installed this spring, the media reported that Netanyahu had reached an agreement with his largest coalition partner, Yisrael Beiteinu, to unfreeze construction in E-1. However, that clause was ultimately not included in the coalition agreement.
The plans for E-1 call for building 3,500 housing units, along with commercial areas and tourism sites, to create a single urban expanse stretching from Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim and strengthen Israel's hold on East Jerusalem, which would then be completely surrounded by Jewish neighborhoods.
The United States has always vehemently opposed this plan, fearing it would deprive a future Palestinian state of territorial contiguity, cut the West Bank in two and sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank - all of which would thwart any hope of signing a final-status agreement and establishing a Palestinian state.
President Barack Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, vigorously opposed building in E-1 during the terms of prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Sharon did approve construction of a police station in E-1, and under Olmert, infrastructure work in the area continued. But neither ever approved construction of either the residential units or the commercial buildings, for fear of a confrontation with the United States.
Four years ago, after resigning from Sharon's government, Netanyahu attacked him for giving in to American pressure on E-1. "A sovereign government must build in its eternal capital," he said. "Sharon set a precedent that will lead to the division of Jerusalem."
The Obama's administration - which opposes all construction in East Jerusalem, even of a few houses - would be even more outraged by a large-scale project such as E-1.
It is demanding a moratorium on Jewish building in East Jerusalem until an agreement is reached on the city's legal status, arguing that the cumulative effect of even small-scale projects would destroy any chance of a peace agreement and arouse fierce opposition in the Arab world, especially among East Jerusalem Arabs. Small projects include the construction of 20 apartments in the Shepherd Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood or plans to build new Jewish housing in Silwan.
At Sunday's cabinet meeting, however, Netanyahu rejected this American stance. "United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Our sovereignty in it is not subject to appeal, and among other things, this means that Jerusalem residents can buy apartments anywhere in the city," he said. "We cannot accept the idea that Jews should not have the right to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem."
Next week, three senior American officials will visit Israel: special envoy George Mitchell, National Security Advisor James Jones and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Mitchell will continue his efforts to reach agreement on a settlement freeze, including in East Jerusalem, while the other two will focus on the Iranian threat.
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Last update - 22:35 23/07/2009
New Yorkers call for boycott of Motorola over dealings with IDF
By Grace Wermenbol
Tags: IDF, Israel News, West Bank
Protesters in the New York borough of Queens held a rally last week to call for a boycott of Motorola over the firm's business dealings with the Israel Defense Forces.
At the demonstration, which was organized by the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, protestors waved Palestinian flags and signs saying: "Goodbye Moto, Goodbye Apartheid," and "Boycott Motorola, Free Palestine."
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The group also wrote songs and conducted street theater to draw the attention of passersby.
The organization's spokesperson, Aaron Levitt, told Haaretz this week that over 300 people have signed a petition for a boycott of Motorola after just four events in New York City.
"Every time we go out to flyer, we meet many people who express support for the campaign and even sign our pledge to boycott Motorola," said Levitt. His organization has more events planned for the coming month.
In June 2007, the New England United Methodist Church named Motorola as one of a number of firms that supported Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Who Profits, a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace, also lists the company as profiting from Israel's activities in the Palestinian territories.
Motorola has been active in Israel since 1964; it currently provides the IDF with a cellular network through a subsidiary, MIRS.
MIRS provided the IDF with a military-encrypted cellular communication system, nicknamed "Mountain Rose," which is worth $100 million and was especially constructed for field conditions.
The company's radar detectors' and surveillance systems have been reportedly installed in West Bank settlements. Both of these systems had a price tag of more than $90 million.
The department responsible for installing these systems was sold in April 2009 to an Israeli company, Aeronautics Defense Systems, after Motorola had come under fire from several groups in the U.S. over its activities in Israel.
Motorola spokesman Rusty Brashear said the sale of the unit was not triggered by the protests, but because "it primarily doesn't fit in our portfolio."
The groups the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Palestinian National Committee and other organizations worldwide also support a boycott of the phone company.
Motorola was previously boycotted due to its support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. The company supplied South African police with mobile radio transmitters used to suppress demonstrations against the government
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Last update - 20:59 23/07/2009
Netanyahu to Arabs: Saudi plan can help bring peace
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
Tags: Saudi, Arab, Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in comments addressed to the Arab world Thursday that a 2002 Saudi initiative could help efforts to reach a regional peace agreement.
"We appreciate the efforts by Arab states to advance the peace initiative," said Netanyahu. "If these proposals are not final, they can create an atmosphere in which a comprehensive peace can be reached."
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The prime minister made the comments at a reception marking an Egyptian national holiday outside Tel Aviv.
He added: "We hope in the months ahead to forge peace with the Palestinians and to expand that into a vision of a broader regional peace."
The initiative, backed by all 22 members of the Arab League, offers Israel full normalization in return for a withdrawal from territory conquered in the 1967 Six Day War, a Palestinian state and an equitable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
In June, Egyptian sources said that Egypt and Saudi Arabia had been threatening to rescind the Arab peace initiative, and pressuring U.S. President Barack Obama to set a two-year deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
They said Egyptian officials told Obama that the Arab peace initiative would crumble unless some real progress was made before the deadline.
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Last update - 20:00 23/07/2009
UN accuses Hezbollah of violating 2006 Lebanon cease-fire
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Tags: Israel News, IDF, Hezbollah
For the first time ever, the United Nations on Thursday accused Hezbollah of violating the UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon war, fought between Israel and the Shi'ite militant organization.
The UN's Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Le Roy, said Hezbollah had been operating a weapons depot in south Lebanon that was the site of an explosion last week.
He told member states there was solid evidence that the cache belonged to Hezbollah, but added that it was not known whether the weapons had been stockpiled there before or after Resolution 1701, which called for the cease-fire, was passed.
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Le Roy also touched upon claims that Hezbollah is disrupting the activities of UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon. He said there was evidence that Hezbollah organized the group of villagers that prevented UNIFIL soldiers from searching an abandoned building near the structure that blew up last week.
The official made the comments during an emergency closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council. The United States called the session to discuss the situation in south Lebanon following a number of security incidents in the area.
The session was the first time when the UN explicitly accused Hezbollah of breaching the resolution; all 15 Security Council members, apart from Libya, agreed that Hezbollah was responsible for the violation.
A senior Hezbollah official said Wednesday, the explosion along the border with Israel was set off by old shells, not a secret arms cache.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon called the ammunition that had exploded a serious violation of the ceasefire. Resolution 1701, which was accepted by both Israel and Hezbollah, called for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon.
The Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN said Thursday the closed-door meeting was called after Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev sent two letters of complaint to the Secretary-General and Security Council.
On Tuesday, the Lebanese Army said it had uncovered a militant Islamist network that had been plotting to carry out attacks against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and the army itself.
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Last update - 18:53 23/07/2009
Clinton: Iran unable to respond to U.S. overtures
By Reuters
Tags: U.S., Israel News, Clinton
The United States is still willing to 'reach out' to Iran but political turmoil there means Tehran is not now in a position to respond, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the BBC on Thursday.
U.S. President Barack Obama made diplomatic overtures to Iran before its June 12 election, but Clinton told the BBC: "We haven't had any response."
She added: "We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do, even now, despite our absolute condemnation of what they've done in the election and since, but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."
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Her comments were published on the BBC's website.
The re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a poll the opposition denounced as rigged, triggered days of mass street protests in which at least 20 people were killed.
The contested vote and the authorities' harsh response to the unrest have divided Iran's ruling elite.
Washington and Tehran have had hostile relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Iran rejects suspicions harbored in Israel, the U.S. and other Western nations that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program.
Clinton's comments Thursday came after she pledged Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor later criticized Clinton for the remark, telling Army Radio that it implied a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran.
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Last update - 18:33 23/07/2009
France summons Israel envoy over building in East Jerusalem
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
Tags: Israel News, Settlement
A senior official in France's Foreign Ministry questioned Israel's ambassador, Daniel Shek, on Thursday over Israeli construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem, which he demanded be halted immediately.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said an immediate freeze in settlement construction, including in east Jerusalem, was indispensable for preserving a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He said the move was also necessary for allowing the resumption of peace talks.
Shek said in response that Jerusalem is not a settlement, and that construction in the capital is carried out legally and in accordance with municipal decisions.
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He added that both Jews and Arabs have complete freedom to live wherever they desire in Jerusalem.
Chevallier said Shek was also told in the meeting with the ministry's political director that Israel should open checkpoints regularly to allow the reconstruction of Gaza.
The French ministry expressed concern about difficulties French diplomats have experienced in getting around the Palestinian territories because of Israeli security measures.
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Last update - 18:01 23/07/2009
Opposition leader Mousavi's brother-in-law arrested in Iran
By The Associated Press
Tags: Hossein Mousavi, Iran
The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said Thursday that her brother is among the hundreds arrested in Iran's postelection crackdown, and she warned authorities not to publish any forced confessions from him or other detainees.
More than 500 people remain imprisoned after the heavy crackdown against
protests that erupted in support of Mousavi after the disputed June 12
e
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lection. Among them are many top politicians from pro-reform political
parties, human rights lawyers, journalists and activists.
Some hard-line officials have claimed that detainees have confessed to being in the service of foreign enemies to fuel the protests as part of a soft revolution against the government. The opposition denies the accusations and says any confessions have been obtained under torture or duress.
"Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, told the semiofficial ILNA news agency that her 62-year-old brother was arrested more than a month ago. We have tried all legal and peaceful means to try to win the release of him and other detainees," Rahnavard said, adding that she was speaking out now because some officials have spoken of allegations against her brother.
She said her brother, Shahpour Kazemi, a communications engineer, was
apolitical and that accusations of provoking riots or connections to
foreigners ... are unimaginable.
She warned those that are making accusations against detainees that a divine anger will catch them and the nation will reject them.
Rahnavard, a former dean of Tehran's al-Zahra University, campaigned alongside her husband in the election, a rarity for a candidate's wife, which made her a star among women and student supporters. Her original name is Zohreh Kazemi but she changed it in the 1960s when she became an activist against the U.S.-backed shah, and she was a prominent activist in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.
This week, the political chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Yadollah Javan, issued a public call for authorities to make public any confessions to prove to Iranians that the opposition protests were foreign-inspired.
Mousavi claims to have won the presidential election and that President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory was fraudulent. Hundreds of thousands of
supporters marched in the streets in the weeks after the elections, until the crackdown by police, Revolutionary Guards and Basiji militiamen. At least 20 people were killed in the crackdown - though human rights groups say the number is likely far higher.
Mousavi on Wednesday said he intends to soon issue a document for moving ahead with the opposition campaign that he said would go beyond forming a political front or party, as some aides have said he will do. He said the document would have a plan for activating neglected parts of the constitution, according to opposition Web sites.
He did not elaborate, but warned that the situation in Iran was heading in the direction of becoming more militarized, a reference to the increasing power of security forces in the postelection crackdown. He repeated his stance that Ahmadinejad's government does not have the support of people's vote and therefore does not have legitimacy.
On Thursday, members of the pro-government Basij militia arrested the father of a 27-year-old who was killed during a June 20 protest, the pro-Mousavi Norooz news Web site reported. Basijis arrested the father of Masou Hashemzadeh from his Tehran home and collected black signs of mourning at the house's entrance, it said. Pro-reform Web sites have reported that families of slain protesters have been intimidated not to mourn publicly.
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Last update - 17:43 23/07/2009
Report: Israel asks Turkey to renew mediation of Syria talks
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel News, Israel, Syria
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he has been asked by Israel to mediate the renewal of indirect peace talks with Syria, UPI reported.
Erdogan made the comments prior to meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, the news agency quoted Qatari newspaper al-Watan as reporting. There has been no official Israeli response to the Turkish prime minister's statement, UPI said.
The official Syrian news agency SANA said Thursday that Erdogan and Assad discussed the need for a comprehensive peace deal in the Middle East.
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SANA said such an accord can occur only if Israel is willing to make a deal based on "the implementation of international legitimacy resolutions and the Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan, to the line of June 4, 1967."
Israeli and Syrian officials met for indirect peace talks a number of times in Turkey during the tenure of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The talks came to a halt last year following Israel's 3-week offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and after Olmert became embroiled in multiple corruption investigations, which led to his resignation.
According to SANA, the pair also agreed to work toward lifting the Israeli-led blockade on Gaza.
The leaders also agreed on "the importance of continuing exerting efforts towards the achievement of the Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation that ensures the unity of the Palestinian ranks in the struggle for the restoration of rights, on top of which the establishment of the independent Palestinian state," the Syrian news agency said.
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Last update - 16:37 23/07/2009
Israel doesn't see U.S. limiting loan guarantees
By Reuters
Tags: Settlements, Steinitz, U.S.
Israel does not expect the United States to limit use of loan guarantees despite a dispute with Washington over building in East Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Thursday.
"I don't see any limitations on the horizon. It's not time to be concerned about that," Steinitz told reporters.
He added that Israel would prefer not to use them.
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"I don't see any need to use them in the near future," Steinitz said. "But it's good they are there."
The finance minister noted that prior disputes over settlement building have led the U.S. to deduct rather than cancel the guarantees.
In 2002, to help Israel deal with a recession caused by a global downturn and a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, the U.S. provided a package of $9 billion in loan guarantees, where Israel could sell bonds internationally with the backing of the United States.
The guarantees have been instrumental in allowing Israel to raise money more cheaply and in sovereign ratings upgrades by credit rating agencies.
Israel still has $3.8 billion left to use by 2011 after already issuing $4.1 billion in bonds backed by the U.S. and a $1.1 billion deduction for Israeli settlement building and concerns over the West Bank security fence.
Palestinians are looking to set up a state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
Last month, the U.S. re-approved Israel's loan guarantee program, subject to Israel meeting fiscal targets. It came despite the rift between Israel and its main ally over Israel's rejection of U.S. demands to halt settlement building.
The tensions have grown as Israel also plans to build a residential project in East Jerusalem.
In recent years, Israel has opted to issue bonds without U.S. backing. Its latest offering using its own creditworthiness was a sale of $1.5 billion in 10-year notes this past March at 262.5 basis points over U.S. Treasuries.
Steinitz said Israel's economy remained weak but was starting to stabilize.
He pointed to positive developments in recent weeks including the first rise in the Bank of Israel's economic performance index in 11 months in June, passing of the 2009 and 2010 state budgets, Standard & Poor's affirming Israel's credit ratings and stabilizing tax collections.
He also rejected demands from union leaders for a cost of living adjustment due to a spike in the annual inflation rate to 3.6 percent in June.
Steinitz mainly blamed government tax increases for the rise in the June consumer price index although he said it appeared that consumer demand was starting to improve.
"I don't think inflation is starting to rear its head," he said. "We need at least a half year to determine if inflation is starting to creep up."
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Last update - 11:44 23/07/2009
Israeli, Thai firms to build Bangkok's tallest tower
By Reuters
Tags: real estate, IBD, israel news
A joint Israeli-Thai venture unveiled Thursday plans to build Bangkok's tallest tower.
Thailand's Pace Development Co and Israel's Industrial Buildings Corp Ltd. (IBC) unveiled the $410 million joint venture to build a 77-storey, multipurpose high-rise in central Bangkok.
The 310-meter Mananakhon project, which will be the tallest building in the Thai capital, housing 200 luxury residential units, a 150-room five-star hotel and a shopping mall, is due for completion in late 2012, the companies said.
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According to IBC's chief executive, Dalit Braun, the investment is the biggest in Asia for her company, Israel's biggest property and infrastructure developer.
Pace and IBC respectively hold 50.1 percent and 49.9 percent in the venture, the largest property project in Bangkok in more than a decade, Pace's chief executive, Surapoj Techakraisri, told reporters.
Mahanakhon's residential units, priced from $900,000 to $8.8 million, are being sold on 99-year leasehold terms.
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Is Romania human egg scandal a case of anti-Semitism?
By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, anti-Semitism
By comparing Israeli doctors to Nazis, the Romanian Medical Council needlessly risks triggering anti-Semitism, World Medical Association President Dr. Yoram Blachar told Haaretz.
Blachar, an Israeli who heads the international watchdog on medical ethics, was reacting to public statements by Prof. Vasile Astarastoae, president of the Romanian Medical Council, who on Tuesday equated Israeli doctors in Romania to medical personnel at Auschwitz. Astarastoae was commenting on Monday's police raid on the Israeli-owned "Sabyc" clinic in Bucharest, and the arrest of gynecologist Harry Mironescu and his son Yair Miron, both Israelis. They are accused of illegal trade in ova.
Astarastoae is quoted as saying that the two arrested Israelis "bought body parts from poor, vulnerable people, without informing them on risks or telling them they were part of a research."
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The two Israeli doctors denied breaking the law. Blachar said that even if the two traded in ova, it would still be "light years away" from what was done at Auschwitz.
Romanian Jews and Israelis working in the country said the raid and its fallout likely reflected competition - possibly from other Israelis - rather than anti-Semitism or xenophobia.
The country's chief Chabad rabbi, Naftali Deutsch, said Bucharest still has several Israeli-owned fertility clinics that harvest ova. Police, he said, "aren't bothering" any of them. "Clearly this was a case of a dispute between competitors, and this whole thing would not have happened otherwise," said Deutsch.
The president of Romania's Jewish community, Dr. Aurel Vainer, said the Mirons were seen driving around in fancy sports cars. "This and other signs of richness create envy and people react negatively. Maybe the fact that they are foreigners also drew attention to them, but I don't see any connection to their Jewishness. Rich Romanians will also often encounter hostility. It's human nature."
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Germany drops case against 'Heil Hitler' garden gnome
By DPA
Tags: Jewish World, Nazis
German prosecutors Wednesday dropped a case over a garden gnome that has its right arm raised in a "Heil Hitler" salute.
German artist, Ottmar Hoerl made 700 of the gnomes for an exhibition entitled "Dancing with the Devil" at a Nuremberg art gallery. A visitor to the gallery objected and lodged a complaint that Hoerl had violated German laws prohibiting the reproduction of Nazi symbols or slogans. News of the "Nazi gnome" promptly went around the world.
T
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he prosecutors in Nuremberg said they would not put Hoerl on trial because he was obviously mocking the Nazis, not honoring them, and had made the gnomes as art. Gnomes used to be popular as garden decorations.
"Taken as a whole, his opposition to Nazi ideology is plain," a prosecutor said.
The 59-year-old sculptor, professor of design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, said earlier the figure was intended to poke fun at the Nazis.
"The Nazis would have massacred me for the work if it had been done in 1942," Hoerl said.
The case bears similarities to that of a German trader who was fined 3,600 euros in 2006 for using crossed-out swastikas on stickers, buttons and T-shirts to protest far-right extremism. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe later overturned the verdict, saying it was not a criminal offense to display symbols that are "obviously and clearly" meant to demonstrate opposition to Nazism.
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Last update - 12:46 23/07/2009
Israeli firms still dealing with companies tied to Iran
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, Siemens
The Los Angeles municipality is considering canceling a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars with the German firm Siemens to improve the public transportation infrastructure in the city.
The reason is Siemens' widespread commercial ties with Iran's ruling regime. One deal in particular - Siemens joint venture with the Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia to sell sophisticated wiretapping equipment to the Iranian government - has sparked widespread anger.
The equipment is being used by that country's intelligence and security forces to locate and follow telephone calls made by opponents of the regime who are then arrested and subjected to prolonged interrogation and torture.
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Richard Katz, a member of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, told the Washington Times that "at a time when the city and the board of supervisors are urging divestment from Iran, it would be hypocritical of our board to make a deal with Siemens or anyone else who is doing business in Iran."
Siemens is the biggest German exporter of equipment, know-how and services to Iran. The scope of its business there is close to 1 billion euros.
With hundreds of companies engaged in trade to the Iran, Germany is the Islamic regime's biggest business partner in the European Union selling goods worth some 4 billion euros per year to them.
And in the broader EU, thousands of industrial plants, banks and financial institutions from all over do very good business with Tehran. In this way the firms undermine the international effort to put economic pressure on that country to stop their nuclear program.
This two-faced policy is arousing anger in the United States where the law forbids commercial ties with Iran. The American administration, together with state governors and labor unions, are taking pains to get the EU, Japan and Australia signed on to the embargo. Washington is demanding that banks and financial institutions withhold credit from Iran and that industrial firms like Siemens not build infrastructure programs, especially those connected with the energy industry.
The most effective threat against those companies is that of a divestment campaign. Various bodies in the U.S. are threatening to stop investing their pension money and funds with anyone who does business with Tehran.
This pressure is bringing results. Banks in Switzerland such as UBS have pared down their ties with Iran. Other banks, such as the British house Lloyds, have been forced to pay fines of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Israel is not merely a bystander benefiting from this policy. It actually spearheaded it.
For many years, prime ministers, foreign ministers, heads of the Mossad and others have been lecturing the entire world and calling on everyone to work against Iran's nuclear program. They have advised nations to sever diplomatic relations, impose sanctions, impose an embargo on the export of oil, reduce commercial ties, impose a maritime blockade and, if all this does not help, launch a military attack.
Israeli diplomats have protested to the Swiss government over the signing of a giant natural gas deal with Iran, and the Israeli ambassador to Vienna, Dan Ashbel, has submitted a protest to the Austrian government about OMV, the government controlled Austrian concern which is aiming to develop a gas field in Iran.
No divestment at home
However while Israel makes plenty of demands of others, it turns out it does nothing itself. Companies that have close commercial ties with Iran enjoy large-scale exposure in the Israeli market.
An example is Siemens, which in the past sold gas turbines to the Israel Electric Corporation worth billions of shekels and recently won a tender put out by the Israel Airports Authority for a NIS 150 million deal to set up a facility for carrying out security checks and handling baggage.
The airports authority said in response that "four companies applied for the international tender for security examinations to baggage and two of them provided proposals. The Siemens company is the only one that met the complex technical requirements that were defined."
The Israeli branch of Siemens referred the newspaper to the standard international response of the company that states that its dealings with Iran are limited solely to the civilian sphere. International banks that have connections with Iran are also continuing to work with Israeli banks; Nokia sells telecommunications equipment in Israel worth hundreds of millions of shekels, including to state bodies.
Even under the repressive regime in Iran, the public there has demonstrated greater courage and responsibility than in Israel. There were reports last week that an unofficial consumer boycott has been imposed by Iranian citizens on Nokia and that the sale of portable telephones by that company has dropped by almost half.
The Iranian civil rights activist Shirin Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, told the Washington Times last week that she was calling for a boycott of all the companies like Siemens and Nokia which have violated civil rights in Iran. "If such companies are faced with consequences that effect their 'bottom line' they will be less enticed to enter into business agreements with any government attempting to restrict the basic human rights of their people," she said.
Israel's hypocrisy is particularly jarring now in view of the declarations by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel and that it has to be stopped at all costs. Apparently that is on the condition that the costs are paid by others.
Moreover a law was passed in Israel in April 2008 forbidding investment in corporations that have commercial ties with Iran, but so far Israel has not taken a single step to apply the law. Only now, in the wake of a question from Haaretz to the prime minister's bureau, was an answer received stating, "We expect the corporations and companies to be familiar with the letter of the law and to observe it."
But this statement too does not have any kind of hint as to what the Prime Minister's Office plans to do to enforce the law, if anything, even though a source in the ministry promised that the National Security Council and the Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority would begin to deal with the matter.
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Last update - 23:44 22/07/2009
Israel circulates photo of Hitler greeting late Palestinian mufti
By Reuters
Tags: Hitler, Palestinian mufti
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem.
Israeli officials said on Wednesday that Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti or top Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem.
One official said Lieberman, an ultranationalist, hoped the photo would "embarrass" Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti's family in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.
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Israel captured East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing it as part of its internationally unrecognised claim to Jerusalem as its
capital.
Some diplomats opposed Lieberman's move, arguing it could earn Israel stiffer world criticism for seeming to sidestep the wider conflict it faces with the Palestinians who want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state, another official said.
Asked why Lieberman issued the order, a spokesman said: "because it's important for the world to know the facts" and would not elaborate.
The United States and Europe this week protested the plan by private Israeli developers to build 20 apartments on the land which Israel says was bought by an American-Jewish millionaire as well as Israel's threats to demolish Palestinian homes that could leave thousands homeless.
The controversy has complicated an Israeli rift with the U.S. over its refusal to meet President Barack Obama's demands to halt settlement building throughout the West Bank so that stalled peace talks may resume.
About half a million Israelis live in the settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that are home to some three million Palestinians.
An official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's government accused Lieberman of "political bankruptcy" in ordering the distribution of the Husseini-Hitler photograph.
"It's an old story that has its own circumstances and doesn't apply to the present," said Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Jerusalem, and a relative of the late mufti.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem said said Husseini supported Nazi Germany to try to win backing for Arab nationalistic goals and that he lobbied for the extermination of Jews in North Africa and Palestine.
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Last update - 07:37 23/07/2009
Lieberman urges Brazil: Convince Iran to halt its nukes
By The Associated Press
Tags: Avigdor Lieberman
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asked Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday to use its influence to help halt Iran's nuclear program.
Lieberman's 10-day trip to four South American nations is aimed at staunching Iran's growing influence in the region, and perhaps beyond.
"I think that Brazil more than other countries can try to convince Iranians to stop their nuclear program and, of course, to convince the Palestinians to start direct talks," he said after meeting da Silva in Brasilia.
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Lieberman noted that Brazil has good ties both with Muslim nations and with Israel.
Israel sees Iran as a major strategic threat, fearing it is developing a nuclear weapon and noting its development of long-range ballistic missiles.
Concerns have been sharpened by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated references to the destruction of Israel.
Silva made no comments following his hourlong meeting with Lieberman. But Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said that "Brazil's constitution
prohibits the creation of nuclear weapons and we hope other countries also have nuclear research only for peaceful purposes."
Israeli officials also have expressed concern at Iran's growing ties with leftist-led nations in Latin America. Iranian companies are building apartments, cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela and the two countries' leaders have exchanged visits.
Iran has opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua and a secret Israeli report recently suggested that Bolivia and Venezuela were supplying uranium to Iran - an allegation sharply denied by both Latin American countries.
A top Israeli diplomat for Latin America accompanying Lieberman told The
Associated Press that Israel also wants to halt alleged Hezbollah activities in the region.
"Ever since Ahmadinejad was first elected as president [in 2005], it seems Iran is making a big effort to penetrate Latin America," Shavit said. "This is worrying for us."
Shavit alleged that Hezbollah cells are present in Venezuela's border area with Colombia. She did not offer proof and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has denied the allegation.
"It may be right now they're not active, but they might be active tomorrow," said Shavit, deputy director-general of Foreign Ministry's department on Latin America and the Caribbean.
The U.S. and Israel consider Lebanon-based Hezbollah - which receives support from Iran and Syria and has often clashed with Israel - to be a terrorist group.
Calls to Iran's ambassador in Brazil were not returned. But he rejected
allegations that Iran is supporting Hezbollah activities in South America in an interview with the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper earlier this week, saying they were made by an "intolerant regime that suffers two crises - of legitimacy and acceptability."
Shavit noted that Argentine prosecutors say that Iranian and Hezbollah were behind the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy that killed 29 people in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center there that killed 85.
An Argentine judge has asked Interpol to arrest suspects in the case. Iran has denied involvement.
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Last update - 21:52 22/07/2009
Quentin Tarantino to visit Israel for premiere of Holocaust film
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Holocaust, Israel News
Director Quentin Tarantino plans to visit Israel for the local premiere of his Holocaust-era film "Inglourious Basterds," set for September 17.
This will be the first visit to Israel for the American filmmaker. Some of the movie's actors may also join him.
Tarantino, who made such ground breaking films as "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp
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iction" and "Kill Bill," is considered one of the most fascinating but
controversial directors today.
"Pulp Fiction" won the Palme d'Or award at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, the event's highest prize. That film also earned Tarantino an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director.
The Oscar winning director's most recent outing, "Inglourious Basterds" tells the fictional and outrageous tale of a group of WWII-era Jewish-American soldiers who avenge their European brethren by scalping Nazi soldiers.
The narrative opens in the first year of the German occupation of France, where character Shoshanna Dreyfus witnesses the execution of her family at the hands of SS Colonel Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz.
Elsewhere in Europe, Aldo Raine, played by Hollywood megastar Brad Pitt, forms a group of soldiers charged with scalping their Nazi victims.
Diane Kruger plays a German actress who is also an undercover agent on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich.
The film was accepted into the main selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and won the Best Actor award for Christoph Waltz's performance.
The film cost $70 million to make and was shot in a number of locations,
including Germany. The film has so far drawn mixed reviews. It will open in the United States on August 21.
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Last update - 21:11 22/07/2009
Anne Frank landmark set alight in possible anti-Semitic arson
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Anne Frank
A shed in which Anne Frank was forced to work before she was sent to a German concentration camp has been destroyed in a fire, Dutch police said on Wednesday.
Police are treating Sunday's fire as arson, but said it was too early to speculate on whether anti-Semitism was the motive.
Anne Frank became famous posthumously for the diaries she kept while hiding from the Nazis with her Jewish family in Amsterdam during World War Two before they were betrayed and arrested in 1944.
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Anne and her family were forced to work in a Dutch camp, Westerbork, dismantling batteries in the shed for recycling.
Anne died in a German camp in 1945.
At the time of the fire, the shed was located in the village of Veendam and was due to be moved back, later this year, to its original position in the work camp, now a memorial.
Police are investigating an online message calling for the shed to be set on fire, which someone posted in reaction to a news story that it was to be moved back to the camp.
First published in 1947 and now translated into more than 70 languages, Anne Frank's diary remains one of the world's best-selling books.
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Last update - 20:19 22/07/2009
Israel envoy: No crisis with U.S. over settlements
By News Agencies
Tags: settlement natural growth
There is no crisis in relations between Israel and the United States, despite a lingering dispute - which will be settled "soon" - over settlement construction in the West Bank, Israel's new ambassador to Washington said Wednesday.
But a highly respected Tel Aviv think tank said the two countries could be on a "collision course" unless Israel undertook practical measures to back up its statements that it wanted peace with the Palestinians.
"
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There is no crisis in Israel-U.S. relations. Here we are talking about disagreements over certain subjects, very, very specific," Ambassador Michael Oren told Israel Radio.
The State Department summoned Oren over the weekend to ask for clarifications over an Israel plan to construct housing units on the site of a defunct hotel in East Jerusalem.
In response, Oren told the State Department that Israeli construction in East Jerusalem was no different than in any other part of the country. Netanyahu said the following day that Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was "indisputable" and that he would not allow citizens to be forbidden property purchases in any part of the city.
Oren said there was "goodwill" between the two countries in attempting to solve the dispute.
"I am sorry to disappoint, but there is no crisis," Oren added. "We are talking about an extremely deep alliance (between Israel and the U.S.)"
But the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based think tank, said Wednesday afternoon that Netanyahu's recent qualified and conditional commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state may not be enough to avert a clash with Washington, unless it "substantiates its desire to settle its conflicts with the Arab world with practical measures."
Presenting its annual Israeli strategic survey, the INSS said a stalemate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue "is the potential for tensions between the United States and Israel."
Israel, a summary of the survey said, had to formulate a strategy for negotiations with the Palestinians and with Syria and had to establish a "constructive exchange" with the U.S. on how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Possible regional developments, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or challenges to moderate Arab regimes, could force Israel to grapple with new threats and sources of instability, the institute said.
Earlier Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also urged Israel to freeze all forms of settlement activity.
"I urge the government of Israel to commit fully to its obligations, including to freeze settlement activity and natural growth," said Ban in a message to a United Nations meeting in Geneva on the Middle East.
"If Israel continues settlement activity, it will not only be acting contrary to international law but also to a strong international consensus," he said.
In his message on Wednesday, Ban said that an agreement by Israel to freeze settlement activity would "facilitate a new environment of cooperation and common purpose from the countries in the region."
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in the east of the city to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. The European Union and Russia this week warned Israel that activity there was destroying the peace process.
Israel regards communities in East Jerusalem, annexed during the 1967 Six-Day war, to be a legitimate part of the state and views with distinction that area from the West Bank.
The U.S., on the other hand, claims it has made clear to Netanyahu that it sees East Jerusalem as an issue that should be left to "permanent status" negotiations, and has said any activity there could prejudice a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Last update - 19:04 22/07/2009
German court orders unprecedented compensation for Jew's Nazi-era funds
By The Associated Press
Tags: Germany, Nazi, Israel News
A German appeals court has ordered greater compensation for the American heirs of a Jewish businessman forced to sell his company stock under the Nazis' "Aryanization" program - a ruling that could set a precedent for dozens of others, their attorney said Wednesday.
The Federal Administrative Court ruled July 17 that the heirs of businessman Bernhard Hirschmann should be compensated based on the fact that he and his brother lost their company, not just shares, said Berlin attorney Robby Fichte, who represented Hirschmann's heirs.
The ruling increases the compensation about 20-fold to some euro700,000 (nearly $1 million), Fichte said.
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"I'm happy that after so many years at least the material consequences of the injustice can be mitigated," heir Peter Fenner of Ohio said in a statement. Fenner - a grandson of Bernhard - brought the suit with his sister, Ruth Fenner-Barash of New York state.
The federal court confirmed the ruling but said no details would be released until the full written verdict is delivered in six to eight weeks.
The defendant in the case, Germany's Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, said it could not comment on how many other cases could be affected by it until it saw the entire written decision.
"We lost, but we don't know why yet," said spokeswoman Ellen Haendler. "So I can't say anything more until we have the ruling."
Fichte estimated the number in the dozens, however.
"It definitely sets a precedent - that's why we had the opportunity to appeal to the Federal Administrative Court; we are one of many cases, but it's the first to be decided," he told The Associated Press. "The authorities haven't decided many cases yet because they were waiting to see what to do."
Under the Nazi program to strip Jews of property, Hirschmann and his brother were forced in 1935 to sell their stock in the former Deutsche Kabelwerke AG, a wire and cable manufacturing company that they founded in the late 1890s, to Dresdner Bank. Both brothers fled Germany.
The bank then sold the shares at a profit to a company deemed to be "Aryan" by the Nazis.
At the end of the war, the company - based in Berlin with factories in the surrounding region of Brandenburg ? was nationalized by communist authorities.
While people in similar circumstances with assets in West Germany received compensation in the 1950s and 1960s, the Hirschmann family only received a payment of 125,000 German marks per brother from the Dresdner Bank - a mere fraction of what their holdings in the company were worth, Fichte said.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the family began pursuing full compensation.
Based on a formula that calculated compensation for having lost stocks under the Nazis, the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues ruled that the claim was worth 40,000 euros for each brother - less than Dresdner Bank had already paid.
But the federal appeals court ruled that the compensation had to be based on a different formula to pay for the two brothers having lost their company, not just the stocks, Fichte said.
The federal appeal's court ruling awards Bernhard Hirschmann's heirs euro700,000, or about euro980,000 with interest, Fichte said.
The money will come from funds set aside by Germany to compensate Nazi-era victims.
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Last update - 18:11 22/07/2009
Egyptian FM: Israel not willing to pay price for Gilad Shalit
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel news, Egypt
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Wednesday that Cairo was working to convince Israel to ease some of its demands for a prisoner swap with Hamas that would see the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Aboul Gheit told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayyat that Israel is not willing to pay the necessary price for the release of Shalit, who has been in Palestinian captivity since he was seized in a 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.
According to Aboul Gheit, Israel's insistence on exiling Hamas prisoners freed as part of the swap deal is holding up negotiations, as the number of militants and stages of release have already been set.
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He pledged that Egypt would guarantee that all prisoners released would not attack Israel and said Jerusalem's demands were unacceptable, unethical, and inhumane.
The Egyptian minister said that Hamas' request to free Israeli Arabs jailed as security prisoners was also stalling the deal.
The new Israeli envoy charged with negotiating the deal, Haggai Hadas, held his first round of talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo over a week ago.
Egypt has been mediating for a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Hamas-rulers of the Gaza Strip.
Hadas - who took the place of former negotiator Ofer Dekel - is seeking the release of hundreds of prisoners held by Israel, many of whom are serving lengthy terms for deadly attacks. Israel has said Hamas' demands are excessive.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told an Israeli newspaper before the negotiations that Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, came close to reaching a deal shortly before leaving office, but that he changed his mind and talks broke down.
Last week, Mubarak announced that Shalit was in good condition and expressed hope he would be released soon. However, he gave no details on where he got his information.
A Hamas official later dismissed Mubarak's comments as "wishful thinking".
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Last update - 17:03 22/07/2009
Jew's Muse / Erasing Jewish heritage, one historical omission at a time
By Uzi Silber
Tags: Oldest bible, israel news
Diligent media watchdogs such as CAMERA have documented the BBC's
chronically hostile coverage of Israel in its conflict with its Arab neighbors. My own ears are exposed to this biased barrage daily on my drive to work.
I
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grudgingly tune in nevertheless - after all, the BBC does produceother segments of interest to the intellectually curious, ostensiblyunrelated to the Middle East conflict.
And yet even among such benign reports, there are those that - while notintentionally hostile to Jews or Israel - are potentially inimical to Jewish interests not for what they report but for what they don?t.
The BBC recently presented just such a report, on the recovery, digitization and online availability of the so-called Codex Sinaiticus, billed at the onset as 'the world?s oldest Bible'.
While of immediate interest to Christians, the subject matter would attract any avid student of scripture and so I turned up the volume onthe car radio.
The segment was indeed illuminating, and I found myself considering its implications for Jewish tradition. But what was left unsaid was downright deafening.
Here then is the gist of the segment: the Codex is a 16-century old bound bible stowed away for many centuries at St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. It contains the entire Christian bible, comprising the Greek translation of the Tanakh, Apocrypha (books left out of the Tanakh), Gospels and other Christian scriptures.
The manuscript fascinates Bible historians for many reasons but what intrigued me most were its layers upon layers and 800 years worth of monastic editing, alterations, corrections, deletions and rewrites on each of its pages, reflecting the evolution of Christian dogma from the late Roman period to the Medieval era.
I soon detected parallels between the centuries-long development of the Codex by the monks and the creation of the Talmud and its
commentaries by the rabbinic sages. Perhaps this was no coincidence, considering that the monks of Sinai and Galilean Rabbis lived both contemporaneously and in relative proximity.
Secular biblical scholarship demonstrates that even the authorized version of the Tanakh evolved from a similar scribal editing process, lasting from about 1000 BCE to 150 BCE.
Nevertheless, I found the segment as troubling as it was enlightening, since its crucial omissions would have the effect of misleading a radio audience of millions.
BBC's website describes the Codex as 'the world's oldest bible'. But it isn't. And while the broadcast itself called it 'the oldest surviving bound bible, such a distinction is easily lost on the program's worldwide audience.
For the record, the oldest books of the bible were uncovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and predate the Codex by six
centuries.
Secondly listeners could easily assume that the bible was originally written in Greek 1600 years ago. Considering that Hebrew isn't mentioned even once throughout the segment, listeners would never know that the bible was first composed in Hebrew beginning 3000 years ago.
While misleading, these omissions by the BBC are unlikely to have been intentional - at least not in this instance. On the other hand, in the hands of Israel's adversaries, omission and the related act of denial are potent weapons used to sever the Jewish People's bonds to its ancient heritage in the eyes of the world.
Historical omission and denial is a particular expertise of
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose 1982 doctoral dissertation espouses views identical to those of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denying President of Iran.
Abbas, widely viewed as 'moderate', earned his doctorate from Moscow Oriental College by arguing, among many things, that that six million were not murdered during the Holocaust and that gas chambers were not used to exterminate them.
Similarly, Yasser Arafat, Abbas' mentor, adamantly denied the
existence of the ancient Jewish Temple that is buried beneath the
gold-domed Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Omission and denial has given license to the Muslim religious
authorities on the Temple Mount (Mt Moriah in the Hebrew bible) totrample the Jewish presence there that preceded the Muslim conquest by 14 centuries.
During recent renovations in and around the famous gold-domed
Mosque, bulldozers shoveled through deep layers of previously buried ancient Jewish artifacts, and dumped them outside the city walls in haphazard trash piles. The damage done to the Jewish historical record is irreversible and criminal.
Historical omission is a worrying trend worldwide. The Simon
Wiesenthal Center reports on a growing phenomenon of Holocaust
omission and denial in schools in Britain and throughout Europe.
Meanwhile, Phil Orenstein of the Democracy Project blog anecdotally relates that, "half of the teachers in (a certain Queens public school) social studies department refuse to teach the Holocaust ... for fear that it might offend Muslim students."
Overt demonization of Israel is detected easily enough; historical omission, intentional or purposeful, and whether by BBC correspondents or outright foes of the Jewish State, is more insidious. Unless confronted, we Jews may find ourselves pushed off Mount Moriah, tumbling down the slippery slope and into Gehena below ? the biblical Valley of Hell
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Last update - 15:00 22/07/2009
Hamas police close in on rival Islamists holed up in Gaza house
By Reuters
Tags: Hamas, Israel News, Gaza
Hamas police in the southern Gaza Strip surrounded a building where Muslim extremists were holed up on Wednesday, trying to quell a rare challenge to the territory's militant Islamic rulers.
The standoff began Wednesday morning when four Jund Ansar Allah militants
inside the building refused to surrender to police in the southern town of Khan Younis for an interrogation, Hamas security officials said, calling them outlaws.
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Jund Ansar Allah claims inspiration from al-Qaida, but no ties have been
confirmed.
Residents said five Hamas jeeps surrounded the area, and Hamas police set up a checkpoint leading to the building. It was not clear why the men were wanted.
Hamas, a violently anti-Israel group backed by Syria and Iran, seized power in Gaza more than two years ago and has ruled with a firm hand. However, a small number of shadowy extremist groups have emerged as an opposition of sorts, seeking to enforce an even stricter version of Islamic law.
At nightfall Wednesday, the Jund Ansar Allah militants remained holed up
inside the apartment in Khan Yunis, while prominent Muslim scholars were
trying to negotiate their surrender. Hamas police kept reporters away.
Jund Ansar Allah warned on its Web site that the men in the building would blow themselves up if Hamas tries to move in. The statement said the men would not surrender until Hamas officials returned weapons confiscated from the group.
Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, came to public attention in June after it claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to attack Israel from Gaza on horseback. It is unclear how many members it and similar extremist groups in Gaza have.
The groups have criticized Hamas for not imposing Muslim law in Gaza and are upset that the Hamas regime had agreed to a cease-fire with Israel over the past six months.
Hamas has said it seeks to set an example and does not impose its views on others. It also says its violent struggle is against Israel, not the Western world.
The hard-line groups are perhaps the most serious opposition to Hamas, which has crushed the influence of its main rival, Fatah, since taking power in a 5-day civil war in June 2007.
61 hurt as blast rocks wedding of ex-Fatah man's relatives
Earlier Wednesday, a bomb exploded at the wedding of a relative of a former senior Fatah security official in the Gaza Strip, wounding more than 61 people, a hospital official said.
The explosion occurred late on Tuesday in Khan Younis during the wedding of a cousin of Mohammed Dahlan, national security adviser for President Mahmoud Abbas until the Gaza Strip was seized by Hamas.
Dahlan, reviled by Hamas supporters over crackdowns he led against the group when he was head of Fatah-dominated Preventive Security service in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, moved to the West Bank after Fatah lost control of the territory.
He did not attend the wedding.
Muawya Hasanein, a hospital official, said 52 people were wounded in the blast.
Ihab al-Ghussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip, said some 30 people were hurt, including the bridegroom, Mahmoud Dahlan.
In the West Bank, Mohammed Dahlan accused Hamas members of planting a bomb near the wedding stage. He said that after the explosion, they threw other explosives into the crowd and fired shots. Hamas denied any involvement.
A police spokesman said three people were arrested. He did not identify them.
A relative who took part in the celebration and asked not to be identified said the family believed that "hatred for Mohammed Dahlan" was the motive for the attack
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Last update - 14:36 22/07/2009
Israeli officials: Turkey PM too extreme to moderate Syria talks
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Tags: Peace Process, Turkey
Turkey is ready to resume its role as mediator in suspended indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, before leaving for a one-day visit to Syria.
Senior Israeli officials responded to the initiative by telling Israel Radio that while the negotiations should indeed be held, they should not be handled by Erdogan.
The officials pointed out that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called more than once to renew the negotiations without preconditions, anywhere in the region, and has made clear that all options with this regard were on the table.
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Benny Begin, a Netanyahu confidant, suggested Turkey's fierce criticism the offensive had damaged Ankara's role as a neutral negotiator and said any negotiations for a peace agreement would have to be conducted directly between Syria and Israel without a negotiator.
"If this is what they want and how they continue it will be hard to view them as a means for mediating or for conveying messages between us and Syria," Begin, minister without portfolio, told Israel Radio.
"The Syrians are posing preconditions, i.e. saying what the outcome should be from the outset, which of course is unreasonable."
Israel's previous centrist govermment held the last round of talks with Syria last year, under mediation of Turkey, with which has good relations.
Syria froze the contacts to protest Operation Cast Lead, and the negotiations have been frozen ever since.
"We feel a responsibility ... Requests to resume the process have started to come. We are working on the issue," Erdogan told reporters before leaving for Aleppo to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Erdogan, who last week met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara, was traveling with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Syria seeks the return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel wants a peace deal including diplomatic recognition by Syria and other political concessions.
But Israel has said Syria does not want a peace deal and has demanded Damascus stop insisting on the return of the Golan as a precondition for talks. Assad in May played down prospects of resuming talks, saying Syria did not "have a partner."
Syria and Turkey: Israel needs 'real political will'
After the talks between Assad and Erdogan on Wednesday, Syria's state-run news agency SANA said the two leaders discussed the need to achieve a just a comprehensive peace in the Middle East which requires the presence of a "real Israeli political will".
Assad said earlier this month that there is no real partner in Israel to make peace, stressing that a halt to settlements in the West Bank is
essential to restart talks.
Syria has said it is willing to resume the Turkish-mediated talks if they
focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. But Netanyahu has said he is not willing to cede the territory Syria wants.
A state-run newspaper reaffirmed in an editorial that Syria is keen to restore all the Golan Heights and would not agree to start negotiations from scratch.
"It's not in the interest of peace to waste time or efforts or to return to point zero under the pretext of preconditions," said the government's Al-Thawra newspaper.
"Moving toward negotiations means an endorsement of a full withdrawal from the occupied land," it added.
Assad said in a newspaper interview in March that the Turkish-mediated talks failed because Israel would not make a clear commitment to return all of the Golan up to the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret.
Assad said Israel wanted to keep some disputed land around the Galilee, its main water source.
Israel, for its part, demands that Syria end its support for the Lebanese
militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Direct talks between Israel and Syria under U.S. auspices also failed in 2000 over the extent of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan.
Last month, President Barack Obama's special Mideast peace envoy, George
Mitchell, became the highest-level U.S. administration official to visit
Damascus since 2005. He acknowledged Syria's clout, declaring Damascus has a key role to play in forging Mideast peace.
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Last update - 21:14 22/07/2009
Netanyahu: Israel won't dismantle West Bank fence
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Tags: West Bank, Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel has no intention of dismantling the West Bank separation fence, which he called "a critical component of Israel's security."
"The separation fence will remain in place and will not be dismantled," Netanyahu told Knesset members.
Media reports in Israel on Wednesday indicated that the Palestinian Authority had relayed to U.S. President Barack Obama a demand that the fence be removed since the security situation in the West Bank had improved.
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Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters he had approached the United States on the issue. "The Israelis know that the wall adds to the complexities. It's part of the problem and not part of the solution," he said.
Netanyahu told lawmakers in the Knesset that the fence should be credited with restoring security and preventing the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers into Israeli towns. As a result, the fence should remain in place, the premier told MKs.
"I hear they are saying today that because it's quiet, it's possible to take down the fence. My friends, the opposite is true... It's quiet because a fence exists."
In his speech, Netanyahu said Israel welcomed "a certain improvement in the functioning of Palestinian security forces" in the West Bank. But he added: "The fence is important."
The prime minister was summoned to the Knesset after 40 MKs from the opposition parties signed a query requiring him to provide explanations for his diplomatic and economic policies.
Netanyahu also told the lawmakers that his government's defense policy had successfully deterred Palestinian Hamas gunmen in Gaza from launching Qassam rockets.
Israel's threat of responding to every rocket fired from Gaza was an effective change of policy that the prior regime did not implement, Netanyahu said.
"We are not ready to accept rocket and missile fire on the territory of the state of Israel," Netanyahu said. "From the moment I entered the prime minister's post there has been a response against every instance of shooting."
"This is the correct policy," Netanyahu said. "We cannot accept missile fire on Israeli cities as a fait accompli."
The prime minister added that Israel would insist on "effective demilitarization" of a future Palestinian state, and that an end to the conflict could only be reached in exchange for an end to all claims against Israel.
Netanyahu said Iran remains Israel's most pressing threat. The Tehran regime has not wavered from its intention to build a nuclear weapon, the prime minister said.
Israel is working to enlist wide swaths of the international community in forming a "united front" against Iran, which features "a brutal regime that oppresses its people," Netanyahu said.
Dramatic drop in West Bank attacks since fence built
Work on the barrier began in 2002, the height of a Palestinian uprising. Israel said the project was necessary to stop suicide bombers from reaching its cities. Palestinians called it a land grab that could deny them a viable state.
There has been a dramatic drop in the number of attacks in Israel over the past several years, a decrease security experts attribute to the barrier, Israeli and Palestinian Authority security steps and a change of tactics by some militant groups.
No suicide bombers have struck this year. In 2008, one person was killed in Israel by a bomber whom authorities said infiltrated from the West Bank through an area where the barrier had not been completed.
The International Court of Justice, in a non-binding decision in 2004, said the barrier was illegal and should be taken down because it crossed occupied territory.
The barrier, mainly razor-wired tipped fences but also comprises towering concrete walls, snakes through land Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Five conditions for peace
In his speech to Knesset, Netanyahu reaffirmed his government's five foundations for peacemaking with the Palestinians.
The following are Israel's demands, first voiced by Netanyahu last month, and the Palestinian position on each issue.
1. Palestinians must recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinians say such recognition could be perceived as abjuring a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees to land now in Israel. They say they are also mindful of the rights of Arab citizens of Israel.
2. Palestinian refugees must be resettled outside Israel.
Palestinians have long demanded that refugees who fled or were forced to leave in the war of Israel's creation in 1948 should be allowed to return, along with millions of their descendants. Yet Palestinian negotiators have signalled they would accept "a just and agreed-upon" solution for refugees as laid out in a UN resolution that mentions compensation for those who settle elsewhere.
3. The final peace agreement will end the conflict, and Palestinians can make no further demands on issues such as borders and refugees.
The Palestinians seek a final, lasting agreement that would meet all their national aspirations.
4. The Palestinian state must be demilitarised so as not to threaten Israel.
The Palestinians do not object to this demand, but say it should be discussed in negotiations with Israel.
5. Foreign backing, in the form of explicit international guarantees, for these security arrangements.
Again, the Palestinians say the issue can be sorted out in peace talks, as it was agreed upon in previous internationally backed agreements like the 2003 "road map".
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Last update - 13:33 22/07/2009
Israeli rabbis to U.S. Jews: Sway Obama administration in our favor
By Haaretz Service
Tags: U.S., Shlomo Amar, rabbis
A group of Israeli rabbis, headed by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, have sent a letter to U.S. rabbis and the President's Conference, urging them to exert political leverage in Israel's favor, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday.
"The American government pressures Israel to prevent Jews from building houses in extensive areas in the Land of Israel, which is very unfortunate," the rabbis wrote. "We ask you to make use of your political power to lobby the American authorities to reconsider this policy in the spirit of truly democratic justice, and give weight to halakhic considerations that are binding for the Jews."
Israel's previously cordial relations with the U.S. have been damaged by the Israeli government's insistence, in the face of U.S. opposition, that it can continue building within existing settlements.
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The signatories stressed that although it is an unusual declaration coming from religious figures, they have no intention to make a political statement.
"We would like to express our deepest regret, not from a political point of view, but rather a religious one, as the Torah stipulates the settlement and population of Eretz Israel," they said.
"While a person is allowed to reside wherever he wishes, Jews will not be allowed to reside in the territory of the future state," the rabbis also wrote, referring to the future of the settlement once a Palestinian state is established.
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Last update - 12:27 22/07/2009
Envoy to U.S.: Differences on settlements to be resolved soon
By DPA
Tags: Israel News, U.S.
There is no crisis in relations between Israel and the United States, despite a lingering dispute - which will be settled "soon" - over settlement construction in the occupied territories, Israel's new ambassador to Washington said Wednesday.
"There is no crisis in Israel-U.S. relations. Here we are talking about disagreements over certain subjects, very, very specific," Michael Oren told Israel Radio.
The interview took place against a backdrop of reports that the U.S. and Israel are on a collision course over Israel's insistence, in the face of U.S. opposition, that it can continue building within existing settlements.
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The White House has demanded that Israel halt all settlement activity.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that, while Israel will not build any new settlements, or expropriate any more land in the West Bank, it will continue construction in existing settlements in order to deal with the effects of population increase - a practice Israel calls natural growth.
The State Department summoned Oren over the weekend to ask for clarifications over an Israel plan to construct housing units on the site of a defunct hotel in HEADLINE">occupied East Jerusalem.
Oren however said there was "good will" between the two countries in attempting to solve the dispute.
"The spectrum of contacts, of cooperation, between the two countries is tremendous, deep and long," he said. "We do not feel any tensions."
"I am sorry to disappoint, but there is no crisis," Oren added. "We are talking about an extremely deep alliance (between Israel and the U.S.)"
He did not say when he thought the dispute would be resolved, but said he assumed it would be "soon."
Oren, American-born and an acclaimed historian, presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on Monday.
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Last update - 09:16 22/07/2009
Israel slams Clinton statement on nuclear Iran
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
Tags: nuclear weapons, Iran, U.S.
A key minister in the Israeli government criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement on Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
Dan Meridor, Israel's minister for secret services, told Army Radio that the comments imply a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran.
"I heard, unenthusiastically, the Americans' statement that they will defend their allies in the event that Iran arms itself with an atomic bomb, as if they have already reconciled with this possibility, and this is a mistake," Meridor told Army Radio. "Now, we don't need to deal with the assumption that Iran will attain nuclear weapons but to prevent this."
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Clinton said on Tuesday that the U.S. has a plan to prevent Iranian domination in the Middle East if it gets the nuclear bomb.
"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer," Clinton said during a visit to Bangkok.
The U.S. has asked 10 uranium-rich countries to tighten their monitoring of sales of the mineral to Iran, according to a document obtained by Haaretz. The move is based on an American estimate that Iran's uranium reserves will run out by 2010. A senior American delegation will arrive in Israel next week for talks on the dialogue between Iran and Western countries, especially regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
The document was distributed by the U.S. State Department to 10 countries that produce yellowcake, a uranium concentrate used as a raw material for enriching uranium. The United States wants the countries to increase monitoring of the sale of yellowcake to Iran.
According to the document, "As a consequence of its geology, Iran's reported indigenous uranium reserves are insufficient to support its current nuclear reactor program for sustained period of time .... Calculations based on Iran's rate of uranium conversion thus far suggest that Iran will run out of yellowcake in 2010."
The document is defined as a so-called non-paper to be used in contacts with privately owned companies that produce the concentrate. It was sent to Russia, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Britain, Kazakhstan and three others countries.
UN sanctions prohibit the sale of uranium to Iran, but the United States fears that the Islamic Republic might be trying to acquire the material anyway. "Iran could soon begin, or may have already begun, to look for outside suppliers of uranium," the document says. "Extreme vigilance in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program is necessary given the requirements of the UN Security Council and the significant threat Iran presents to international peace and security."
The document also notes that given "Iran's publicly stated ambition to pursue its enrichment-related activities, we believe it critically important that the world's major uranium resource companies prevent all exports of uranium to Iran unless contained in fuel rods and for an established light-water reactor.
Beyond the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation that we all share and the specific requirements of the UNSC, we believe that nuclear cooperation - particularly the provision of raw nuclear materials - with Iran is a significant business and reputational risk."
It adds that "we urge companies subject to your jurisdiction not to facilitate Iran's nuclear ambitions by engaging in new business deals with Iran until all concerns regarding its intentions have been resolved and confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program has been established."
Next Wednesday, a senior U.S. delegation led by National Security Adviser James Jones will arrive in Israel. He will be accompanied by President Barack Obama's special Mideast adviser, Dennis Ross, who recently served as Clinton's special adviser on Iran.
The delegation will also include representatives of the CIA, Defense Department, Treasury and State Department. These officials were invited to Israel by National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, who will lead the Israeli side in what is said to be a continuation of talks held in Washington around three weeks ago.
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Last update - 08:36 22/07/2009
Romania to charge Israeli doctors for trafficking human eggs
By Marius Hosu, Dan Even, Yanir Yagna, Fadi Eyadat and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
Tags: fertility clinic
Romania has stepped up the legal measures against the suspects in the ova trafficking scandal, which involves Bucharest-based Israeli fertility doctors.
The State Prosecution announced on Wednesday that 22 suspects - including Harry Mironescu (Miron) and his son Yair, who are the directors of the Sabyc fertility clinic - would be indicted.
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The head of the Romanian Medical Association on Tuesday compared the activities of the Bucharest fertility clinic, whose Israeli directors have been arrested on charges of trading in ova, to Nazi practices.
Professor Vasili Esterestua told Romanian TV that the Israeli-owned clinic "carried out medical experiments similar to those the Nazis did in Auschwitz," and was characterized by "severe ethical deficiency."
Accusing the Sabyc clinic of extracting ova from women as young as 15-year-old, Esterestua said the doctors "breached the very basic moral standards." He also said they were not licensed to practice medicine in Romania.
Esterestua's comments met with a mix of rage and amazement in Israel. The Israeli Consul in Bucharest, Lily Ben Haroush, said she would ask the Romanian authorities for explanations.
"I was absolutely appalled to hear that. There is absolutely no way to compare the two cases," she said.
On Tuesday, the brother-in-law of one of the detained doctors told Haaretz he believed they would be released soon.
The wife of Dr. Harry Mironescu (Miron), who with his son Yair is in a Romanian jail, flew to Romania on Monday morning. According to her brother, Bobby Yanko, "my sister is worried but she is not under pressure because she knows her husband will be released soon and back home to Ashdod."
Yanko said Miron has been operating in Romania for more than 20 years. In recent years he was joined by Yair, who studied medicine in the Balkan nation and specialized in plastic surgery.
Yanko suggested that another fertility clinic in Romania may have implicated Miron because of his success.
"This is a good man and not a criminal. They can say anything, but we're sure he'll leave Romania an innocent man," he said.
N., a 45-year-old Israeli patient arrested during the police raid of the Sabyc clinic, returned yesterday to Israel.
She said she had turned to the clinic after receiving a referral from Dr. Natan Levit, also under investigation in the affair. "I thought they were terrorists who were going to kill us," she told Haaretz about the raid. She said as soon as her treatment was over, police dragged her out brutally.
V., another patient, said police broke into the room where she was undergoing treatment, with Dr. Levit and the clinic's lab director, the Israeli doctor Genia Ziskind. She said she intends to sue the Romanian authorities.
V. visited the Sabyc clinic on the recommendation of the deputy head of the in-vitro fertilization department at Bnei Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Dr. Ilan Calderon. "He [Calderon] told me that the [egg] donors are young students, he told me what it would cost and why it was expensive. He said it was because of the medications the donors were given, and the time they spent in hospitals and the anesthesiologists. Obviously, I understood they were not doing this for free."
According to Channel 2, Romanian media reported that the total income of the clinic was 20 million euros, and that 20,000 euros in cash was found on the premises.
The telephone did not stop ringing at Dr. Levit's home. His patients were calling to express support for him, his wife Esther and daughter Chen. Some sent flowers with messages that read "Justice will out," and "Our hearts are with you."
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Did Norway promote a diplomat who compared Israelis to Nazis?
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: norway, nazis, israel news
A first secretary in Norway's embassy in Riyadh who compared Israelis to Nazis will return to Oslo next month with the title of Consul, after completing her posting, Haaretz has learned.
This contrasts with assurances by Norway's foreign minister that the diplomat had been recalled.
In January Trine Lilleng, then described by her foreign ministry as first secretary, sent an email through her official foreign ministry account with images of slain children said to have been killed in the Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza, juxtaposed with photos of Jewish Holocaust victims in seemingly correlating situations.
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In the mail, she wrote: "I always wondered why they didn't learn anything from the horror during WWII. Now I see what they learnt [mistake in original text]." As reported by Haaretz, the mail prompted opposition politicians to demand she be rebuked or recalled.
But an embassy employee told Haaretz two weeks ago that Lilleng was "sitting by her desk." The employee said Lilleng was a consul.
This does not represent a promotion, according to Ragnhild Imerslund, spokeswoman in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The title depends on the functions of the person in the actual position at the embassy. Ms Lilleng has been First Secretary ... In executing her consular duties she may use the title Consul."
But after Norwegian media reported about Lilleng's Holocaust inversion in January, the ministry emphasized that she belonged to the administrative staff as opposed to the diplomatic staff, according to Per Antonsen, a former veteran consultant on foreign policy to the Norwegian government.
"I doubt whether this would be considered a formal promotion, but it isn't the opposite either," he told Haaretz.
Commenting about Lilleng's actions, Imerslund said: "Ms. Lilleng voiced her personal opinion and in no case did she express the opinion of the - Norwegian government. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs - deeply deplores [these] views and comparisons."
When queried about steps to reprimand Lilleng, Imerslund replied that the ministry "will not comment on personnel matters related to individual staff," but added "the matter has been dealt with internally." She also said that Lilleng's assignment in Riyadh will expire in August.
This contrasts with Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store's statement in an interview with Maariv in February that Lilleng was "no longer working in Riyadh."
Imerslund, the spokeswoman, said that in the interview, Store "by mistake did say that Ms. Lilleng was no longer working in Riyadh. However, this was immediately corrected during the interview by the Minister's aide."
She added: "We therefore regret that [Maariv reporter] Shalom Yerushalmi chose to quote the minister the way he did." Yerushlami says that he does not recall receiving the correction.
After checking a recording of the interview, Yerushalmi said he did not find the correction. "If the aide's correction was made and omitted, then why didn't the Norwegians complain after the interview ran?" he said.
"Only in very rare circumstances does the ministry correct printed interviews and it did not happen in this case," Imerslund replied. Asked to arrange an interview with the aide, whom she identified as Haakon Svano, Imerslund said he could not be interviewed because he was "currently on summer leave."
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Last update - 17:49 22/07/2009
Hamas: We won't stand in way of PA-Israel deal
By Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff
Tags: meshal, israel news, hamas
Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal told a Russian diplomat a few days ago that his group would not stand in the way of a peace deal brokered between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel.
Meshal reportedly told Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov in Damascus that if Abbas comes to an agreement on a final settlement of the conflict with Israel, and if the agreement is approved in a Palestinian referendum, Hamas would not try to derail such an accord.
After the talks, Saltanov traveled to Israel, where he had two days of meetings with senior Israeli officials. Saltanov told his Israeli hosts that Meshal's comments were positive in nature and should be given the attention they deserve.
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Israel, for its part, has been unhappy about Russian contacts with high-ranking Hamas officials in the Syrian capital, and Israeli officials have expressed skepticism about Meshal's reported comments.
At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin said the more conciliatory tone which has been reflected recently in statements by senior Hamas officials does not reflect a real shift in the organization's ideological principles.
Several weeks ago, in a speech in Damascus, Meshal said Hamas would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel's pre-Six-Day War 1967 lines, but he did not say that Hamas would recognize Israel.
He also conditioned acceptance of the 1967 borders upon provisions including Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes within Israel, conditions that Israel has refused.
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Despite tensions, U.S., Israel unite to track uranium to Iran
By Barak Ravid
Tags: israel news, iran, U.S.
The United States has asked 10 uranium-rich countries to tighten their monitoring of sales of the mineral to Iran, according to a document obtained by Haaretz. The move is based on an American estimate that Iran's uranium reserves will run out by 2010. A senior American delegation will arrive in Israel next week for talks on the dialogue between Iran and Western countries, especially regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
The document was distributed by the U.S. State Department to 10 countries that produce yellowcake, a uranium concentrate used as a raw material for enriching uranium. The United States wants the countries to increase monitoring of the sale of yellowcake to Iran.
According to the document, "As a consequence of its geology, Iran's reported indigenous uranium reserves are insufficient to support its current nuclear reactor program for sustained period of time .... Calculations based on Iran's rate of uranium conversion thus far suggest that Iran will run out of yellowcake in 2010."
Advertisement
The document is defined as a so-called non-paper to be used in contacts with privately owned companies that produce the concentrate. It was sent to Russia, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Britain, Kazakhstan and three others countries.
UN sanctions prohibit the sale of uranium to Iran, but the United States fears that the Islamic Republic might be trying to acquire the material anyway. "Iran could soon begin, or may have already begun, to look for outside suppliers of uranium," the document says. "Extreme vigilance in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program is necessary given the requirements of the UN Security Council and the significant threat Iran presents to international peace and security."
The document also notes that given "Iran's publicly stated ambition to pursue its enrichment-related activities, we believe it critically important that the world's major uranium resource companies prevent all exports of uranium to Iran unless contained in fuel rods and for an established light-water reactor.
Beyond the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation that we all share and the specific requirements of the UNSC, we believe that nuclear cooperation - particularly the provision of raw nuclear materials - with Iran is a significant business and reputational risk."
It adds that "we urge companies subject to your jurisdiction not to facilitate Iran's nuclear ambitions by engaging in new business deals with Iran until all concerns regarding its intentions have been resolved and confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program has been established."
Next Wednesday, a senior U.S. delegation led by National Security Adviser James Jones will arrive in Israel. He will be accompanied by President Barack Obama's special Mideast adviser, Dennis Ross, who recently served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's special adviser on Iran.
The delegation will also include representatives of the CIA, Defense Department, Treasury and State Department. These officials were invited to Israel by National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, who will lead the Israeli side in what is said to be a continuation of talks held in Washington around three weeks ago.
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Last update - 21:01 21/07/2009
'Huckabee to air Fox News show from disputed East Jerusalem site'
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, Palestinian
Former U.S. presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee plans to broadcast his weekend show on Fox News from the site of a disputed Israeli construction project in East Jerusalem, a New York politician has told Haaretz.
New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Huckabee will air the talkshow during a solidarity visit to the site of the project, which is in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Hikind, who is active in right-wing Jewish causes, told Haaretz that dozens of U.S. activists will participate in the mission, in order to express their support for the project and the man behind it, Irving Moskowitz.
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A Fox News Channel spokesperson told Haaretz that this report was inaccurate, and that Huckabee was not planning to broadcast a show from Israel.
Israeli media outlets reported Sunday that the United States is demanding a halt to the residential project. Later in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had been surprised by the U.S. demand and that he refused to "cave in" on the matter.
Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build housing units in its place.
The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters.
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Last update - 16:39 21/07/2009
Deputy PM: U.S. should honor past deals on settlements
By The Associated Press
Tags: Israel News, West Bank, Obama
Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said Tuesday that U.S. calls for a freeze on West Bank settlement construction run counter to past agreements between the two nations and could undermine U.S. credibility.
Speaking to foreign reporters, Meridor said it was important for past understandings to be honored. "Otherwise, it would raise questions about the legitimacy of future agreements," he said.
"It is of great importance to us that what the American administration agreed to is not overlooked, not because of the contents of that agreement, [but] because of contents of agreements in the future," he said.
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U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Israel to halt all settlement construction as a confidence-building move to get stalled peace negotiations back on track.
Meridor, who is also intelligence and atomic energy minister, added: "We never had an agreement with the previous administration. We had an agreement with America.
"The agreement we had with the Americans is binding on us and them ... They should keep to the agreement."
The deputy prime minister's comments underscored the growing rift between Israel and the U.S. over the continued construction of homes in the settlements. Meridor, a respected veteran of Israeli politics, is considered one of the most moderate voices in the new government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would not build any new settlements, but that construction must be permitted inside existing settlements to accommodate what he calls natural growth in their populations.
Israeli officials and former White House official Eliot Abrams have cited a series of written and oral understandings reached with the Bush administration that appear to permit limited settlement construction.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, said in the West Bank Tuesday that, "What is required from Israel is to freeze all settlement activity... When Israel meets these demands, we will be ready to go to the final negotiations."
Meridor expressed hope that the differences would soon be bridged.
"In the coming weeks, I think that we will see, I certainly hope so, the resumption of negotiations," he said. He noted that Palestinians conducted three years of negotiations with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, while settlements expanded.
Nearly 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - areas conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six Day war and claimed by the Palestinians as part of a future independent state.
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Last update - 15:15 21/07/2009
Lebanon uncovers terror plot against UN troops
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Lebanon, UN
The Lebanese army said on Tuesday it had uncovered a militant Islamist network that had been plotting to carry out attacks against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and the army itself.
The army, in a statement, said it had detained the cell's 10 members. A security source said the men belonged to the Al-Qaida-inspired Fatah al-Islam group which fought a 15-week battle with the army in 2007.
The network, made up of members of different Arab origins and most of whom came from outside Lebanon, also planned to help "wanted terrorists" get out of the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp where many of them are holed up.
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The security source told Reuters the ringleader of the arrested group, a Syrian national, had been found with six forged passports.
"He traveled to six Arab countries in 15 days. His group was planning several attacks against a wide range of targets," the source said. Many of the men had taken up residence in Christian areas east of Beirut, he said.
The army statement said the network was also plotting attacks outside Lebanon.
At least 430 people were killed in the fighting between Fatah al-Islam and the army. Over half of those killed were fighters from the group and 170 were soldiers.
In December, the group said it feared its leader Shaker al-Absi had been killed in Syria and named another member to lead the group.
Last year, Syrian state television showed 12 alleged members of the group confessing that they had helped plan a suicide car bombing in Damascus that killed 17 people in September 2008.
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Last update - 11:26 21/07/2009
Ex-envoy to U.S.: Israel 'totally committed' to razing outposts
By Yuval Azoulay and Yoel Marcus, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
Tags: West Bank, settlers
Former ambassador to the United States Sallai Meridor said on Tuesday that Israel was "completely committed" to evacuating unauthorized outposts in the West Bank.
Meridor, who was recently replaced in his post by Michael Oren, told Israel Radio that Jerusalem and Washington had reached "certain understandings regarding what the Americans can live with and what Israel can live with."
"The Americans, unfortunately, have retreated from these understandings," Meridor added. "There was never a doubt that Israel's commitment on the matter of outposts was complete."
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Meridor was responding to Haaretz's report that the Israel Defense Forces and the police are planning to evacuate all illegal West Bank outposts in a single day.
As reported by Haaretz,
security authorities were in the midst of preparations for a lightning-quick evacuation of 23 unauthorized settler outposts, though the exact date of the operation has been kept secret by defense officials.
Rightist politicians warned on Tuesday that the plan would lead to "extreme" public strife and division.
Netanyahu's government committed to removing the outposts as part of an American-led drive to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Outpost removal is also one of the tasks which Israel agreed to undertake as part of the road map peace plan.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad told Army Radio that the evacuation of outposts is liable to lead to bloodshed and civil strife. "News of this kind could push the settlers to extreme actions," Eldad warned. "The members of the coalition will also have to open up a front against the prime minister."
Likud MK Danny Danon said the planned evacuation would be "very bad."
"I don't believe that a Likud government headed by Netanyahu would lend its hand to a mass evacuation of Jewish settlers," Danon said. The lawmaker added that the government should engage settler leaders through dialogue in an effort to reach an accommodation on the issue of unauthorized outposts.
Another Likud MK, Tzipi Hotoveli, also called for talks with the settlers. "This step [of forcible evacuation] cannot be done outside the framework of a comprehensive plan for the unfreezing of construction in Judea and Samaria," said Hotoveli, invoking the biblical names which are used to refer to the West Bank.
"We've become accustomed to the fact that from every destruction and ruin we build ourselves up, and from all the bad things that have befallen Jewish settlement in the past, the people of Israel built itself and progressed," National Union MK Ya'akov Katz said.
"We do not despair because out of all these expulsions we grow stronger, and the fact of the matter is that we have 350 thousand Jews in Judea and Samaria," Katz said. "We are seeing the birth of Jews, thank God, and we do not despair nor do we panic."
IDF: No plans for lightning evacuation of outposts
The IDF said on Tuesday that it had received no orders from the political echelons for a lightning evacuation of West Bank outposts, and denied having begun preparatory operations for such a move.
Amid the increased tension between the United States and Israel surrounding construction in the settlements, Haaretz learned that the Israel Defense Forces was drafting a plan to evacuate 23 illegal outposts in one day.
"The IDF is subordinate to the political echelon and implements its instructions, but such an order was never received," the IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement.
The army was also said to be conducting preparations to forcibly evacuate the outposts in plan formulated by the security establishment, with the knowledge of Netanyahu.
The statement on Tuesday, however, described the drills in question as preparation for daily confrontations in the West Bank, and not designed to contend with imminent outpost evacuations.
In talks with the United States, Israel had said it would clear out 23 outposts built after March 2001 that it had told the George W. Bush administration it would evacuate five years ago.
So far as is known, a timetable has not been set for the evacuations.
Police on Monday evacuated three illegal structures in various outposts. In response, settlers torched Palestinian olive groves, threw stones at Palestinian cars and blocked roads around the West Bank.
Two Palestinians were lightly hurt, as were a soldier and a settler. Five settlers were arrested.
The first joint exercise to prepare for the large-scale evacuation was carried out last week. It involved the Border Police, the police and the IDF.
The drill, led by the Border Police, was held at a military base more than a week ago, with police and IDF participation. Senior officers, including the IDF's West Bank commander Noam Tibon, watched the drill.
The forces practiced handling mass riots and evacuating settlers entrenched in an outpost.
Police sources told Haaretz, "The difference between this drill and former ones is the extent of the forces that took part and the participation of the IDF and police along with Border Police."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has promised to clear out these 23 outposts, but said it was a matter of law enforcement and was not addressed in talks with the Americans over freezing settlement construction.
In practice, though, the political leaders know that evacuating the outposts meets U.S. demands, and that it will ultimately be part of a final deal. Associates of Barak say they sense the parties are close to an understanding, and that the first step will be evacuating the outposts. However, these statements were made before the crisis erupted over construction in East Jerusalem.
The IDF will try to keep its evacuation preparations, particularly dates, as foggy as possible. IDF leaders realize many soldiers identify with the settlers, and could potentially leak the plans to evacuation opponents. Therefore, as few people as possible will be let in on the plans.
While the IDF and the police managed to surprise settlers in December when they evacuated a house in Hebron, it will be more difficult this time around, because many more sites are slated for evacuation, and a large number of forces will have to be involved.
Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has said several times that he prefers the IDF not be on the front lines of evacuating outposts, and that police units specializing in crowd control should do the job.
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The painful cost to Israel of its settler adventure
By Bradley Burston
Tags: IsraelNews, Barack Obama
Click here for more articles by Bradley Burston
[This is the third installment in theOutpost Watch series]
___________________________
As friction between the Obama administration and Israel mounts over Washington's repeated calls for a freeze on settlement construction, anxious supporters of Israel's West Bank settlement enterprise ask one question with ever greater urgency and frequency:
Why should settlers have to pay the price for peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
The question is intended to be rhetorical, meant to dismiss and deflect pressure to curb expansion of West Bank enclaves.
But in a real sense, it is precisely the question of the moment. Why, in fact, should settlers be made to pay the price for peace?
The answer, in short: Because of what the settlement movement has cost us, cost Israel. And because of what it is costing Israel now.
1. The cost in dollars
The settlement movement has cost Israel some $100 billion over the past 40 years.
Setting aside the considerable waste and graft in building projects in the West Bank and Gaza, the cost to Israel's development has been incalculable. Settlement in remote areas has siphoned off critically needed funds for investment in employment, infrastructure, housing and social welfare in central Israel, the Galillee and the Negev.
Huge expenditures on West Bank road construction, including parallel highways intended only for use by Israelis, and roads built at great expense to remote and often illegal settlements, have taken a human toll as well. They have put off the upgrading of dangerous roads [designated "red highways"] within Israel, adding materially to one of the country's most lethal problems. Last year more than 440 people died on Israel's highways, more than 12 times the number of Israelis killed in terror attacks.
2. The cost to Israel's security
For decades, the enormous burdens of guarding settlements, policing roadblocks and maintaining the far-reaching bureaucracy of occupation have robbed the IDF of vitally needed resources of time and funding for military training.
In recent months, as Haaretz military commentator Amir Oren has reported, Prime Minister Netanyahu's wrangling with President Obama over settlement construction has been doing damage to the IDF's capability to face the threat posed by Iran.
3. The cost to Israeli democracy and the rule of law
The unwillingness of the settlement movement to brook compromise, even when in direct defiance of national consensus, and its explicit threats to exploit Israel's precarious political system to topple any democratically elected government which makes significant progress in negotiations with the Palestinians, places the very nature of Israeli democracy in doubt.
The double standard which for decades has favored settlers with inexpensive housing, heavily subsidized social services, and blind-eye building permits has long been accompanied by a kid-gloves approach regarding settler violence against Palestinians and their property.
4. The cost to Israel's diplomatic credibility
Both in established settlements and in outposts acknowledged by Israel as illegal, settlers and settlement planners have covertly bent and distorted zoning procedures, military directives, and government decrees in order to boost settlement, block Palestinian construction, agriculture, and access to employment, and effectively neutralize measures intended to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace progress.
Measures aimed at driving a secure wedge between settlers and Palestinians have had the effect of tarnishing Israel's international image, and have kept many nations from normalizing and strengthening diplomatic ties with Israel.
The settlers' rejection of all territorial compromise renders moot all proposals similar to the Arab League peace initiative.
5. The cost to Israel's relationship with the U.S.
With every move of ostentatious defiance mounted by the Netanyahu government, the Obama administration finds the Palestinian Authority a more reliant, cooperative, and businesslike partner for diplomacy and West Bank security.
The gratuitous machismo characterizing many of the declarations of right-wing parties, in particular the shrill back-benchers of Netanyahu's Likud and members of Avigdor Lieberman's indictment-shadowed Yisrael Beiteinu, has done little to win domestic backing in Israel, but has landed with dramatic and destructive effect in Washington.
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Last update - 10:51 20/07/2009
Playing with fire
By Haaretz Editorial
Tags: settlements, barack obama
The controversy surrounding the plan to create a Jewish enclave in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem is not another routine expression of the U.S.-Israel dispute over the settlements. The timing of the decision to build dozens of housing units in the Shepherd Hotel complex, at the height of efforts to reach an agreement on limited construction in the settlements, casts doubt over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's willingness to enter serious negotiations on a final-status agreement. The support he granted the construction project yesterday, despite the vehement condemnations of America and Britain, show he is prepared to endanger Israel's most essential foreign relations for a provocative initiative led by Irving Moskowitz, the patron of right-wing organizations in East Jerusalem.
U.S. President Barack Obama's opposition should not have surprised Netanyahu. The day after Jerusalem Day, when the prime minister declared the city is "Israel's united capital" and would remain forever under Israeli sovereignty, Washington clarified that authority over East Jerusalem would be resolved only through negotiations on a final-status agreement.
Netanyahu's agreement to hold talks based on the principle of "two states for two peoples" must also include readiness to discuss Sheikh Jarrah. Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Arab states cannot be expected to normalize relations with Israel while the latter embarrasses them with construction projects in East Jerusalem.
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Particularly infuriating is the government's claim that Israel is allowing the Arabs of East Jerusalem to settle in Jewish neighborhoods. Unlike Jewish right-wing organizations - which work to settle Jews in, and take control of, the eastern part of the city - Palestinian residents look to the Jewish areas due to a lack of housing and public services in their own neighborhoods. Since 1967 Israel has expropriated 35 percent of East Jerusalem in order to construct 50,000 housing units in neighborhoods intended primarily for Jews. During the same period, fewer than 600 housing units were built for Palestinian residents with government support.
Construction for Jews in East Jerusalem is inflicting tremendous diplomatic damage on Israel. Netanyahu and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat are playing with fire under the transparent cover of "normal authorization for private construction." Freezing construction at Shepherd Hotel is no less essential than evacuating the outposts and freezing settlement construction beyond the capital's municipal area.
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OU disavows pamphlet claiming Vatican-Hezbollah conspiracy
By Raphael Ahren, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Jewish World
The Orthodox Union has apologized for the publication of a booklet its staff distributed to Israeli soldiers, implying that the Vatican organizes tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to kill Jews.
The New York-based group said in statement that endorsement of the book was unauthorized and that it regretted its involvement.
The OU has subsequently rescinded the endorsement and "disavow[ed] any connection to the views expressed in it."
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Monday's statement came on the heels of a Haaretz report about the book, which purports to be the testimony of "a Hezbollah officer who spied for Israel," and was published by the OU in cooperation with the chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu.
"Upon investigation," the group stated, "it has been ascertained that this endorsement was made by staff at the OU's Israel branch office, and was never submitted to, nor approved by, senior Orthodox Union management."
While maintaining that the Haaretz report "sensationalized the book's contents," the OU admitted "there is no doubt that some of what it contains is antithetical to the well-known views of the OU regarding respect for other faiths and their leaders... The Orthodox Union expresses its sincere regret to those of other faiths who may have been embarrassed or offended by the publication of this work."
The religious group's senior leadership has ordered an internal review to ensure ?that such a situation is not repeated," the statement continued.
According to the book, "On Either Side of the Border," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was invited to join a delegation touring France, Poland, Italy and the Vatican, as the narrator explained he knew the pope "identified with Hezbollah?s struggle."
The booklet, which an Eliahu aid says is factual, also implies that European politicians and journalists ostensibly work against Israel.
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Last update - 10:06 21/07/2009
Punk rock's secret Jewish roots
By Judy Berman, The Forward
Tags: Jewish world, Israel news
Punk rock's most revered founders include a yeshiva alum named Tamas Erdelyi and a Bronx Jew known to his family as Richard Blum.
No, they weren't managers, producers or label honchos; Erdelyi and Blum are living legends of the mid-1970s punk rock scene, widely celebrated for their bands? revolutionary three-chord masterpieces.
Both men are also better known by their stage names, Tommy Ramone and Handsome Dick Manitoba.
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Ramone, the sole surviving member of the Ramones, and Manitoba, frontman for the Dictators, were hardly the only Jews to shape the movement, as a capacity crowd learned in a program at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, located in Manhattan?s Chelsea area. Lenny Kaye, who's a guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, and Blondie co-founder Chris Stein joined Manitoba and Ramone in a panel discussion on ?Loud, Fast Jews? of New York punk rock.
Kaye, who also served as moderator, warmed up the panelists by asking about their family backgrounds and bar mitzvah memories before moving on to more difficult topics, such as the movement?s controversial appropriation of Nazi imagery. But one central question pervaded the evening?s discussion: How much did Jewish culture influence punk rock?
As the musicians acknowledged, it seems counterintuitive to draw parallels between Judaism and punk: The stereotypes attached to each culture seem mutually exclusive. "You don?t expect Jews to be good in the scuffle of anti-establishment movements," Kaye said. "Jews were groomed for white-collar jobs.? His parents did not consider making music a "real job,? he recalled. ?Jews aren't supposed to be tough guys,? Manitoba added. "They?re supposed to go to school and be nebbishy."
Although Jews have made countless contributions to American popular music, Harold Steinblatt, YIVO?s director of cultural affairs and the June 11 event's organizer, noted that punk was unusual because so many of its progenitors were Jewish.
New York's pioneering punk scene found its headquarters at CBGB, an East Village dive that served as both performance space and clubhouse before it closed in 2006. The bar?s proprietor, Hilly Kristal, along with CBGB's fixture and the city?s central punk icon, Joey Ramone (né Jeffrey Hyman), was born into a Jewish family. So was the genre?s forefather, Lou Reed. British punk?s notorious ringmaster Malcolm McLaren is the son of shmatte factory owners. Is this merely a coincidence, or is there something particularly Jewish about the music itself?
"There is a sense of being an outsider in music," Kaye said, just as growing up in a religious minority may have isolated some Jews who became punks. In a later phone interview, he also cited the cultural influences he had derived from Judaism ? "a love of the minor key, a sense of community and clan." The setting for the music was important, too, he said, because ?CBGB?s was a kind of strange ghetto with its own vocabulary and customs.?
Panelists also praised the influence of Jewish artists, entertainers and activists on punk music. Ramone credited Bill Gaines's Mad Magazine and pulpy EC Comics for teaching him that "sometimes being outrageous is important." Kaye pointed to the Jewish radical tradition and the folk music of Israeli kibbutzim, while Manitoba reminisced about the Catskills comedians of his youth. "I?m sure that what I spit back has a little Shecky Greene in it," he admitted, chuckling.
But Stein - and all the panelists, to varying degrees ? worried about overstating the connection between punk and Jewish religion and identity. "My Jewishness has always been there, but it's not an integral part of me," he said. Raised in Brooklyn's Flatbush area by secular parents, Stein dismissed punk's ties to Judaism as "just another facet for people to analyze."
Perhaps because so many punks assumed stage names in the '70s, most were unaware of how many other Jews participated in the scene until 2006, when Steven Lee Beeber published "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk" (Chicago Review Press). As Kaye explained, musicians were so wrapped up in absorbing and creating various religious modes of rock 'n' roll that individuals' cultural and spiritual backgrounds seemed beside the point.
Sometimes, what Kaye referred to as punk's use of "shock imagery" even could appear to be antisemitic. Yet when bands referenced Nazism, as Manitoba?s Dictators did in their song "Master Race Rock" (1975), the intent was to satirize and reclaim noxious words and images. "There's a cathartic effect when you take your deepest fear," Ramone told the audience, "and either make humor of it, or, in an artistic sense," transform it. Ramone believes that few artists were truly antisemitic, although he never endorsed plastering swastikas on everything from clothing to concert fliers. "The whole thing that became called punk ? we never had any control over it," he said.
Manitoba compared the use of Third Reich imagery by punk rock bands to Mel Brooks's films, which poke fun at Nazis. During the panel, he confessed to crying when he watched "Schindler's List," and said he would be upset to learn that ?Master Race Rock? hurt anyone. Later, in the phone interview, he told of visiting Arturo Vega, the designer famous for creating the Ramones logo, who had an Andy Warhol swastika painting hanging on his wall. "It was his idea of art. I didn?t like it, but I laughed at Mel Brooks," Manitoba said. "?There really is no universal morality for what is truly funny."
Judy Berman is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn.
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Last update - 23:38 20/07/2009
Israel envoy: UNIFIL cooperated with Lebanese infiltrating Israel
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel news, Lebanon
United Nations peacekeeping troops in Lebanon did nothing to stop a group of Lebanese citizens from crossing the border into Israel, said Israel's envoy to the international body.
Hezbollah "allowed" 12 Lebanese civilians to infiltrate a few dozen meters into Israeli territory on Mount Dov on Saturday near Shaba Farms, raising a Lebanese flag. They returned to Lebanon shortly thereafter. The Israel Defense Forces said it did not respond because the civilians were unarmed and not dangerous.
In a letter of complaint to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, envoy Gabriela Shalev said that witnesses had also reported seeing the troops cooperating with the infiltrators.
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This type of action "demonstrate[s] an escalation and a pattern of behavior in Lebanon, that must be confronted," Shalev wrote. She added is a clear violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701., which brought a cease-fire to the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The border between Israel and Lebanon in the area is not fenced. IDF lookouts said the group, which included children, also had a Hezbollah flag, but did not raise it.
Israeli forces were placed on alert and the IDF informed UNIFIL command of the matter, asking them to intervene. By the time the UNIFIL force went to the site, the group was on its way back to Lebanese territory.
Government officials dealing with the Lebanon issue say UNIFIL soldiers encounter armed Hezbollah fighters or are detained by them, but the incidents do not appear in the reports submitted to the Security Council.
On Saturday it was reported that that area residents prevented UNIFIL soldiers from searching an abandoned building near the building that blew up last week, in which it is believed Hezbollah stored weapons, against the UN resolution.
A government source in Jerusalem said UNIFIL learned a few months ago about the cache of Katyusha rockets that exploded in the southern Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim last Tuesday.
The source said UNIFIL had precise information about the cache and a number of other installations where Hezbollah is storing rockets, but that UNIFIL had done nothing.
A discussion is scheduled in the UN Security Council for late August on renewing UNIFIL's mandate in southern Lebanon; Israel hopes last week's explosion will show the need to strengthen UNIFIL. Israel believes that UNIFIL could sharpen its rules of engagement and act more forcefully with the Lebanese army in southern Lebanese villages.
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Last update - 22:10 20/07/2009
U.S.: No unilateral moves in East Jerusalem
By Natasha Mozgavaya, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Tags: Obama administration
The United States believes that unilateral moves on the part of either Israel or the Palestinians could prejudice the result of final status negotiations, the State Department said on Monday.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. has made clear to Israel that it views construction in East Jerusalem with the same opposition that it has for settlement activity in the West Bank.
"This is not a new issue, those issues came up a number of times," Crowley said, confirming that a construction project in East Jerusalem had been a topic of conversation last week during a meeting between senior U.S. diplomats and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
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"We've made our views known to Israel. This kind of construction is a type of issues that should be subject to permanent-status negotiations," Crowley said, adding: "We are concerned that unilateral actions taken by the Israelis or the Palestinians cannot prejudge the outcome of these negotiations."
U.S. officials said Oren met with Deputy Secretary of State for Management Jacob Lew, who told him that Washington was troubled by the project in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which would see 20 apartments developed by American millionaire Irving Mokowitz.
The spat emerged publicly on Sunday when Netanyahu told his cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in unified Jerusalem.
"We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn't be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem, he said, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city indisputable.
American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority that the United States views East Jerusalem as no different from an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction.
The special U.S. envoy for Middle East peace, George Mitchell, will departs for the
region this week amid these new signs of tension between the U.S. and Israeli governments over settlement construction.
Mitchell, a former U.S. senator, plans to visit Israel, the Palestinian territories and several neighboring countries, including Bahrain. His itinerary was still being worked out Monday.
He will head for the region as the administration tries to build Arab support for a resumption in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, a mission complicated by American divisions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements.
Dissension flared anew over the weekend when Netanyahu rejected a U.S. demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem.
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to be settlements and an obstacle to peacemaking because they complicate a possible division of the city. Israel does not regard them as settlements because it annexed east Jerusalem after capturing the area in 1967. The annexation has not been recognized internationally.
Settlements on captured lands claimed by the Palestinians are a major sticking point in relations between Israel and the Obama administration. Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to about 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is an especially volatile because it is the site of key Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. The Palestinians want the traditionally Arab sector of the city to be the capital of their future state. The Palestinians have refused to restart peace talks until Israel halts all settlement expansion.
Mitchell has been attempting to negotiate a deal under which Israel would at least temporarily freeze settlement activity in a bid to bring the Palestinians to the table and attract Arab concessions toward Israel.
Several options have been discussed, including a six-month freeze that would allow Israel to finish construction on some settlement projects that have already been contracted, but officials say no deal has yet been struck.
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Last update - 17:47 20/07/2009
Lieberman trip to South America aimed at curbing Iran influence
By News Agencies
Tags: Iran, South America
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's trip to South America this week is in part at stemming Iranian influence there, deputy Danny Ayalon said on Monday.
Lieberman leaves later Monday for a 10-day tour in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Colombia.
In Argentina, Lieberman is slated to attend a memorial marking the 15th anniversary of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured 200. That attack came two years after a bomb flattened the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and killed 29 people.
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Argentine officials claim Iran orchestrated the attack and that Hezbollah
agents carried it out. The United States and Israel also say Iran is behind the bombing. Iran has denied involvement.
During his visit, Lieberman plans plans to address the issue of Iran's infiltration, said deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon. In particular, he will discuss the close ties Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales have built with Tehran.
The visit is meant to emphasize the high importance the Foreign Ministry
ascribes to Latin America, a statement from the ministry said.
Chavez and Morales are both fiercely opposed to Israeli and U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East.
According to a secret Israeli government report revealed last month, Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program.
The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran's nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.
"There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program," the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions. It added, "Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran."
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said in its latest global terrorism report that lax controls in the border region between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay provide a safe haven to Islamic extremists and Hezbollah in particular.
A top U.S. military commander also said earlier this year that Hezbollah has been active in the drug trade across the Colombian border.
"We have been seeing in Colombia a direct connection between Hezbollah activity and narco-trafficking activity," said Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who oversees U.S. military interests in the region as head of U.S. Southern Command.
Colombia said last October that it had smashed a drug and money-laundering ring suspected of shipping funds to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has denied links to drugs and money-laundering and described allegations as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at harming its image.
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Last update - 16:40 20/07/2009
Romania mayor outrages Jews after parading as Nazi
By Reuters
Tags: Nazis, Israel news, Romania
The mayor of a Romanian city has outraged Jewish and pro-democracy groups after he goose-stepped with his son in World War Two German uniforms during a weekend fashion show.
Wearing Nazi uniform is illegal in Romania, which denied participating in the Holocaust until 2004 when it accepted the findings of international commission that Romanian authorities killed up to 380,000 Jews in territories under their control.
The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism sent a letter on Monday to the country's general prosecutor urging an investigation of Radu Mazare, 41, mayor of Black Sea city port Constanta, for breaking the law and instigating a child to follow his example.
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Mazare said the uniform had no swastikas and was the uniform of a German infantry general and nothing to do with the SS.
"I was inspired from the Valkyrie movie ... I wanted to dress like a Vehrmacht general because I've always liked this uniform, and admired the rigorous organisation of the German army," newspaper Evenimentul Zilei quoted him as saying.
Under pro-Nazi Marshal Ian Antonescu, Romania became a German ally in 1940 but switched sides just before war ended.
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Last update - 15:17 20/07/2009
Police: Lone surviving Mumbai attacker pleads guilty
By Reuters
Tags: Mumbai, terror, israel news
The lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in November and raised tensions between India and Pakistan pleaded guilty in court on Monday, police said.
Pakistani citizen Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, pleaded guilty in a Mumbai court and was recording his confession there, the police officer overseeing the probe into the attacks told Reuters.
"Yes, he has pleaded guilty in court today for the November attacks during a hearing," senior police officer Rakesh Maria said.
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Kasab, who had been videotaped carrying an AK-47 assault rifle while carrying out the assault on Mumbai's main train station, had been charged with 86 separate offences including murder and waging war against India.
"He has confessed to his role and the fact that he was involved in the attacks that killed so many people during the attacks, the planning and the execution," Maria told Reuters.
Kasab had pleaded not guilty in May. He was the only one of the 10 gunmen captured alive during the Nov. 26-28 attacks on targets including two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and the train station.
India has charged 38 people including Kasab over the attack, but most of the accused are in Pakistan, the Indian government says.
New Delhi has demanded Pakistan take concrete action against the perpetrators of the attacks before it will consider reopening five-year old peace talks it broke off after the attacks in November.
The assault on India's financial capital raised tensions between the nuclear rivals who have been to war three times since their independence from Britain in 1947.
Both sides have exchanged angry rhetoric since the attack, with India saying the gunmen must have had support from official Pakistani agencies. Islamabad denies that, but has acknowledged that the raid had been launched and partly planned from Pakistan.
It has detained several Islamist leaders, including some whom India has named as planners of the guns-and-grenade assault on Mumbai.
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Last update - 14:45 20/07/2009
Abbas: Israel trying to Judaicize East Jerusalem
By DPA
Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday accused Israel of destroying the Islamic and Christian character of Jerusalem, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of a U.S. demand to halt a proposed housing project in East Jerusalem.
"The holy city is today facing real dangers, while there are attempts to turn it into a full Jewish city by changing its Islamic and Christian landmarks," a statement published Monday by the official Wafa news agency quoted Abbas as telling Palestinians in Bethlehem.
He accused Israel of "digging under every corner in the city, which would cause a real danger to its historic and religious constructions, mainly the al-Aqsa Mosque."
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And, he said, Israel's policy "of demolishing houses or confiscating them, as well as imposing heavy taxes on its Muslim and Christian residents and preventing them from building, aims at forcing them to leave the city."
Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, and annexed it shortly afterwards.
Palestinians however want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state, and say the Jewish neighborhoods Israel has built there cut the city off from the rest of the West Bank.
On Sunday Israeli media reported that the U.S. has demanded Israel not proceed with a plan to build housing units on the site of the Shepherd Hotel, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
The hotel had been bought in the mid-1980s by US businessman Irving Moscowitz, a supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Netanyahu responded to the U.S. demand by telling his cabinet that Israel "cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem."
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Last update - 13:02 20/07/2009
Iran's 'friend of Israel' VP denies reports of his resignation
By DPA
Tags: Israel News
An entry on the website of Iran's newly appointed vice-president Monday denied a local television report about his resignation.
Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie's website categorically denied Sunday's resignation reports as a lie by enemies aimed at tarnishing the new government's image.
He was appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last Thursday as first vice- and de facto acting president.
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The appointment led to widespread criticism even within pro-Ahmadinejad circles due to remarks by Rahim-Mashaie in 2008 that were perceived to be pro-Israel.
In particular, it was his remark that Iran was also friends with the Israeli people that sparked harsh political protests and calls for the resignation of Rahim-Mashaie, at that time vice-president and head of the country's tourism agency.
But Ahmadinejad ignored the criticism and defended his vice-president, who is also his son's father-in-law, although the president is known for his anti-Israel stance, controversial remarks that Israel should be wiped from the map of the Middle East and for calling the Holocaust a "fairy tale."
Rahim-Mashaie's appointment as acting president was therefore regarded as a provocative move, especially as his remark on Israe was also harshly criticized by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The report on his resignation was carried only by Press TV, the English-language network of state-television IRIB, which quoted an ambiguous source, and some foreign news agencies.
Ahmadinejad has already replaced three of his vice-presidents and reportedly also plans to change almost half of his cabinet members.
The president has faced criticism from his opponents, including opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi, for making ideological choices in his administration rather than using qualified ministers.
The first change was the appointment of Ali-Akbar Salehi as vice-president and head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization. Salehi is a technocrat and ideologically not close to the president.
The rest of the cabinet members will be introduced to parliament in early August. Observers expect heated debates with the deputies who have to approve the choice of ministers.
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Last update - 10:55 20/07/2009
30 Israelis probed over human egg trafficking in Romania
By Haaretz Service and Reuters
Tags: Romania, Israel News
Some 30 Israelis were detained for questioning on Monday in Romania on suspicion they were involved in the trafficking of human eggs.
The suspects were detained during a raid on a fertility clinic in the capital Bucharest, but most of them were subsequently released on bail.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yossi Levy said that two Israelis were still undergoing questioning, and that the matter was being monitored by the ministry. "We have full confidence in the authorities over there, and I am convinced that this affair will be concluded quickly and effectively," he said.
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Israel's ambassador to Romania, Ilan David, said that four doctors were still being questioned. He explained that the raid was carried out in light of suspicion that the clinic was operating without the proper permits.
David said furthermore that under Romanian law, egg donation was permissible as long as no payment was exchanged, and as long as the extraction of the eggs was done in an authorized facility. The clinic raided Monday was not authorized to extract eggs.
David added that most of the detainees were women, and stressed that they had not been arrested, but only brought in for questioning.
"The group was focusing on identifying foreign couples eager to resort to reproduction techniques and on grabbing Romanian (women) aged 18-30 to donate ova for 800 to 1,000 lei (e270 to e335)," Romania's department for fighting organized crime (DIICOT) said in a statement.
DIICOT said it had detained Harry Mironescu, a gynecologist and de facto head of the clinic, his son Yair Miron and Borzea Cecilia, a Romanian employee, for 24 hours and launched a criminal investigation against them.
Romanian television said the clinic had carried out about 1,200 in vitro fertilization procedures since opening in 1999, and that the main beneficiaries were Israeli, Italian and British couples.
In vitro fertilization, used by couples who cannot conceive normally, involves fertilizing eggs outside the body and placing them in the uterus for a normal pregnancy. If a woman's eggs are infertile, a donor must be found to provide fertile eggs.
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Last update - 10:03 20/07/2009
Melbourne film festival rejects Ken Loach anti-Israel pressure
By Haaretz Service
British director Ken Loach has withdrawn his film Looking for Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival to protest Israeli funding of another film participating in the festival.
Loach demanded that the festival reject the Israeli Embassy's sponsorship of Tatia Rosenthal to visit the festival to answer questions about her animation feature $9.99, but the festival organizers refused, saying that they would not bow to "blackmail," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Earlier this year, the Edinburgh Film Festival returned a 300 pound grant from the Israeli embassy due to pressure from the renowned director.
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ABC quoted Australian federal Labor MP Michael Danby as having applauded festival organizers for standing up to Loach, and saying that "Israelis and Australians have always had a lot in common, including contempt for the irritating British penchant for claiming cultural superiority."
He also said that it does not make sense to boycott Israeli films in order to make a political point against their country's government.
"Some people in Israel have been very critical of the Israeli film industry because of the way many films have been critical of the Government's actions in the Occupied Territories," he said.
"Why would you stop showing films that ask serious questions of the Israeli government in order to spite that very government?"
Melbourne International Film Festival chief executive Richard Moore insisted that as an independent arts event, the festival would not capitulate to political pressure.
"MIFF understands that that this issue is a particularly emotional one for people, but we will not participate in a boycott against the state of Israel, just as we would not contemplate boycotting films from China or other nations involved in difficult long-standing historical disputes," ABC quoted him as saying.
"Mr Loach's decision is part of an orchestrated campaign to target events that are in receipt of financial support from the state of Israel. Loach requested that we join the boycott and as an independent arts organization. MIFF has refused," he said.
Loach has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and its actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
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Last update - 09:37 20/07/2009
Israel extradites alleged KKK man to U.S.
By Reuters
Tags: KKK, Micky Louis Mayon
Israel extradited a suspect to the United States on firearms charges on Sunday, despite his denial he belonged to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
"No. I'm not. I'm not affiliated with any group whatsoever," a handcuffed Micky Louis Mayon, who was arrested in Tel Aviv last week, told reporters when asked if he was a member of the Klan.
U.S. citizen Mayon, 33, was speaking as police escorted him for extradition from Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport. An interior ministry spokeswoman later confirmed he had been deported.
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"You know what they accuse me of. But it's not what I did. Absolutely not true," Mayon said, when reporters pressed him on whether he hated Jews and black people.
He said he had enjoyed his stay in Israel - especially "the Israeli girls" - and wanted to "come back."
Mayon fled the United States after he was suspected of burning the car of a judge who had ordered he stand trial on the firearms charges.
The Israeli Interior Ministry said on Monday law enforcement units were told by Interpol that Mayon belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, described by the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League as a racist, anti-Semitic movement.
Mayon was being sought by U.S. marshals on two arrest warrants. Charges included illegal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment and flight to avoid apprehension.
The ministry said Mayon arrived in Israel as a tourist in January 2008. He was issued a one-month visa and stayed on illegally.
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Last update - 09:17 20/07/2009
Germany to honor Nazi officers who plotted to assassinate Hitler
By The Associated Press
Tags: Germany, Adolf Hitler
German leaders on Monday will honor the plotters of a celebrated army attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, 65 years after they were executed.
In ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the July 20, 1944, coup attempt, officials will lay wreaths at the Bendlerblock building, now the Defense Ministry, where Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg and three others were executed shortly after their plan to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb failed.
There will also be an hour of commemoration at the Berlin Ploetzensee Memorial Center for the victims of the Nazis.
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On Monday night, there will be a swearing-in ceremony for 400 recruits of the Bundeswehr in front of the Reichstag, which will be attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Immediately after World War II, the July 20 plotters were widely viewed as traitors, a label the Nazis gave them that stuck for many years. Even now, historians still argue about their motives and - given their conservative views and early support for Hitler - their commitment to democracy.
But the day's significance has become increasingly accepted in Germany, as wounds over the war heal and the rest of Europe grows comfortable with reunified Germany's place in it.
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Last update - 06:27 20/07/2009
Rabbi Michael Melchior slated to become next WZO head
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: world zionist organization
Rabbi Michael Melchior is slated to head the World Zionist Organization as of next month, after Kadima chairperson Tzipi Livni invited him to join the organization on her party's ticket, Haaretz has learned.
The WZO has been without a chairperson for several weeks, since Zeev Bielski resigned after becoming a Kadima Knesset member. The job is hence under Kadima's control.
Melchior may become chairman on August 3, at a meeting of the organization's steering committee comprising 22 representatives of Zionist movements and political parties. The selection is expected to be confirmed next year by the Zionist Congress.
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Instead of putting forth one her own party members, Livni asked Danish-born Melchior - head of the dovish religious Meimad movement - to replace Bielski. "The offer was made out of the recognition that Melchior is a man of stature with a deep understanding of the Diaspora," said David Breakstone from the Conservative movement, Kadima's partner in the WZO alliance which supports Melchior's nomination.
But a prominent WZO member said: "It's sad that Kadima has so few worthy men and women that it can't even propose its own candidate."
Melchior's name came up as a leading candidate about a month ago, and his candidacy was agreed upon by a majority of the 22 representatives, including Likud and Gil, the pensioners' party. However, according to some sources, that deal may be falling apart. "I heard that some of the people who agreed on my nomination are rethinking the deal now," Melchior told Haaretz. "I suppose party interests are legitimate, but I was touched when Kadima offered to give up a seat for me though I made it clear that I would not join the party. It's unusual in Israeli politics."
Mizrachi, also represented in the 22-member forum, did not sign the deal and opposes the nomination, World Mizrachi Chairman Zevulon Orlev told Haaretz.
The World Zionist Organization - which runs a number of projects including the Hagshama program for instilling Zionist leadership in young Diaspora Jews - received an annual budget of a $7.3 million in 2008.
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Last update - 06:09 20/07/2009
Akiva Eldar / What Netanyahu wants from Obama's 'self-hating Jews'
By Akiva Eldar
Tags: settlements, netanyahu
Who is to blame for the latest dispute with the United States over the new neighborhood going up in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah area? Mayor Nir Barkat? Certainly not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood behind him? Ridiculous. Any child knows that everything is the fault of other Jews: Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two American administration officials who are inciting President Barack Obama against their own people.
This is not the first time that "self-hating Jews" have given us trouble. In negotiations over the separation of forces agreement in the 1970s, U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the scion of a family of Jewish refugees who had escaped from Nazi Germany, earned the anti-Semitic epithet "Jewboy" in Israel. At the end of the 1980s, when president George H.W. Bush dared to argue that the peace process does not jibe with settlement expansion, the Shamir government instigated a campaign against "the 'Jewboy' trio": Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller and Dan Kurtzer. Now it is the turn of Obama's Jewish confidantes to be the scapegoats.
It is easy to imagine what an uproar there would be in Jerusalem if an Arab leader or newspaper dared to claim that an American president was favorable to Israel because of the influence of a Jewish adviser. Netanyahu, who spent many years in the United States, knows very well the extent to which Jewish administration officials in key positions are sensitive to the slightest hint of dual loyalty - to their birthplace and their historic homeland. It turns out that for him, politics bends the iron-clad rule that "all Jews are responsible for one another."
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To satisfy the settlers, he permits himself to hurt people whose only sin is that they are trying to promote the goals enshrined in the platform of his senior coalition partner - the Labor Party.
We want our Jews in the administration to be blind to the settlements and deaf to the complaints of the Arabs. Take Elliott Abrams, for example, who was in charge of Middle East affairs in the Bush administration. Abrams, who is identified with the neo-conservative right, made an important contribution to legitimizing a good many dubious Israeli acts. He was an excellent salesman for the "no partner" theory, and the guiding spirit behind the indulgent policy toward the flourishing of settlements. He recently publicly criticized the two-state vision of the president who had hired him, among other things, to promote that vision.
Back during his election campaign Obama made it clear that he did not have to join Likud to be a friend of Israel. Opinion polls in the United States revealed that the views of most Jews are closer to the attitudes of organizations like the Reform movement, American Friends of Peace Now and J Street, which support a two-state solution and eschew Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's doctrine - and above all, largely object to the settlements.
The conversation Obama held with representatives of the Jewish community last week confirms that Netanyahu is drafting them for the wrong war. Even his oldest supporters did not attack the president's position on the settlements, and made do with a complaint about the high profile given to disputes over the issue of natural growth in the settlements. One of the guests at that meeting said that history showed that exposing the differences between the U.S. and Israel does not help to advance peace.
"This was not my reading of the lessons of the last eight years," Obama responded without flinching. Moreover, he said he would not shy away from a willingness to pressure all parties, including Israel, if that is in the best interests of the United States and Israel. Obama did not hesitate to tell his Jewish interlocutors that beyond the special commitment to Israel's security, his policy would be completely even-handed. If it became necessary, Obama said, he would speak to Israelis, as he had done to the Arab and Muslim world, to help them to achieve some kind of self-reflection.
Obama has internalized what his predecessors refused to understand: the traditional supporters of the Israeli right are growing old, or losing their relevance. They are giving way to younger, liberal forces who identify with Obama's values. In the "best" case, Netanyahu's incitement against the "self-hating Jews" will do to them what his whispered comment in the ear of Rabbi Kaduri "those leftists are not Jews" did to Israelis a decade ago - it turned them against him.
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Last update - 09:09 20/07/2009
U.K. envoys: The Israelis don't listen to us
By Nir Hasson
Tags: east jerusalem, israel news
British diplomats touring the Shepherd Hotel recently in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah expressed concern about Israeli construction plans there, particularly in light of the site's close proximity to the British consulate in East Jerusalem.
The tour, which also included American diplomats, was led by Jerusalem city councilman Meir Margalit of Meretz, who is also active in the Committee Against House Demolitions. During the visit, Margalit said, the British diplomats asked their American colleagues to pressure Israel on the issue and take the lead in applying international pressure to stop settlement building.
"The British said explicitly - the Israelis don't pay attention to us, but if you apply pressure, there is a chance," Margalit recounted. The U.K. envoys also expressed concern that construction activity so close to the consulate could lead to an intelligence leak.
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The area was acquired in 1985 by American Jewish philantrhopist Irving Moskowitz and designated for private housing. Two weeks ago, the local planning council approved the construction plan, which calls for the erection of two residential buildings of 20 housing units stretched over a 3,000-square-meter area.
The council recognized the hotel building - which in the 1930s and 40s served as the compound for the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini - as a historic site and designated it for renovation.
Eitan Geva, the Israeli legal representative of Moskowitz, said he was surprised by U.S. opposition to the project, which he characterized as "commercial," and not "ideological."
The Jerusalem municipality commented: "The district planning committee is working according to equitable criteria, and grants building permits to both Jews and Arabs, without regard to the religion, race or nationality of the recipient. The acquisition of property is conducted according to law, and the site has been granted the necessary authorizations."
Sarah Kreimer, associate director of Ir Amim, an Israeli non-profit organization engaged in issues affecting Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem, said yesterday, "All of these small developments constitute a sequence, the goal of which is to encircle the Old City from every direction - Sheikh Jarrah, Wadi Joz, the Mount of Olives, Ras al-Amud, Silwan and the Armon Hanatziv promenade," she said.
"In each of these places, plans are being advanced for construction whose ultimate purpose is to disconnect the Old City from Palestinian Jerusalem," she said.
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Amir Oren / Netanyahu-Obama spat harming IDF capability on Iran
By Amir Oren
Tags: iran, barack obama, nuclear
In the summer of 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the Israel Defense Forces hastily conceived a plan - without precise intelligence and with no developed, operational plans - to raid the missile sites in western Iraq that threatened Israel, Benny Gantz was the commander of the elite air force commando unit Shaldag. The military coordination with the region's overlords, the Americans, was minimal if not non-existent. Deputy chief of staff Ehud Barak expended much of his energy in maneuvering for the removal of Gen. Doron Rubin, who headed the headquarters for special operations.
In the summer of 2010, with Barak (perhaps still) defense minister and Gantz as the deputy chief of staff, the missile threat from the east will loom larger, though on the other side of the equation, both our capability to act from afar and our relations with the American army will have improved.
Of the U.S. army's 10 unified combatant commands, five are preparing for a possible confrontation with Iran. These include U.S. Central Command, whose forces control much of the Middle Eastern theater; U.S. European Command, which borders Centcom and whose jurisdiction includes Turkey and Israel; U.S. Special Operations Command, which is responsible for building and deploying commando units; U.S. Strategic Command, which deploys bombers and missiles from land bases and submarines; and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, which builds forces on land, sea, and in the air.
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Officers who are studying methods for thwarting nuclear programs are analyzing how the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor was destroyed in the Israel Air Force raid in 1981. According to official U.S. army publications, the American military and the IDF have cooperated in drawing up joint study plans, held conferences, and taken part in joint symposia. Gantz - who is Israel's military attache in Washington and whose deputies include the attaches to land, sea, and air forces as well as intelligence and research and development - also relies on the services of a liaison officer to the special forces and the Marines, Lt. Col. Avi Gil, who was the operations branch officer in the Paratroops Brigade during the height of America's war on terror. Gil commanded the Paratroopers' reconnaissance battalion as well as the undercover unit Duvdevan.
Two months, ago, the American military hosted the current head of the operations branch, Gen. Tal Russo, whom they knew from his experience in the Shaldag special forces unit, Sayeret Matkal and Maglan. At the Pentagon, Russo met his counterpart, Lt. Gen. John Paxton from the U.S. Marines. During his visit to the special forces bases in Florida and North Carolina, Russo met with Admiral Eric Olson; his deputy, Lt. Gen. David Fridovich; and Vice Admiral William McRaven, who commands the secretive JSOC special forces headquarters. Olson and McRaven served as commanders of the Navy SEALs. Olson, who visits Israel on occasion, was also a UN observer in Israel and Egypt, and when McRaven wrote a research paper on six impressive commando operations during and after World War II, he dedicated the last, and most instructive chapter, to the Entebbe raid.
Last year, GOC Southern Command Yoav Gallant - who during the 1990s was McRaven's and Olson's counterpart as commander of Shayetet 13 - paid a visit to the American Special Operations Command. Gallant was joined by Col. Hertzi Halevy, the commander of the Paratroopers Brigade and the former commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit.
The IDF and the American special forces have been engaged in a long-running initiative which includes information sharing, joint training exercises and intelligence upgrades. The American reports often quote Brig. Gen. Itai Brun of the operations branch.
Brun heads the Dado Center for military thinking in Glilot. He is known to take part in American war games that focus on "hybrid threats" posed by semi-guerilla and semi-military groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Brun lectures on the lessons learned by the IDF in Lebanon and Gaza within the context of the West's struggle with countries like Iran, Syria, and Iraq.
One can surmise that American officers are careful not to reveal any more information than what the civilian echelons above them say. At the same time, it is reasonable to assume that the professional dialogue, which is held in conjunction with various military bodies, yields an important basis for understanding the needs and solutions required for times of crisis. Even if the talks are limited to exchanges of opinions and brainstorming without getting entangled in joint operational planning, nobody wants to be surprised if there is escalation in the region, with Iran inching closer to attaining nuclear weapons and after a confrontation. If the discussions only deal with the day before and the day after, then it will be possible to bypass the day itself.
The weakness in Israeli-American relations stems from the rift at the top. Without prior planning by the military bodies, diplomatic coordination will be of no benefit, not even the partial, limited coordination that we saw during the 1991 war. But the Israeli prime minister's bickering with the U.S. president over the nonsense surrounding the settlements is harming the IDF's capability in dealing with its most vital missions.
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Last update - 04:05 20/07/2009
'No difference to U.S. between outpost, East Jerusalem construction'
By Akiva Eldar, Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury
Tags: israel news
The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
This clarification came in the context of a growing crisis in U.S.-Israel relations over the planned construction of some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."
"United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people in the State of Israel, and our sovereignty over the city is not subject to appeal," he continued. "Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city. This has been the policy of all Israeli governments. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city's east. This is the policy of an open city."
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Saying that Israel could not accept Jews being forbidden to live in anywhere in Jerusalem, Netanyahu added: "I can imagine what would happen if someone proposed that Jews could not live or buy in certain neighborhoods of London, New York, Paris or Rome. A huge international outcry would surely ensue. It is even more impossible to agree to such an edict in East Jerusalem."
Asked to comment on these remarks, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, said the administration is trying to reach an agreement with Israel on settlements, and "the negotiations are intense," the Associated Press reported.
Later Sunday, Netanyahu met with his advisors to discuss Israel's response to Washington's demand.
"I was surprised by the American demand," a source present at the meeting quoted him as saying. "In my conversation with [U.S. President Barack] Obama in Washington, I told him I could not accept any restrictions on our sovereignty in Jerusalem. I told him Jerusalem is not a settlement, and there is nothing to discuss about a freeze there."
"In my previous term [as premier], I built thousands of apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem, defying the entire world," Netanyahu added. "Therefore, it is clear that I will not capitulate in this case - especially when we are talking about a mere 20 apartments."
Other ministers also criticized the American stance at the cabinet meeting. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for instance, termed it "puzzling," while Interior Minister and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai declared that "no agency in the world can stop construction in Jerusalem."
And Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the ministers that the PA and its security services are engaged in widespread efforts to keep Palestinians from selling land in Jerusalem to Jews. He also said that Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar has allocated $21 million to Hamas activists to buy buildings and establish infrastructure in Jerusalem.
Washington's objections to the Shepherd Hotel project were first voiced by senior State Department officials at a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last Thursday, in response to a request by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The officials complained that the construction would change the neighborhood's demographic balance and harm its Palestinian residents.
Oren responded that the land in question was privately owned, having been purchased in 1985 by American Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, and the project has received all the necessary permits from the Jerusalem municipality.
Also Sunday, Abbas' bureau chief, Rafiq Husseini, said he hoped the U.S. would not back down on its demand for a complete settlement freeze, including in East Jerusalem.
In an interview with the Nazareth-based radio station A-Shams, Husseini said, "from our standpoint, there is no room for a compromise [on this issue], and we expect the American administration to stick to the determined stance that envoy [George] Mitchell expressed as far back as 2001. Any compromise that enables continued construction ... will do nothing whatsoever to advance the diplomatic process."
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Last update - 19:15 19/07/2009
Report: Iran's 'friend of Israel' VP resigns amid outcry
By News Agencies
Tags: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei
Iranian Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, whose appointment sparked an outcry because of previous comments in which he said Iranians were friends of Israelis, resigned Sunday, local media said.
State-run English language Press TV said Mashaie "no longer wanted the job" of first vice president and had resigned because of the row.
There was no immediate confirmation of the decision.
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had come under fire from leading hardliners for naming Mashaie as his top deputy on Thursday.
Analysts say Ahmadinejad's decision to appoint Mashaie, to whom he is related by marriage, suggests that the president has a small entourage of people he trusts.
In rare public criticism, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, an Ahmadinejad ally and member of the top legislative body, said Ahmadinejad had shown "a twisted face to clerics and elites" by appointing Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as vice president last Thursday.
"Ahmadinejad should not challenge conservatives with such decisions. I request the President to replace him before more criticisms are made," the hardline cleric was quoted as saying by the Khorasan newspaper.
Many hardline lawmakers and clerics, including several top clerics, had called on the president to dismiss Mashaie for his comments. Ahmadinejad, already at the center of a post-election crisis, remained defiant. He said Mashaie's comments had been "misrepresented."
Mashaie, previously one of several vice presidents and in charge of a culture and tourism body, angered hard-liners in 2008 when he said Iranians were friends of all people in the world - even Israelis.
The row ended after Iran's most powerful figure Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who backs Ahmadinejad, said in September the remarks "are not right but the dispute should end."
Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, and most hard-liners consider the country Iran's archenemy.
A hardline editor seen as close to Iran's top authority also criticized Ahmadinejad's choice of the first vice president, which unlike ministers does not need approval of parliament.
"Ahmadinejad's appointment of Mashaie as his first vice president brought shock, regret and concern to his voters," said Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan daily.
"It is necessary for Ahmadinejad to take back the first vice presidency from Mashaie," Shariatmadari wrote in the daily.
Mashaie also came under fire for hosting a ceremony in November where women in traditional dress carried in Muslim's holy book, the Koran, to music, an action deemed insulting to Koran.
Lawmaker Hamid Rasai said Iranian society was very sensitive over Mashaie, a close relative to Ahmadinejad through marriage.
"I believe it would have been better if he had not been appointed," the Etemad-e Melli newspaper quoted Rasai, an ally of Ahmadinejad, as saying.
A pro-reform lawmaker said Ahmadinejad could be impeached over his decision.
"Now lawmakers can question Ahmadinejad or even impeach him for this appointment," the newspaper quoted Dariush Ghanbari as saying. Analysts say Ahmadinejad's impeachment is unlikely, as parliament is dominated by hardliners.
Ahmadinejad was re-elected in a June presidential vote, which stirred the largest display of internal unrest in Iran, the world's fifth biggest oil exporter, since the 1979 revolution and exposed deep rifts in its ruling elite.
Defeated moderate candidates say the vote was rigged in favor of Ahmadinejad, who has called the vote "the world's freest election".
But there are still many hardliners who back him such as Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi who said in remarks published on Saturday that the Iranian government drew its legitimacy from "the Almighty God."
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Last update - 13:04 19/07/2009
Can Muslim-Jewish relations ever improve?
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward
Tags: jewish-muslim relations
Efforts to bring together Jewish and Muslim communities hit another snag when an imam at a major Muslim conference gave an incendiary speech in which he said Jews were to blame for the Holocaust.
The speech came during the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, which was attended by rabbis who have been trying to build closer relations between Muslims and Jews.
At one of the conference's 70 sessions, Warith Deen Umar, a New York imam, spoke critically of Jews, saying that the Holocaust happened to the Jews "because they were serially disobedient to Allah."
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He also said that a small handful of Jews around President Obama "control the world." ISNA immediately condemned the tenor of the comments. This was enough for some of the Jewish figures in attendance, but not enough for the Jewish terrorism hunter who brought the comments to light.
The divide comes in the context of a broader debate in the Jewish community about how far to go in dialogue with Islamic groups. One strong view has been presented by Steve Emerson, head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and a skeptic when it comes to close ties between Jewish groups and the major American Muslim organizations.
Emerson has argued that ISNA and other Muslim groups are not as moderate as Jewish groups would like to believe. It was Emerson's project that released a record and transcript of Umar's comments, and he immediately rejected ISNA's apology.
"I think they have fooled the Jewish groups," Emerson told the Forward. "They haven't changed."
But Rabbi Marc Schneier, president and founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and a keynote speaker at the ISNA convention, said that Islamic groups are too often condemned based on extreme outliers.
"When you have 99.999% of the people saying good things and one person saying other things, you shouldn't magnify the words of that one person," Schneier said. "It is time for the Emersons of the world to understand that the process has begun and that while there may be bumps on the road, the process has begun."
Emerson shot back that "Rabbi Schneier is involved in legitimization of extreme Islamist groups for years. He wouldn't tell a good group from a bad one, even if he got hit on his head by jihad."
ISNA, the largest representative Muslim body in the United States, has been engaged in an active dialogue with the Union for Reform Judaism for the past two years. Leaders of both groups spoke at gatherings of their counterparts, and their joint project, Children of Abraham, formulated a guidebook on interfaith relations.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs adopted in March a resolution endorsing dialogue with the Muslim community, and Schneier has been active in twining mosques and synagogues to encourage dialogue.
ISNA's national convention, which took place in Washington on the July 4th weekend and drew several thousand participants, featured a senior White House official for the first time. Valerie Jarrett, President Obama?s senior adviser on public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, praised ISNA for its interfaith outreach.
Umar's speech came during a session that was named after a new book he is touting, titled "Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace." Umar, the former head of the New York State prison chaplain program, is no stranger to controversy. In 2003, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report about how Umar spread extremism within the prison system. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Umar referred to the terrorists as martyrs. He also published a book titled "Judaiology" that spoke about the "inordinacy of Jewish power" and stated that Jews "play mind games" to deceive the non-Jews.
In his July speech, Umar took issue with the fact that Obama's first choices for White House positions were Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. Both men are Jewish, though Umar wrongly described them as Israeli. "Why do this small number of people have control of the world?? he asked.
He then moved to speak of the Holocaust, providing his own explanation for its cause: "These people were punished. They were punished for a reason, because they were serially disobedient to Allah."
ISNA leaders were quick to issue a statement condemning his language and stressing that it does not reflect the group's opinion of other religions.
"We would like to set the record straight and state our complete rejection of all prejudicial views and bigoted stances toward the Jewish community and any other community of faith," ISNA?s president, Ingrid Mattson, said in a statement.
Louay Safi, executive director of the group?s Leadership Development Center, told the Forward that Umar was scheduled to speak about peace and to demonstrate how Muslim and Jewish communities can live in peace. Safi said that Umar, like other speakers, was vetted based on his proposed topic, not his past.
"We were very surprised when we heard about it," Safi said, adding that the group will now look for ways to make sure that such mistakes do not occur in the future.
Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com
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Last update - 12:09 19/07/2009
Palestinian police wound two in West Bank raid on Hamas
By Reuters
Tags: Hamas, Israel news, Fatah
Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas shot and wounded two people on Sunday during a raid to arrest a Hamas member in the West Bank, local residents told Reuters.
A security source said fighting erupted after residents of Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah tried to prevent security forces from detaining Halil Ali, 37, who was taken into custody.
The two wounded men, Ali's cousin and uncle, were being treated in hospital. Their injuries were not life-threatening.
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"He was asked to go to meet Palestinian security forces who wanted to question him, but he refused because he was scared as he knew that he could be jailed and tortured," Ali's brother Nidal said.
Tensions between Hamas and the Western-backed Abbas's secular Fatah faction have increased since the Islamist group took control of the Gaza Strip in a brief but bloody civil war two years ago. Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank.
Both sides accuse each other of arresting men from the other faction and of torturing detainees. Last month, nine people from the two factions were killed in fighting in the West Bank town of Qalqilya, where Abbas's forces carried out arrests.
For months, Fatah and Hamas have tried to agree a power-sharing deal in Egyptian-brokered reconciliation talks but have repeatedly missed deadlines for an agreement.
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PA fears U.S. will let Israel keep up settlement construction
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel news, East Jerusalem
WASHINGTON - Palestinian officials said on Saturday they were worried the U.S. administration was close to an interim agreement with Israel on settlement construction.
According to information that has reached the Palestinian Authority, Israel will not completely halt construction in the settlements but will limit it drastically to the point of almost stopping it. In exchange, Arab countries will implement previously discussed concessions - among them, allowing Israeli planes to cross their airspace and opening diplomatic missions.
The PA will discuss this with U.S. special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah this week.
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Sources in the PA said that "half-solutions" are unacceptable and that Israel must completely stop construction in the settlements.
The Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam reported on Saturday that Mitchell is to inform PA President Mahmoud Abbas by phone that the U.S. administration has been unable to obtain Israel's consent to stop construction completely.
Senior Palestinian officials have been following ambiguous statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has hinted that an agreement with Israel is in the offing.
Senior officials say American assent to even limited Israeli construction in the settlements would once again damage the American position as an honest broker in the Middle East. U.S. President Barack Obama told American Jewish leaders last week that his clear position against settlements has strengthened his position as an honest broker with the Arabs.
Over the past few days, Abbas has reiterated concerns over continued construction in the settlements, saying he would not renew negotiations with Israel as long as such construction persisted. However, senior Palestinian officials said that soon after the Obama administration reaches an agreement with Israel and the Arab countries, it intends to renew negotiations on a final status agreement. If the PA refuses to join, as Abbas apparently articulated, it will appear to be obstructing the peace process.
In any case, the PA will probably seek to postpone talks until after the Sixth Fatah Congress and general elections, scheduled for August 4. Sources in the PA said talks between Hamas and Fatah, which were to resume between July 25-28, would probably be postponed until after the Fatah Congress opens in Bethlehem.
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Last update - 09:20 19/07/2009
WZO suspected of giving settlers Palestinian land
By Amos Harel
Tags: Palestinians, Jewish Agency
Attorney General Menahem Mazuz has told police to investigate workers from the World Zionist Organization's settlement division on suspicion of knowingly allocating private Palestinian land for construction in the settlement of Ofra, Channel 2 reported on Friday.
Mazuz ordered the investigation in light of information revealed in a High Court of Justice petition filed by five Palestinian landowners, Channel 2 said.
The Palestinians, the heirs of the original owners, petitioned the High Court against the construction of five houses on their land, in southern Ofra.
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Ofra is north of Ramallah, in the northern West Bank.
Construction was well underway when the petition was submitted, with the help of human rights groups Yesh Din and B'Tselem. By the time of the hearing, the houses were already occupied.
During the hearing, the state's representatives conceded that the buildings were on private Palestinian land.
The Justice Ministry wrote a letter to Yesh Din member Dror Etkes, informing him it was launching an investigation.
The settlers who purchased the land showed the court their contracts with the settlement division, which stated that the land was transferred to the settlement division by the Civil Administration official in charge of abandoned property in the West Bank.
The settlement division in turn transfered it to Ofra's partnership organization, which sold it to the Israelis.
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Last update - 22:52 19/07/2009
'U.S. tells Israel to halt East Jerusalem building'
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: settlements, Israel News
The United States has told Israel it must halt an East Jerusalem construction project in accordance with the Obama administration's demands for a complete freeze on settlement building, Israeli radio stations reported on Sunday.
The State Department summoned Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren over the weekend to advise him that the project developed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz should not go ahead, according to both Israel Radio and Army Radio.
Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build housing units in its place. The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters.
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The approval, granted by the Jerusalem municipality earlier this month, allows for the construction of 20 apartments plus a three-level underground parking lot.
In response, Oren told the State Department that Israeli construction in East Jerusalem was no different than in any other part of the country.
Jerusalem could not be considered along the same lines as settlements, he said, adding that Israel would not accede to this demand.
The Jerusalem municipality issued a statement following the report, saying the purchase was legal and it had acted with full transparency in granting building permits.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy had no immediate comment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion, no matter the U.S. requests.
Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting that Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel and that all citizens are allowed to purchase property in any part of the city they choose.
This is the policy of an open city, he said, and Israel would not accept a stance that counters that civil right.
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in the east of the city to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
Israel regards communities in the area annexed during the 1967 Six-Day war to be a legitimate part of the state.
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said on Saturday they were worried the U.S. administration was close to an interim agreement with Israel on settlement construction.
According to information that has reached the Palestinian Authority, Israel will not completely halt construction in the settlements but will limit it drastically to the point of almost stopping it. In exchange, Arab countries will implement previously discussed concessions - among them, allowing Israeli planes to cross their airspace and opening diplomatic missions.
The PA will discuss this with U.S. special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah this week.
Sources in the PA said that "half-solutions" are unacceptable and that Israel must completely stop construction in the settlements.
The Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam reported on Saturday that Mitchell is to inform PA President Mahmoud Abbas by phone that the U.S. administration has been unable to obtain Israel's consent to stop construction completely.
Senior Palestinian officials have been following ambiguous statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has hinted that an agreement with Israel is in the offing.
Senior officials say American assent to even limited Israeli construction in the settlements would once again damage the American position as an honest broker in the Middle East. U.S. President Barack Obama told American Jewish leaders last week that his clear position against settlements has strengthened his position as an honest broker with the Arabs.
Over the past few days, Abbas has reiterated concerns over continued construction in the settlements, saying he would not renew negotiations with Israel as long as such construction persisted. However, senior Palestinian officials said that soon after the Obama administration reaches an agreement with Israel and the Arab countries, it intends to renew negotiations on a final status agreement. If the PA refuses to join, as Abbas apparently articulated, it will appear to be obstructing the peace process.
In any case, the PA will probably seek to postpone talks until after the Sixth Fatah Congress and general elections, scheduled for August 4. Sources in the PA said talks between Hamas and Fatah, which were to resume between July 25-28, would probably be postponed until after the Fatah Congress opens in Bethlehem.
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Israel: UN learned of Hezbollah arms cache months ago
By Barak Ravid, Zvi Bar'el, Amos Harel and Jack Khoury
Tags: Hezbollah, Israel News
UNIFIL learned a few months ago about the cache of Katyusha rockets that exploded in the southern Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim last Tuesday, a government source in Jerusalem said. The source said UNIFIL had precise information about the cache and a number of other installations where Hezbollah is storing rockets, but that UNIFIL had done nothing.
A discussion is scheduled in the UN Security Council for late August on renewing UNIFIL's mandate in southern Lebanon; Israel hopes last week's explosion will show the need to strengthen UNIFIL. Israel believes that UNIFIL could sharpen its rules of engagement and act more forcefully with the Lebanese army in southern Lebanese villages.
Government officials dealing with the Lebanon issue say UNIFIL soldiers encounter armed Hezbollah fighters or are detained by them, but the incidents do not appear in the reports submitted to the Security Council.
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On Saturday it was reported that that area residents prevented UNIFIL soldiers from searching an abandoned building near the building that blew up last week, in which it is believed Hezbollah stored weapons, against UN Security Council resolution 1701. A Lebanese security official said dozens of civilians surrounded UNIFIL vehicles and blocked the road leading to the building. The UNIFIL forces retreated with the assistance of the Lebanese army.
Earlier, Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech marking a year since the exchange of Lebanese prisoners for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev; the Hezbollah leader said Israel still held one Lebanese prisoner and a number of bodies, and that there is still uncertainty surrounding the disappearence of four Iranian diplomats.
Nasrallah said he would continue working to bring back all Lebanese prisoners and remains from Israel, implying that the Lebanese government is not up to the task.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah "allowed" 12 Lebanese civilians to infiltrate a few dozen meters into Israeli territory on Mount Dov on Saturday near Shaba Farms, raising a Lebanese flag. They returned to Lebanon shortly thereafter. The Israel Defense Forces said it did not respond because the civilians were unarmed and not dangerous.
The border between Israel and Lebanon in the area is not fenced. IDF lookouts said the group, which included children, also had a Hezbollah flag, but did not raise it.
Israeli forces were placed on alert and the IDF informed UNIFIL command of the matter, asking them to intervene. By the time the UNIFIL force went to the site, the group was on its way back to Lebanese territory.
Security officials say the civilian incursion was intended to draw attention away from the explosion, which embarrassed Hezbollah, as it revealed the presence of weapons in southern Lebanon.
A senior defense official told Haaretz that he believed Hezbollah does not want to escalate the situation in the north, but that the group was seeking to attack Israeli targets abroad.
The infiltration of civilians onto Mount Dov is also apparently connected to Saudi and American pressure on Syria to demarcate its border with Lebanon to bring about an Israeli withdrawal from Shaba Farms. Such an Israeli withdrawal would neutralize Hezbollah's justification to continue to remain an armed group to liberate occupied Lebanese territory. Nasrallah is not part of these diplomatic efforts and views them as an Israel-American-Saudi "plot."
Hezbollah says the government and foreign interests are not the "owners" of the Shaba Farms "project," and if anyone is to make political hay from an Israeli withdrawal, it must be Hezbollah.
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Ahmadinejad caves to Iran hard-liners, fires VP for 'pro-Israel' remarks
By The Associated Press
Tags: Ahmadinejad, Israel News
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday caved in to an order from the country's supreme leader and dismissed his top deputy after remaining defiant for five days.
The official IRNA news agency quoted Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, a top
Ahmadinejad aide, as saying that Esfandiar Rahim Mashai is no longer the first vice president.
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The aide said that following the public statement of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's order to dismiss the president's choice, Mashai doesn't consider himself first vice president, Hashemi told IRNA.
Mashai stirred controversy among hardliners by once saying Iranians were
friends to the Israelis. Ahmadinejad resisted pressure to dismiss him for
weeks.
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Last update - 19:30 24/07/2009
Iranian airliner skids off runway killing 17
By The Associated Press
Tags: Iran, Israel News
An Iranian passenger plane burst into flames and skidded off the runway as it was landing in a northeastern city, killing 17 people, said the state news agency.
Footage from Iran's PressTV showed the front end of the plane had been sheared off, leaving mangled wreckage where the cockpit had once been. The rest of the plane appeared largely intact, though it rested awkwardly on its tail.
The Russian-made Ilyushin plane from the privately owned Aria Arilines was carrying 153 passengers and flew from the capital Tehran to the northeastern city of Mashhad, 600 miles away.
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Local official Ghahrman Rashid told the state news agency that another 19
people injured in the crash and that all survivors had been evacuated from the scene.
On July 15, an Iranian passenger plane crashed soon after take off, killing 168 people aboard.
It was the latest in a string of deadly crashes in recent years that have
highlighted Iran's difficulties in maintaining its aging fleet of planes.
Iranian airlines, including state-run ones, are chronically strapped for cash, and maintenance has suffered, experts say.
U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft and make it difficult to get European spare parts or planes as well. The country has come to rely on Russian aircraft, many of them Soviet-era planes that are harder to get parts for since the Soviet Union's fall
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Last update - 18:23 24/07/2009
U.S. to transfer $200 million to Palestinians
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Palestinians
The United States has transferred $200 million to the Palestinians to help ease their government's growing budget crisis.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary announced the aid in a video conference with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Friday.
Fayyad's budget deficit is growing and he has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from commercial banks to cover the government payroll. Fayyad says the reasons for the shortfall are the continued Israeli restrictions on the Palestinian economy and the failure of some donors, particularly Arab states, to make good on their pledges.
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Clinton said the Obama adminstration is making progress toward creating the environment for resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
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Last update - 13:50 24/07/2009
Iran Ayatollah urges Ahmadinejad to sack 'friend of Israel' VP
By DPA
Tags: Ayatollah Khatami, Iran
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who led Friday prayers in Tehran, once again called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sack his acting president, Esfandir Rahim-Mashaie.
"I hope that the president will pay attention to critics and especially the demand by the supreme leader ?Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? and revise the appointment of his first vice-president," the ayatollah said.
Ahmadinejad appointed Rahim-Mashaie was last week as first vice-president, making him de-facto acting president until his own inauguration on Sunday.
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"The demand by the leadership should be implemented by the president at the earliest term without any hesitation," said the cleric, himself a supporter of Ahmadinejad.
Rahim-Mashaie's appointment led to widespread criticism even within pro-Ahmadinejad circles, owing to an earlier remark by the vice-president that Iran's political differences with Israel had nothing to do with Israelis and Jews.
His remark that Iran was also a friend of the Israeli people sparked particularly harsh protests and calls for his resignation. Rahim-Mashaie at that time served as vice-president and head of the tourism organization.
Parliament also demanded the vice-president be sacked, or they were to take the issue to Supreme Leader Khamenei who, according to constitution, has the final say on all state affairs.
Khamenei has reportedly informed the president already about his wish that Rahim-Mashaie should be replaced.
But Ahmadinejad has ignored the criticism against Rahim-Mashaie - who is also the father-in-law of his son - even though he himself is known for his harsh anti-Israeli stance.
"Rahim-Mashaie is one of the persons most loyal to the revolution and a servant of the people. He has been appointed as first vice- president and he will stay in this position," Ahmadinejad said.
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami also criticized the opposition's continued claims of fraud in the June 12 presidential election and their refusal to acknowledge Ahmadinejad's re-election.
The ayatollah especially condemned a call by former president Mohammad Khatami on holding a referendum on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's presidency.
"Hello, good morning, the referendum was made on June 12 and over 24.5 out of 40 million voted for Ahmadinejad and therefore the president's government is absolutely legitimate," Ahmad Khatami said.
He reiterated that both the leadership and the establishment were too powerful to be harmed by the protests.
He also criticized opposition groups of having sought support from outside Iran and Western media for their activities, saying these supports would eventually prove futile.
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Last update - 09:53 24/07/2009
Nuclear Iran wouldn't pose existential threat to Israel
By Gabi Sheffer
Tags: iran, netanyahu, israel news
There is no need to hear the repeated declarations by Benjamin Netanyahu, his political allies, his aides (particularly Uzi Arad) and senior officers to know that the state of the Iranian regime and the perception of the looming Iranian nuclear threat has become a political tool for them.
They repeat the same mantras that the current Iranian regime will continue to rule, that it will become even more extreme, that Iran will attain a nuclear military capability, that it will not hesitate to use it directly or through terrorist intermediaries, and that it would set off reactionary nuclear armament in other Middle Eastern countries which, in their view, would cause a disaster.
Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and other politicians and generals in the West and Middle East have voiced more restrained fears. Most observers say that if the major powers do not take significant steps to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, even if the regime there changes in character, its nuclearization is irreversible. In addition, more liberal leaders in Iran would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against anyone they hate for political and religious reasons. At the top of the list, of course, are the United States and its allies, particularly Israel.
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These individuals offer a variety of possible actions, beginning with the vital, immediate need to use force against Iran, which would compel it to stop developing the atomic bomb; to continue with the need to combine diplomatic pressure with harsh sanctions; and to hold direct and indirect diplomatic contacts in order to persuade the Iranian regime to stop developing nuclear weapons. In the background, preparations are being made for military operations against various nuclear installations in Iran.
Undoubtably, it is important to force Iran - like any other state irrespective of the regime in place - to stop its nuclear program that will lead to it attaining the atomic bomb. Yet even if there are no diplomatic contacts, which the United States and other countries would like to have in order to stop Iran's nuclear program; even if the sanctions are instituted, if indeed they are enforced effectively they will not have an influence on Iran; and even if the threat of military action does not leave an impression on the religious leadership and politicians there, the most basic question must be asked: Does Iran indeed pose a real existential threat rather than an imagined existential threat against those states that are threatened by it, particularly Israel?
The answer is that there are three basic reservations regarding these much-talked-about concerns over Iran.
First, like other small states, Iran seeks to attain nuclear weapons in order to deter other nuclear-armed states from attacking it. So if Iran is not attacked, it will not attack.
Second, Iran's goal is primarily to boost its influence in the Muslim world.
Third, and most important, with the exception of two atomic bombs that were needlessly used by none other than the democratic and liberal United States - since Japan was very near surrender - no other country possessing nuclear weapons has used them.
The other reasons for not using nuclear weapons are numerous. The main reason is these states' fears, including Iran's, of a response by other nuclear-armed countries. Even if any country, including Israel, were to be attacked by an Iranian nuclear weapon, other countries would respond with force. This is not because of the damage that would be caused to the attacked country, but particularly due to the fear that they too would be harmed.
Other reasons for refraining from using nuclear weapons include moral considerations, fear of mistakenly striking allies in the region, concern over widespread destabilization and other related factors.
The conclusion is that even if Iran attains nuclear weapons, it does not pose a real existential threat to other countries, Israel included. It would behoove Israeli politicians and defense officials to take these considerations into account and cease disseminating statements about the existence of this threat and military operations against Iran.
Even if the Iranian threat is not completely imagined, it is completely weak and the Israeli public should understand this rather than allow itself to be dragged into supporting a destructive military operation.
The writer is a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Last update - 08:19 24/07/2009
Lieberman: Iran nukes could spark world-threatening arms race
By The Associated Press
Tags: Iran, South America
If Iran develops nuclear capabilities it will start an arms race in the Middle East that would threaten the world, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday.
Lieberman said at the start of his four-day trip to Argentina that Iran is the "biggest sponsor of world terror organizations such as Hamas, [Islamic] Jihad and Hezbollah."
"If Iran would achieve nuclear capacity, we'll see a crazy nuclear-armed race in our region that will be a threat not only to Israel but to the rest of the world," he told reporters.
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Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but Israel and the U.S. reject that.
Argentina is the second stage of a 10-day tour of four South American nations aimed at staunching Iran's growing influence in the region.
Lieberman also met with Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana to discuss preparations for President Shimon Peres' visit in November, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America. Argentine prosecutors say Iran and Hezbollah were behind the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in the city that killed 85. Iran has denied involvement.
There was also another bomb attack in 1992 against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people. The attacks remain unsolved.
During a Wednesday meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Lieberman asked Latin America's biggest nation to use its influence to help halt Iran's nuclear program. Lieberman noted that Brazil has good ties both with Muslim countries and with Israel.
The Iranian representative in Bolivia, Masoud Edrisi, accused Israel of using Lieberman's trip to try to undermine Iran's relations with Latin American nations.
"Its objective is propaganda against the good relations that exist between Iran and Latin America," Edrisi told The Associated Press.
Israel sees Iran as a major strategic threat, fearing it is developing a nuclear weapon and noting its development of long-range ballistic missiles. Concerns have been sharpened by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated references to the destruction of the Jewish state.
Israeli officials also have expressed concern over Iran's growing ties with leftist-led nations in Latin America. Iranian companies are building apartments, cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela and the two countries leaders have exchanged visits. Iran has also opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua.
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Last update - 08:04 24/07/2009
U.S.: We won't exert economic pressure on Israel
By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Tags: U.S., settlements
The White House on Thursday brushed aside any suggestion that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was planning to exert economic pressure on Israel to halt West Bank settlement construction.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that a remark made by deputy spokesman Robert Wood on Wednesday had been "misinterpreted."
"There had been some reporting after yesterday's briefing that I think represents some misinterpretation," he said. "There's been some reporting that the United States is contemplating financial or economic pressure against Israel. We are not contemplating such action. Clearly, this why [Middle East envoy] George Mitchell is in the region today, talking to all of the parties that we believe - about what they need to do to set conditions to resume negotiations so that all of these issues can be resolved through peaceful negotiations," Crowley told reporters.
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When Wood was asked Wednesday by one pf the reporters at the daily briefing whether the U.S. was ready to exert financial pressure on Israel, to convince Prime MInister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to freeze the settlements, Wood answered: "It's premature to talk about that," setting off speculation that the U.S. might be considering such an option.
Tensions between Israel and the U.S. have risen recently following the revelation that Israel planned to build some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting on Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."
Meanwhile, Mitchell was planning to arrive in Syria on Saturday, the State Department announced Friday, for his second visit in Damascus since he took up his post.
The Obama administration had a series of meetings with Syria and hopes the diplomatic outreach will encourage Damascus to play a positive role in both the Middle East peace process and also in Iraq.
Syria is seen as a major player in this process because of its support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, as well as the country's intermittent peace talks with Israel.
Turkey has said it is prepared to resume mediating indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel.
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Last update - 02:53 24/07/2009
Reform leader: Most U.S. Jews back settlement freeze
By Natasha Mozgovaya
Tags: israel news, reform judaism
WASHINGTON - The vast majority of American Jews back a settlement freeze, according to Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism. "American Jews don't like when their government is at odds with the government of Israel," said Yoffie, whose organization's 1.5 million members make it the largest Jewish denomination in the U.S.
But beyond that, he stressed in a telephone interview with Haaretz from his New York office on Monday, "there are very important strategic issues at stake here. Iran is a real threat, and we all, including the liberal camp, take it very seriously. In order to deal with this threat, you need the support and friendship of the government of the United States. And you need the support and friendship of the people of the United States."
That is why the current dispute between Israel and the U.S. over construction in the settlements and East Jerusalem is so disturbing, he said. "This is a time that requires smooth and strong relations with [the U.S.] government. It's a time for differences to be worked through. It's a time for compromise and moderation. It's not a time to be involved in a dramatic public dispute."
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"Settlement activity at the West Bank is not popular here," he continued. "It never has been. It's absolutely the last thing in the world you want to be involved in a public dispute over. Because not only you won't have the support of this government - you won't have the support of the American people either. Do you think nevertheless it was the right thing to accentuate solely this issue? Some claim this allowed the Palestinians and the Arab governments to sit and wait until the settlement freeze.
"Settlement freeze at the West Bank is something that we've supported," he replied, dodging the question. "I believe that it's possible to reach some kind of understanding on it - so whatever compromise or understanding is involved there, they need to do that."
At last week's White House meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and 16 Jewish leaders, Yoffie continued, "there wasn't a single person around that table - not one - who on substance supported settlement activity."
Some of the groups weren't invited.
"Every single mainstream grass-roots group with a significant constituency was invited. They broadly represent American Jewry. They raised issues having to deal with an impression of imbalance - these are legitimate concerns and I identify with some of those as well. But when it came to substance, not a single one told the president: 'You're wrong.' And that's because they know that's unpopular here. It's unpopular with government officials, it's unpopular with all Americans, and it's unpopular with American Jews. I understand and appreciate Israeli political realities, but American support is absolutely vital to assure Israel's strategic interests. And some accommodations have to be found."
Asked about reports of a growing distance between Obama and the Jewish community, Yoffie replied, "Absolutely not. If you look at the people surrounding the president and advising him - obviously Rahm Emanuel, obviously David Axelrod, Dennis Ross who just moved to the National Security Council, Dan Shapiro who works there, Hillary Clinton has a long record of strong commitment to Israel. To look at this team and to imply that they are going to abandon Israel - it's just absurd."
You were one of the pioneers of Jewish outreach to the American Muslim community. How optimistic you are about the president's effort, that some call naive?
Yoffie replied that outreach to American Muslims, whose leadership is "middle-class and professional," made obvious sense. "In terms of the Muslim world altogether - I share that skepticism. I don't want to bring this liberal naive 'let's all get along' approach to this, not at all. The Muslim world is huge and diverse. Of course, we should see if there are pockets of moderation, and [if] Sunni fear of Shi'a, and particularly Iran, might create an opportunity for an anti-Iranian coalition. And it could be eventually good for the prospects of the Arab-Israeli peace."
Outreach to Iran didn't seem too successful so far.
"I am really not an optimist in the short term," he agreed, though stressing that the Iranian situation is very fluid right now. "And if we look at what's happening on the Palestinian side and in the Arab world, [it] is not a reason for optimism about a secure peace in the near future. We want the president who wants to exploit the opportunities that may exist because of the Iranian situation, because of the Sunni fears. The Palestinian reality is not particularly encouraging either, but [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas is basically a moderate force and I think Americans are right to try and strengthen him. To just give up doesn't make sense, and it isn't in America's interest any more than it's in Israel's interest."
Do you believe Obama's plan will work?
"I think the status quo is deeply and profoundly problematic. I think there is some possibility he can make progress and move us forward - I'm not sure. I think he is wise and right to do so, and the alternative is doing nothing while additional settlements are built and the possibility of the two-state solution becomes impossible."
Asked about the American Jewish community, Yoffie said he did not think Obama's election produced "a major shift of opinion within the Jewish community. [The] American Jewish community is moderate and centrist; it always has been. They supported [the] two-state solution, on the other hand they are very and appropriately skeptical about the Arab and Palestinian intentions, they want to see facts on the ground. They want to see America active, but they don't want America to impose a settlement."
However, he continued, "I'm very very worried about the students. On campuses, you have outspoken leftist groups that tend to have there more influence than elsewhere because of the dynamics of how students operate, and these groups tend to be very anti-Israel."
"I don't think Jewish students are abandoning Israel," he continued, "but the groups on the left are coming forward and saying 'look, you have all this settlement activity. You have all these facts on the ground. There is no way to have a two-state solution, you have to have a one-state solution. One person one vote, one state, one people.' What's happening at the campuses can become a harbinger of what's happening at the general political culture. It's very important for us to counter that."
Yoffie also expressed concern about the recent ultra-Orthodox riots in Jerusalem: "It's distressing and it's worrisome and in some measure it's incomprehensible to American Jews. These stories don't do us any good in the broader community. Recent polls of how Americans look upon Israel are quite distressing."
The absence of full recognition for the Reform movement in Israel is "terribly frustrating" as well, he said, and most American Jews are concerned by "the absence of religious pluralism."
Nevertheless, "we don't want these matters to determine how American Jews look at Israel. We want to strengthen the ties of the American Jews to Israel and acknowledge that Israel is not a perfect place."
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Last update - 08:58 24/07/2009
Watchdog: British anti-Semitism doubled after Gaza war
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: anti-semitism, gaza war
"Britain is setting a shameful new record in anti-Semitic incidents this year," Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne said Thursday in reaction to a report by Britain's Jewish community which speaks of an unprecedented number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.
The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Semitism and provides security for the Jewish community in Britain, said that it had recorded 609 anti-Semitic incidents across the U.K. from January to June this year - over double the 276 for the same period last year, mostly connected to Israel's operation in Gaza.
Huhne added that "it is absurd that home-grown bigots should hold British Jews responsible for the actions of a foreign government. We cannot have overseas conflicts echoed on Britain's streets."
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The report names 2009 the worst year since CST's records began in 1984, with the number of incidents already exceeding that of the previous record year, 598 in 2006. Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza and southern Israel is cited in the report as the main reason for the record high, since it "produced an anti-Semitic reaction."
Of the incidents, 286 occurred in January, with over half of them (158) featuring direct reference to the fighting.
"This was by far the worst single month ever recorded, but the anti-Semitic surge continued," the report said. February saw 111 anti-Semitic incidents. Levels had returned to "normal" by May, with 51 incidents.
In response to the report, British Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said: "I am deeply concerned by the rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents as reported by the CST today. The British government is firmly committed to tackling and reducing all forms of racism including anti-Semitism. We simply cannot tolerate those who seek to use foreign conflicts to justify racism and criminal acts against any U.K. citizen."
"The U.K.'s Jewish community is an integral part of the rich fabric that makes up modern Britain and must be able to live their lives free from fear of verbal or physical attack. The Government was in regular contact with senior community figures and the CST during the Gaza conflict and remains alert to their concerns," he added.
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Last update - 09:12 24/07/2009
U.S. warns Israel: Don't build up West Bank corridor
By Aluf Benn
Tags: israel news, west bank
The U.S. administration has issued a stiff warning to Israel not to build in the area known as E-1, which lies between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. Any change in the status quo in E-1 would be "extremely damaging," even "corrosive," the message said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed in the past to finally build the controversial E-1 housing project - as have several premiers before him, though none has done so due to American pressure. He opened his recent election campaign with a visit to Ma'aleh Adumim in which he declared: "I will link Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim via the Mevasseret Adumim neighborhood, E-1. I want to see one continuous string of built-up Jewish neighborhoods."
He has also warned in the past that failure to build in E-1 would allow the Palestinians to create territorial contiguity around Jerusalem.
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Just before his government was installed this spring, the media reported that Netanyahu had reached an agreement with his largest coalition partner, Yisrael Beiteinu, to unfreeze construction in E-1. However, that clause was ultimately not included in the coalition agreement.
The plans for E-1 call for building 3,500 housing units, along with commercial areas and tourism sites, to create a single urban expanse stretching from Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim and strengthen Israel's hold on East Jerusalem, which would then be completely surrounded by Jewish neighborhoods.
The United States has always vehemently opposed this plan, fearing it would deprive a future Palestinian state of territorial contiguity, cut the West Bank in two and sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank - all of which would thwart any hope of signing a final-status agreement and establishing a Palestinian state.
President Barack Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, vigorously opposed building in E-1 during the terms of prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Sharon did approve construction of a police station in E-1, and under Olmert, infrastructure work in the area continued. But neither ever approved construction of either the residential units or the commercial buildings, for fear of a confrontation with the United States.
Four years ago, after resigning from Sharon's government, Netanyahu attacked him for giving in to American pressure on E-1. "A sovereign government must build in its eternal capital," he said. "Sharon set a precedent that will lead to the division of Jerusalem."
The Obama's administration - which opposes all construction in East Jerusalem, even of a few houses - would be even more outraged by a large-scale project such as E-1.
It is demanding a moratorium on Jewish building in East Jerusalem until an agreement is reached on the city's legal status, arguing that the cumulative effect of even small-scale projects would destroy any chance of a peace agreement and arouse fierce opposition in the Arab world, especially among East Jerusalem Arabs. Small projects include the construction of 20 apartments in the Shepherd Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood or plans to build new Jewish housing in Silwan.
At Sunday's cabinet meeting, however, Netanyahu rejected this American stance. "United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Our sovereignty in it is not subject to appeal, and among other things, this means that Jerusalem residents can buy apartments anywhere in the city," he said. "We cannot accept the idea that Jews should not have the right to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem."
Next week, three senior American officials will visit Israel: special envoy George Mitchell, National Security Advisor James Jones and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Mitchell will continue his efforts to reach agreement on a settlement freeze, including in East Jerusalem, while the other two will focus on the Iranian threat.
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Last update - 22:35 23/07/2009
New Yorkers call for boycott of Motorola over dealings with IDF
By Grace Wermenbol
Tags: IDF, Israel News, West Bank
Protesters in the New York borough of Queens held a rally last week to call for a boycott of Motorola over the firm's business dealings with the Israel Defense Forces.
At the demonstration, which was organized by the New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, protestors waved Palestinian flags and signs saying: "Goodbye Moto, Goodbye Apartheid," and "Boycott Motorola, Free Palestine."
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The group also wrote songs and conducted street theater to draw the attention of passersby.
The organization's spokesperson, Aaron Levitt, told Haaretz this week that over 300 people have signed a petition for a boycott of Motorola after just four events in New York City.
"Every time we go out to flyer, we meet many people who express support for the campaign and even sign our pledge to boycott Motorola," said Levitt. His organization has more events planned for the coming month.
In June 2007, the New England United Methodist Church named Motorola as one of a number of firms that supported Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Who Profits, a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace, also lists the company as profiting from Israel's activities in the Palestinian territories.
Motorola has been active in Israel since 1964; it currently provides the IDF with a cellular network through a subsidiary, MIRS.
MIRS provided the IDF with a military-encrypted cellular communication system, nicknamed "Mountain Rose," which is worth $100 million and was especially constructed for field conditions.
The company's radar detectors' and surveillance systems have been reportedly installed in West Bank settlements. Both of these systems had a price tag of more than $90 million.
The department responsible for installing these systems was sold in April 2009 to an Israeli company, Aeronautics Defense Systems, after Motorola had come under fire from several groups in the U.S. over its activities in Israel.
Motorola spokesman Rusty Brashear said the sale of the unit was not triggered by the protests, but because "it primarily doesn't fit in our portfolio."
The groups the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Palestinian National Committee and other organizations worldwide also support a boycott of the phone company.
Motorola was previously boycotted due to its support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. The company supplied South African police with mobile radio transmitters used to suppress demonstrations against the government
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Last update - 20:59 23/07/2009
Netanyahu to Arabs: Saudi plan can help bring peace
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
Tags: Saudi, Arab, Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in comments addressed to the Arab world Thursday that a 2002 Saudi initiative could help efforts to reach a regional peace agreement.
"We appreciate the efforts by Arab states to advance the peace initiative," said Netanyahu. "If these proposals are not final, they can create an atmosphere in which a comprehensive peace can be reached."
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The prime minister made the comments at a reception marking an Egyptian national holiday outside Tel Aviv.
He added: "We hope in the months ahead to forge peace with the Palestinians and to expand that into a vision of a broader regional peace."
The initiative, backed by all 22 members of the Arab League, offers Israel full normalization in return for a withdrawal from territory conquered in the 1967 Six Day War, a Palestinian state and an equitable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
In June, Egyptian sources said that Egypt and Saudi Arabia had been threatening to rescind the Arab peace initiative, and pressuring U.S. President Barack Obama to set a two-year deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
They said Egyptian officials told Obama that the Arab peace initiative would crumble unless some real progress was made before the deadline.
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Last update - 20:00 23/07/2009
UN accuses Hezbollah of violating 2006 Lebanon cease-fire
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Tags: Israel News, IDF, Hezbollah
For the first time ever, the United Nations on Thursday accused Hezbollah of violating the UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon war, fought between Israel and the Shi'ite militant organization.
The UN's Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Le Roy, said Hezbollah had been operating a weapons depot in south Lebanon that was the site of an explosion last week.
He told member states there was solid evidence that the cache belonged to Hezbollah, but added that it was not known whether the weapons had been stockpiled there before or after Resolution 1701, which called for the cease-fire, was passed.
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Le Roy also touched upon claims that Hezbollah is disrupting the activities of UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon. He said there was evidence that Hezbollah organized the group of villagers that prevented UNIFIL soldiers from searching an abandoned building near the structure that blew up last week.
The official made the comments during an emergency closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council. The United States called the session to discuss the situation in south Lebanon following a number of security incidents in the area.
The session was the first time when the UN explicitly accused Hezbollah of breaching the resolution; all 15 Security Council members, apart from Libya, agreed that Hezbollah was responsible for the violation.
A senior Hezbollah official said Wednesday, the explosion along the border with Israel was set off by old shells, not a secret arms cache.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon called the ammunition that had exploded a serious violation of the ceasefire. Resolution 1701, which was accepted by both Israel and Hezbollah, called for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon.
The Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN said Thursday the closed-door meeting was called after Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev sent two letters of complaint to the Secretary-General and Security Council.
On Tuesday, the Lebanese Army said it had uncovered a militant Islamist network that had been plotting to carry out attacks against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and the army itself.
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Last update - 18:53 23/07/2009
Clinton: Iran unable to respond to U.S. overtures
By Reuters
Tags: U.S., Israel News, Clinton
The United States is still willing to 'reach out' to Iran but political turmoil there means Tehran is not now in a position to respond, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the BBC on Thursday.
U.S. President Barack Obama made diplomatic overtures to Iran before its June 12 election, but Clinton told the BBC: "We haven't had any response."
She added: "We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do, even now, despite our absolute condemnation of what they've done in the election and since, but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."
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Her comments were published on the BBC's website.
The re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a poll the opposition denounced as rigged, triggered days of mass street protests in which at least 20 people were killed.
The contested vote and the authorities' harsh response to the unrest have divided Iran's ruling elite.
Washington and Tehran have had hostile relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Iran rejects suspicions harbored in Israel, the U.S. and other Western nations that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program.
Clinton's comments Thursday came after she pledged Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor later criticized Clinton for the remark, telling Army Radio that it implied a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran.
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Last update - 18:33 23/07/2009
France summons Israel envoy over building in East Jerusalem
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
Tags: Israel News, Settlement
A senior official in France's Foreign Ministry questioned Israel's ambassador, Daniel Shek, on Thursday over Israeli construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem, which he demanded be halted immediately.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said an immediate freeze in settlement construction, including in east Jerusalem, was indispensable for preserving a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He said the move was also necessary for allowing the resumption of peace talks.
Shek said in response that Jerusalem is not a settlement, and that construction in the capital is carried out legally and in accordance with municipal decisions.
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He added that both Jews and Arabs have complete freedom to live wherever they desire in Jerusalem.
Chevallier said Shek was also told in the meeting with the ministry's political director that Israel should open checkpoints regularly to allow the reconstruction of Gaza.
The French ministry expressed concern about difficulties French diplomats have experienced in getting around the Palestinian territories because of Israeli security measures.
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Last update - 18:01 23/07/2009
Opposition leader Mousavi's brother-in-law arrested in Iran
By The Associated Press
Tags: Hossein Mousavi, Iran
The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said Thursday that her brother is among the hundreds arrested in Iran's postelection crackdown, and she warned authorities not to publish any forced confessions from him or other detainees.
More than 500 people remain imprisoned after the heavy crackdown against
protests that erupted in support of Mousavi after the disputed June 12
e
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lection. Among them are many top politicians from pro-reform political
parties, human rights lawyers, journalists and activists.
Some hard-line officials have claimed that detainees have confessed to being in the service of foreign enemies to fuel the protests as part of a soft revolution against the government. The opposition denies the accusations and says any confessions have been obtained under torture or duress.
"Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, told the semiofficial ILNA news agency that her 62-year-old brother was arrested more than a month ago. We have tried all legal and peaceful means to try to win the release of him and other detainees," Rahnavard said, adding that she was speaking out now because some officials have spoken of allegations against her brother.
She said her brother, Shahpour Kazemi, a communications engineer, was
apolitical and that accusations of provoking riots or connections to
foreigners ... are unimaginable.
She warned those that are making accusations against detainees that a divine anger will catch them and the nation will reject them.
Rahnavard, a former dean of Tehran's al-Zahra University, campaigned alongside her husband in the election, a rarity for a candidate's wife, which made her a star among women and student supporters. Her original name is Zohreh Kazemi but she changed it in the 1960s when she became an activist against the U.S.-backed shah, and she was a prominent activist in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.
This week, the political chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Yadollah Javan, issued a public call for authorities to make public any confessions to prove to Iranians that the opposition protests were foreign-inspired.
Mousavi claims to have won the presidential election and that President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory was fraudulent. Hundreds of thousands of
supporters marched in the streets in the weeks after the elections, until the crackdown by police, Revolutionary Guards and Basiji militiamen. At least 20 people were killed in the crackdown - though human rights groups say the number is likely far higher.
Mousavi on Wednesday said he intends to soon issue a document for moving ahead with the opposition campaign that he said would go beyond forming a political front or party, as some aides have said he will do. He said the document would have a plan for activating neglected parts of the constitution, according to opposition Web sites.
He did not elaborate, but warned that the situation in Iran was heading in the direction of becoming more militarized, a reference to the increasing power of security forces in the postelection crackdown. He repeated his stance that Ahmadinejad's government does not have the support of people's vote and therefore does not have legitimacy.
On Thursday, members of the pro-government Basij militia arrested the father of a 27-year-old who was killed during a June 20 protest, the pro-Mousavi Norooz news Web site reported. Basijis arrested the father of Masou Hashemzadeh from his Tehran home and collected black signs of mourning at the house's entrance, it said. Pro-reform Web sites have reported that families of slain protesters have been intimidated not to mourn publicly.
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Last update - 17:43 23/07/2009
Report: Israel asks Turkey to renew mediation of Syria talks
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel News, Israel, Syria
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he has been asked by Israel to mediate the renewal of indirect peace talks with Syria, UPI reported.
Erdogan made the comments prior to meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, the news agency quoted Qatari newspaper al-Watan as reporting. There has been no official Israeli response to the Turkish prime minister's statement, UPI said.
The official Syrian news agency SANA said Thursday that Erdogan and Assad discussed the need for a comprehensive peace deal in the Middle East.
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SANA said such an accord can occur only if Israel is willing to make a deal based on "the implementation of international legitimacy resolutions and the Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan, to the line of June 4, 1967."
Israeli and Syrian officials met for indirect peace talks a number of times in Turkey during the tenure of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The talks came to a halt last year following Israel's 3-week offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and after Olmert became embroiled in multiple corruption investigations, which led to his resignation.
According to SANA, the pair also agreed to work toward lifting the Israeli-led blockade on Gaza.
The leaders also agreed on "the importance of continuing exerting efforts towards the achievement of the Palestinian-Palestinian reconciliation that ensures the unity of the Palestinian ranks in the struggle for the restoration of rights, on top of which the establishment of the independent Palestinian state," the Syrian news agency said.
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Last update - 16:37 23/07/2009
Israel doesn't see U.S. limiting loan guarantees
By Reuters
Tags: Settlements, Steinitz, U.S.
Israel does not expect the United States to limit use of loan guarantees despite a dispute with Washington over building in East Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Thursday.
"I don't see any limitations on the horizon. It's not time to be concerned about that," Steinitz told reporters.
He added that Israel would prefer not to use them.
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"I don't see any need to use them in the near future," Steinitz said. "But it's good they are there."
The finance minister noted that prior disputes over settlement building have led the U.S. to deduct rather than cancel the guarantees.
In 2002, to help Israel deal with a recession caused by a global downturn and a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, the U.S. provided a package of $9 billion in loan guarantees, where Israel could sell bonds internationally with the backing of the United States.
The guarantees have been instrumental in allowing Israel to raise money more cheaply and in sovereign ratings upgrades by credit rating agencies.
Israel still has $3.8 billion left to use by 2011 after already issuing $4.1 billion in bonds backed by the U.S. and a $1.1 billion deduction for Israeli settlement building and concerns over the West Bank security fence.
Palestinians are looking to set up a state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
Last month, the U.S. re-approved Israel's loan guarantee program, subject to Israel meeting fiscal targets. It came despite the rift between Israel and its main ally over Israel's rejection of U.S. demands to halt settlement building.
The tensions have grown as Israel also plans to build a residential project in East Jerusalem.
In recent years, Israel has opted to issue bonds without U.S. backing. Its latest offering using its own creditworthiness was a sale of $1.5 billion in 10-year notes this past March at 262.5 basis points over U.S. Treasuries.
Steinitz said Israel's economy remained weak but was starting to stabilize.
He pointed to positive developments in recent weeks including the first rise in the Bank of Israel's economic performance index in 11 months in June, passing of the 2009 and 2010 state budgets, Standard & Poor's affirming Israel's credit ratings and stabilizing tax collections.
He also rejected demands from union leaders for a cost of living adjustment due to a spike in the annual inflation rate to 3.6 percent in June.
Steinitz mainly blamed government tax increases for the rise in the June consumer price index although he said it appeared that consumer demand was starting to improve.
"I don't think inflation is starting to rear its head," he said. "We need at least a half year to determine if inflation is starting to creep up."
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Last update - 11:44 23/07/2009
Israeli, Thai firms to build Bangkok's tallest tower
By Reuters
Tags: real estate, IBD, israel news
A joint Israeli-Thai venture unveiled Thursday plans to build Bangkok's tallest tower.
Thailand's Pace Development Co and Israel's Industrial Buildings Corp Ltd. (IBC) unveiled the $410 million joint venture to build a 77-storey, multipurpose high-rise in central Bangkok.
The 310-meter Mananakhon project, which will be the tallest building in the Thai capital, housing 200 luxury residential units, a 150-room five-star hotel and a shopping mall, is due for completion in late 2012, the companies said.
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According to IBC's chief executive, Dalit Braun, the investment is the biggest in Asia for her company, Israel's biggest property and infrastructure developer.
Pace and IBC respectively hold 50.1 percent and 49.9 percent in the venture, the largest property project in Bangkok in more than a decade, Pace's chief executive, Surapoj Techakraisri, told reporters.
Mahanakhon's residential units, priced from $900,000 to $8.8 million, are being sold on 99-year leasehold terms.
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Is Romania human egg scandal a case of anti-Semitism?
By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, anti-Semitism
By comparing Israeli doctors to Nazis, the Romanian Medical Council needlessly risks triggering anti-Semitism, World Medical Association President Dr. Yoram Blachar told Haaretz.
Blachar, an Israeli who heads the international watchdog on medical ethics, was reacting to public statements by Prof. Vasile Astarastoae, president of the Romanian Medical Council, who on Tuesday equated Israeli doctors in Romania to medical personnel at Auschwitz. Astarastoae was commenting on Monday's police raid on the Israeli-owned "Sabyc" clinic in Bucharest, and the arrest of gynecologist Harry Mironescu and his son Yair Miron, both Israelis. They are accused of illegal trade in ova.
Astarastoae is quoted as saying that the two arrested Israelis "bought body parts from poor, vulnerable people, without informing them on risks or telling them they were part of a research."
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The two Israeli doctors denied breaking the law. Blachar said that even if the two traded in ova, it would still be "light years away" from what was done at Auschwitz.
Romanian Jews and Israelis working in the country said the raid and its fallout likely reflected competition - possibly from other Israelis - rather than anti-Semitism or xenophobia.
The country's chief Chabad rabbi, Naftali Deutsch, said Bucharest still has several Israeli-owned fertility clinics that harvest ova. Police, he said, "aren't bothering" any of them. "Clearly this was a case of a dispute between competitors, and this whole thing would not have happened otherwise," said Deutsch.
The president of Romania's Jewish community, Dr. Aurel Vainer, said the Mirons were seen driving around in fancy sports cars. "This and other signs of richness create envy and people react negatively. Maybe the fact that they are foreigners also drew attention to them, but I don't see any connection to their Jewishness. Rich Romanians will also often encounter hostility. It's human nature."
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Germany drops case against 'Heil Hitler' garden gnome
By DPA
Tags: Jewish World, Nazis
German prosecutors Wednesday dropped a case over a garden gnome that has its right arm raised in a "Heil Hitler" salute.
German artist, Ottmar Hoerl made 700 of the gnomes for an exhibition entitled "Dancing with the Devil" at a Nuremberg art gallery. A visitor to the gallery objected and lodged a complaint that Hoerl had violated German laws prohibiting the reproduction of Nazi symbols or slogans. News of the "Nazi gnome" promptly went around the world.
T
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he prosecutors in Nuremberg said they would not put Hoerl on trial because he was obviously mocking the Nazis, not honoring them, and had made the gnomes as art. Gnomes used to be popular as garden decorations.
"Taken as a whole, his opposition to Nazi ideology is plain," a prosecutor said.
The 59-year-old sculptor, professor of design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, said earlier the figure was intended to poke fun at the Nazis.
"The Nazis would have massacred me for the work if it had been done in 1942," Hoerl said.
The case bears similarities to that of a German trader who was fined 3,600 euros in 2006 for using crossed-out swastikas on stickers, buttons and T-shirts to protest far-right extremism. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe later overturned the verdict, saying it was not a criminal offense to display symbols that are "obviously and clearly" meant to demonstrate opposition to Nazism.
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Last update - 12:46 23/07/2009
Israeli firms still dealing with companies tied to Iran
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, Siemens
The Los Angeles municipality is considering canceling a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars with the German firm Siemens to improve the public transportation infrastructure in the city.
The reason is Siemens' widespread commercial ties with Iran's ruling regime. One deal in particular - Siemens joint venture with the Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia to sell sophisticated wiretapping equipment to the Iranian government - has sparked widespread anger.
The equipment is being used by that country's intelligence and security forces to locate and follow telephone calls made by opponents of the regime who are then arrested and subjected to prolonged interrogation and torture.
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Richard Katz, a member of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, told the Washington Times that "at a time when the city and the board of supervisors are urging divestment from Iran, it would be hypocritical of our board to make a deal with Siemens or anyone else who is doing business in Iran."
Siemens is the biggest German exporter of equipment, know-how and services to Iran. The scope of its business there is close to 1 billion euros.
With hundreds of companies engaged in trade to the Iran, Germany is the Islamic regime's biggest business partner in the European Union selling goods worth some 4 billion euros per year to them.
And in the broader EU, thousands of industrial plants, banks and financial institutions from all over do very good business with Tehran. In this way the firms undermine the international effort to put economic pressure on that country to stop their nuclear program.
This two-faced policy is arousing anger in the United States where the law forbids commercial ties with Iran. The American administration, together with state governors and labor unions, are taking pains to get the EU, Japan and Australia signed on to the embargo. Washington is demanding that banks and financial institutions withhold credit from Iran and that industrial firms like Siemens not build infrastructure programs, especially those connected with the energy industry.
The most effective threat against those companies is that of a divestment campaign. Various bodies in the U.S. are threatening to stop investing their pension money and funds with anyone who does business with Tehran.
This pressure is bringing results. Banks in Switzerland such as UBS have pared down their ties with Iran. Other banks, such as the British house Lloyds, have been forced to pay fines of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Israel is not merely a bystander benefiting from this policy. It actually spearheaded it.
For many years, prime ministers, foreign ministers, heads of the Mossad and others have been lecturing the entire world and calling on everyone to work against Iran's nuclear program. They have advised nations to sever diplomatic relations, impose sanctions, impose an embargo on the export of oil, reduce commercial ties, impose a maritime blockade and, if all this does not help, launch a military attack.
Israeli diplomats have protested to the Swiss government over the signing of a giant natural gas deal with Iran, and the Israeli ambassador to Vienna, Dan Ashbel, has submitted a protest to the Austrian government about OMV, the government controlled Austrian concern which is aiming to develop a gas field in Iran.
No divestment at home
However while Israel makes plenty of demands of others, it turns out it does nothing itself. Companies that have close commercial ties with Iran enjoy large-scale exposure in the Israeli market.
An example is Siemens, which in the past sold gas turbines to the Israel Electric Corporation worth billions of shekels and recently won a tender put out by the Israel Airports Authority for a NIS 150 million deal to set up a facility for carrying out security checks and handling baggage.
The airports authority said in response that "four companies applied for the international tender for security examinations to baggage and two of them provided proposals. The Siemens company is the only one that met the complex technical requirements that were defined."
The Israeli branch of Siemens referred the newspaper to the standard international response of the company that states that its dealings with Iran are limited solely to the civilian sphere. International banks that have connections with Iran are also continuing to work with Israeli banks; Nokia sells telecommunications equipment in Israel worth hundreds of millions of shekels, including to state bodies.
Even under the repressive regime in Iran, the public there has demonstrated greater courage and responsibility than in Israel. There were reports last week that an unofficial consumer boycott has been imposed by Iranian citizens on Nokia and that the sale of portable telephones by that company has dropped by almost half.
The Iranian civil rights activist Shirin Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, told the Washington Times last week that she was calling for a boycott of all the companies like Siemens and Nokia which have violated civil rights in Iran. "If such companies are faced with consequences that effect their 'bottom line' they will be less enticed to enter into business agreements with any government attempting to restrict the basic human rights of their people," she said.
Israel's hypocrisy is particularly jarring now in view of the declarations by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel and that it has to be stopped at all costs. Apparently that is on the condition that the costs are paid by others.
Moreover a law was passed in Israel in April 2008 forbidding investment in corporations that have commercial ties with Iran, but so far Israel has not taken a single step to apply the law. Only now, in the wake of a question from Haaretz to the prime minister's bureau, was an answer received stating, "We expect the corporations and companies to be familiar with the letter of the law and to observe it."
But this statement too does not have any kind of hint as to what the Prime Minister's Office plans to do to enforce the law, if anything, even though a source in the ministry promised that the National Security Council and the Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority would begin to deal with the matter.
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Last update - 23:44 22/07/2009
Israel circulates photo of Hitler greeting late Palestinian mufti
By Reuters
Tags: Hitler, Palestinian mufti
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem.
Israeli officials said on Wednesday that Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti or top Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem.
One official said Lieberman, an ultranationalist, hoped the photo would "embarrass" Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti's family in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.
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Israel captured East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, annexing it as part of its internationally unrecognised claim to Jerusalem as its
capital.
Some diplomats opposed Lieberman's move, arguing it could earn Israel stiffer world criticism for seeming to sidestep the wider conflict it faces with the Palestinians who want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state, another official said.
Asked why Lieberman issued the order, a spokesman said: "because it's important for the world to know the facts" and would not elaborate.
The United States and Europe this week protested the plan by private Israeli developers to build 20 apartments on the land which Israel says was bought by an American-Jewish millionaire as well as Israel's threats to demolish Palestinian homes that could leave thousands homeless.
The controversy has complicated an Israeli rift with the U.S. over its refusal to meet President Barack Obama's demands to halt settlement building throughout the West Bank so that stalled peace talks may resume.
About half a million Israelis live in the settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that are home to some three million Palestinians.
An official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's government accused Lieberman of "political bankruptcy" in ordering the distribution of the Husseini-Hitler photograph.
"It's an old story that has its own circumstances and doesn't apply to the present," said Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Jerusalem, and a relative of the late mufti.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem said said Husseini supported Nazi Germany to try to win backing for Arab nationalistic goals and that he lobbied for the extermination of Jews in North Africa and Palestine.
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Last update - 07:37 23/07/2009
Lieberman urges Brazil: Convince Iran to halt its nukes
By The Associated Press
Tags: Avigdor Lieberman
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asked Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday to use its influence to help halt Iran's nuclear program.
Lieberman's 10-day trip to four South American nations is aimed at staunching Iran's growing influence in the region, and perhaps beyond.
"I think that Brazil more than other countries can try to convince Iranians to stop their nuclear program and, of course, to convince the Palestinians to start direct talks," he said after meeting da Silva in Brasilia.
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Lieberman noted that Brazil has good ties both with Muslim nations and with Israel.
Israel sees Iran as a major strategic threat, fearing it is developing a nuclear weapon and noting its development of long-range ballistic missiles.
Concerns have been sharpened by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated references to the destruction of Israel.
Silva made no comments following his hourlong meeting with Lieberman. But Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said that "Brazil's constitution
prohibits the creation of nuclear weapons and we hope other countries also have nuclear research only for peaceful purposes."
Israeli officials also have expressed concern at Iran's growing ties with leftist-led nations in Latin America. Iranian companies are building apartments, cars, tractors and bicycles in Venezuela and the two countries' leaders have exchanged visits.
Iran has opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua and a secret Israeli report recently suggested that Bolivia and Venezuela were supplying uranium to Iran - an allegation sharply denied by both Latin American countries.
A top Israeli diplomat for Latin America accompanying Lieberman told The
Associated Press that Israel also wants to halt alleged Hezbollah activities in the region.
"Ever since Ahmadinejad was first elected as president [in 2005], it seems Iran is making a big effort to penetrate Latin America," Shavit said. "This is worrying for us."
Shavit alleged that Hezbollah cells are present in Venezuela's border area with Colombia. She did not offer proof and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has denied the allegation.
"It may be right now they're not active, but they might be active tomorrow," said Shavit, deputy director-general of Foreign Ministry's department on Latin America and the Caribbean.
The U.S. and Israel consider Lebanon-based Hezbollah - which receives support from Iran and Syria and has often clashed with Israel - to be a terrorist group.
Calls to Iran's ambassador in Brazil were not returned. But he rejected
allegations that Iran is supporting Hezbollah activities in South America in an interview with the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper earlier this week, saying they were made by an "intolerant regime that suffers two crises - of legitimacy and acceptability."
Shavit noted that Argentine prosecutors say that Iranian and Hezbollah were behind the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy that killed 29 people in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center there that killed 85.
An Argentine judge has asked Interpol to arrest suspects in the case. Iran has denied involvement.
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Last update - 21:52 22/07/2009
Quentin Tarantino to visit Israel for premiere of Holocaust film
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Holocaust, Israel News
Director Quentin Tarantino plans to visit Israel for the local premiere of his Holocaust-era film "Inglourious Basterds," set for September 17.
This will be the first visit to Israel for the American filmmaker. Some of the movie's actors may also join him.
Tarantino, who made such ground breaking films as "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp
F
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iction" and "Kill Bill," is considered one of the most fascinating but
controversial directors today.
"Pulp Fiction" won the Palme d'Or award at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, the event's highest prize. That film also earned Tarantino an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director.
The Oscar winning director's most recent outing, "Inglourious Basterds" tells the fictional and outrageous tale of a group of WWII-era Jewish-American soldiers who avenge their European brethren by scalping Nazi soldiers.
The narrative opens in the first year of the German occupation of France, where character Shoshanna Dreyfus witnesses the execution of her family at the hands of SS Colonel Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz.
Elsewhere in Europe, Aldo Raine, played by Hollywood megastar Brad Pitt, forms a group of soldiers charged with scalping their Nazi victims.
Diane Kruger plays a German actress who is also an undercover agent on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich.
The film was accepted into the main selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and won the Best Actor award for Christoph Waltz's performance.
The film cost $70 million to make and was shot in a number of locations,
including Germany. The film has so far drawn mixed reviews. It will open in the United States on August 21.
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Last update - 21:11 22/07/2009
Anne Frank landmark set alight in possible anti-Semitic arson
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Anne Frank
A shed in which Anne Frank was forced to work before she was sent to a German concentration camp has been destroyed in a fire, Dutch police said on Wednesday.
Police are treating Sunday's fire as arson, but said it was too early to speculate on whether anti-Semitism was the motive.
Anne Frank became famous posthumously for the diaries she kept while hiding from the Nazis with her Jewish family in Amsterdam during World War Two before they were betrayed and arrested in 1944.
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Anne and her family were forced to work in a Dutch camp, Westerbork, dismantling batteries in the shed for recycling.
Anne died in a German camp in 1945.
At the time of the fire, the shed was located in the village of Veendam and was due to be moved back, later this year, to its original position in the work camp, now a memorial.
Police are investigating an online message calling for the shed to be set on fire, which someone posted in reaction to a news story that it was to be moved back to the camp.
First published in 1947 and now translated into more than 70 languages, Anne Frank's diary remains one of the world's best-selling books.
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Last update - 20:19 22/07/2009
Israel envoy: No crisis with U.S. over settlements
By News Agencies
Tags: settlement natural growth
There is no crisis in relations between Israel and the United States, despite a lingering dispute - which will be settled "soon" - over settlement construction in the West Bank, Israel's new ambassador to Washington said Wednesday.
But a highly respected Tel Aviv think tank said the two countries could be on a "collision course" unless Israel undertook practical measures to back up its statements that it wanted peace with the Palestinians.
"
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There is no crisis in Israel-U.S. relations. Here we are talking about disagreements over certain subjects, very, very specific," Ambassador Michael Oren told Israel Radio.
The State Department summoned Oren over the weekend to ask for clarifications over an Israel plan to construct housing units on the site of a defunct hotel in East Jerusalem.
In response, Oren told the State Department that Israeli construction in East Jerusalem was no different than in any other part of the country. Netanyahu said the following day that Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was "indisputable" and that he would not allow citizens to be forbidden property purchases in any part of the city.
Oren said there was "goodwill" between the two countries in attempting to solve the dispute.
"I am sorry to disappoint, but there is no crisis," Oren added. "We are talking about an extremely deep alliance (between Israel and the U.S.)"
But the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv-based think tank, said Wednesday afternoon that Netanyahu's recent qualified and conditional commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state may not be enough to avert a clash with Washington, unless it "substantiates its desire to settle its conflicts with the Arab world with practical measures."
Presenting its annual Israeli strategic survey, the INSS said a stalemate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue "is the potential for tensions between the United States and Israel."
Israel, a summary of the survey said, had to formulate a strategy for negotiations with the Palestinians and with Syria and had to establish a "constructive exchange" with the U.S. on how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Possible regional developments, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq or challenges to moderate Arab regimes, could force Israel to grapple with new threats and sources of instability, the institute said.
Earlier Wednesday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also urged Israel to freeze all forms of settlement activity.
"I urge the government of Israel to commit fully to its obligations, including to freeze settlement activity and natural growth," said Ban in a message to a United Nations meeting in Geneva on the Middle East.
"If Israel continues settlement activity, it will not only be acting contrary to international law but also to a strong international consensus," he said.
In his message on Wednesday, Ban said that an agreement by Israel to freeze settlement activity would "facilitate a new environment of cooperation and common purpose from the countries in the region."
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in the east of the city to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. The European Union and Russia this week warned Israel that activity there was destroying the peace process.
Israel regards communities in East Jerusalem, annexed during the 1967 Six-Day war, to be a legitimate part of the state and views with distinction that area from the West Bank.
The U.S., on the other hand, claims it has made clear to Netanyahu that it sees East Jerusalem as an issue that should be left to "permanent status" negotiations, and has said any activity there could prejudice a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
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Last update - 19:04 22/07/2009
German court orders unprecedented compensation for Jew's Nazi-era funds
By The Associated Press
Tags: Germany, Nazi, Israel News
A German appeals court has ordered greater compensation for the American heirs of a Jewish businessman forced to sell his company stock under the Nazis' "Aryanization" program - a ruling that could set a precedent for dozens of others, their attorney said Wednesday.
The Federal Administrative Court ruled July 17 that the heirs of businessman Bernhard Hirschmann should be compensated based on the fact that he and his brother lost their company, not just shares, said Berlin attorney Robby Fichte, who represented Hirschmann's heirs.
The ruling increases the compensation about 20-fold to some euro700,000 (nearly $1 million), Fichte said.
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"I'm happy that after so many years at least the material consequences of the injustice can be mitigated," heir Peter Fenner of Ohio said in a statement. Fenner - a grandson of Bernhard - brought the suit with his sister, Ruth Fenner-Barash of New York state.
The federal court confirmed the ruling but said no details would be released until the full written verdict is delivered in six to eight weeks.
The defendant in the case, Germany's Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, said it could not comment on how many other cases could be affected by it until it saw the entire written decision.
"We lost, but we don't know why yet," said spokeswoman Ellen Haendler. "So I can't say anything more until we have the ruling."
Fichte estimated the number in the dozens, however.
"It definitely sets a precedent - that's why we had the opportunity to appeal to the Federal Administrative Court; we are one of many cases, but it's the first to be decided," he told The Associated Press. "The authorities haven't decided many cases yet because they were waiting to see what to do."
Under the Nazi program to strip Jews of property, Hirschmann and his brother were forced in 1935 to sell their stock in the former Deutsche Kabelwerke AG, a wire and cable manufacturing company that they founded in the late 1890s, to Dresdner Bank. Both brothers fled Germany.
The bank then sold the shares at a profit to a company deemed to be "Aryan" by the Nazis.
At the end of the war, the company - based in Berlin with factories in the surrounding region of Brandenburg ? was nationalized by communist authorities.
While people in similar circumstances with assets in West Germany received compensation in the 1950s and 1960s, the Hirschmann family only received a payment of 125,000 German marks per brother from the Dresdner Bank - a mere fraction of what their holdings in the company were worth, Fichte said.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the family began pursuing full compensation.
Based on a formula that calculated compensation for having lost stocks under the Nazis, the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues ruled that the claim was worth 40,000 euros for each brother - less than Dresdner Bank had already paid.
But the federal appeals court ruled that the compensation had to be based on a different formula to pay for the two brothers having lost their company, not just the stocks, Fichte said.
The federal appeal's court ruling awards Bernhard Hirschmann's heirs euro700,000, or about euro980,000 with interest, Fichte said.
The money will come from funds set aside by Germany to compensate Nazi-era victims.
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Last update - 18:11 22/07/2009
Egyptian FM: Israel not willing to pay price for Gilad Shalit
By Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel news, Egypt
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Wednesday that Cairo was working to convince Israel to ease some of its demands for a prisoner swap with Hamas that would see the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
Aboul Gheit told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayyat that Israel is not willing to pay the necessary price for the release of Shalit, who has been in Palestinian captivity since he was seized in a 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.
According to Aboul Gheit, Israel's insistence on exiling Hamas prisoners freed as part of the swap deal is holding up negotiations, as the number of militants and stages of release have already been set.
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He pledged that Egypt would guarantee that all prisoners released would not attack Israel and said Jerusalem's demands were unacceptable, unethical, and inhumane.
The Egyptian minister said that Hamas' request to free Israeli Arabs jailed as security prisoners was also stalling the deal.
The new Israeli envoy charged with negotiating the deal, Haggai Hadas, held his first round of talks with Egyptian mediators in Cairo over a week ago.
Egypt has been mediating for a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Hamas-rulers of the Gaza Strip.
Hadas - who took the place of former negotiator Ofer Dekel - is seeking the release of hundreds of prisoners held by Israel, many of whom are serving lengthy terms for deadly attacks. Israel has said Hamas' demands are excessive.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told an Israeli newspaper before the negotiations that Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, came close to reaching a deal shortly before leaving office, but that he changed his mind and talks broke down.
Last week, Mubarak announced that Shalit was in good condition and expressed hope he would be released soon. However, he gave no details on where he got his information.
A Hamas official later dismissed Mubarak's comments as "wishful thinking".
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Last update - 17:03 22/07/2009
Jew's Muse / Erasing Jewish heritage, one historical omission at a time
By Uzi Silber
Tags: Oldest bible, israel news
Diligent media watchdogs such as CAMERA have documented the BBC's
chronically hostile coverage of Israel in its conflict with its Arab neighbors. My own ears are exposed to this biased barrage daily on my drive to work.
I
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grudgingly tune in nevertheless - after all, the BBC does produceother segments of interest to the intellectually curious, ostensiblyunrelated to the Middle East conflict.
And yet even among such benign reports, there are those that - while notintentionally hostile to Jews or Israel - are potentially inimical to Jewish interests not for what they report but for what they don?t.
The BBC recently presented just such a report, on the recovery, digitization and online availability of the so-called Codex Sinaiticus, billed at the onset as 'the world?s oldest Bible'.
While of immediate interest to Christians, the subject matter would attract any avid student of scripture and so I turned up the volume onthe car radio.
The segment was indeed illuminating, and I found myself considering its implications for Jewish tradition. But what was left unsaid was downright deafening.
Here then is the gist of the segment: the Codex is a 16-century old bound bible stowed away for many centuries at St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. It contains the entire Christian bible, comprising the Greek translation of the Tanakh, Apocrypha (books left out of the Tanakh), Gospels and other Christian scriptures.
The manuscript fascinates Bible historians for many reasons but what intrigued me most were its layers upon layers and 800 years worth of monastic editing, alterations, corrections, deletions and rewrites on each of its pages, reflecting the evolution of Christian dogma from the late Roman period to the Medieval era.
I soon detected parallels between the centuries-long development of the Codex by the monks and the creation of the Talmud and its
commentaries by the rabbinic sages. Perhaps this was no coincidence, considering that the monks of Sinai and Galilean Rabbis lived both contemporaneously and in relative proximity.
Secular biblical scholarship demonstrates that even the authorized version of the Tanakh evolved from a similar scribal editing process, lasting from about 1000 BCE to 150 BCE.
Nevertheless, I found the segment as troubling as it was enlightening, since its crucial omissions would have the effect of misleading a radio audience of millions.
BBC's website describes the Codex as 'the world's oldest bible'. But it isn't. And while the broadcast itself called it 'the oldest surviving bound bible, such a distinction is easily lost on the program's worldwide audience.
For the record, the oldest books of the bible were uncovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and predate the Codex by six
centuries.
Secondly listeners could easily assume that the bible was originally written in Greek 1600 years ago. Considering that Hebrew isn't mentioned even once throughout the segment, listeners would never know that the bible was first composed in Hebrew beginning 3000 years ago.
While misleading, these omissions by the BBC are unlikely to have been intentional - at least not in this instance. On the other hand, in the hands of Israel's adversaries, omission and the related act of denial are potent weapons used to sever the Jewish People's bonds to its ancient heritage in the eyes of the world.
Historical omission and denial is a particular expertise of
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose 1982 doctoral dissertation espouses views identical to those of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denying President of Iran.
Abbas, widely viewed as 'moderate', earned his doctorate from Moscow Oriental College by arguing, among many things, that that six million were not murdered during the Holocaust and that gas chambers were not used to exterminate them.
Similarly, Yasser Arafat, Abbas' mentor, adamantly denied the
existence of the ancient Jewish Temple that is buried beneath the
gold-domed Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Omission and denial has given license to the Muslim religious
authorities on the Temple Mount (Mt Moriah in the Hebrew bible) totrample the Jewish presence there that preceded the Muslim conquest by 14 centuries.
During recent renovations in and around the famous gold-domed
Mosque, bulldozers shoveled through deep layers of previously buried ancient Jewish artifacts, and dumped them outside the city walls in haphazard trash piles. The damage done to the Jewish historical record is irreversible and criminal.
Historical omission is a worrying trend worldwide. The Simon
Wiesenthal Center reports on a growing phenomenon of Holocaust
omission and denial in schools in Britain and throughout Europe.
Meanwhile, Phil Orenstein of the Democracy Project blog anecdotally relates that, "half of the teachers in (a certain Queens public school) social studies department refuse to teach the Holocaust ... for fear that it might offend Muslim students."
Overt demonization of Israel is detected easily enough; historical omission, intentional or purposeful, and whether by BBC correspondents or outright foes of the Jewish State, is more insidious. Unless confronted, we Jews may find ourselves pushed off Mount Moriah, tumbling down the slippery slope and into Gehena below ? the biblical Valley of Hell
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Last update - 15:00 22/07/2009
Hamas police close in on rival Islamists holed up in Gaza house
By Reuters
Tags: Hamas, Israel News, Gaza
Hamas police in the southern Gaza Strip surrounded a building where Muslim extremists were holed up on Wednesday, trying to quell a rare challenge to the territory's militant Islamic rulers.
The standoff began Wednesday morning when four Jund Ansar Allah militants
inside the building refused to surrender to police in the southern town of Khan Younis for an interrogation, Hamas security officials said, calling them outlaws.
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Jund Ansar Allah claims inspiration from al-Qaida, but no ties have been
confirmed.
Residents said five Hamas jeeps surrounded the area, and Hamas police set up a checkpoint leading to the building. It was not clear why the men were wanted.
Hamas, a violently anti-Israel group backed by Syria and Iran, seized power in Gaza more than two years ago and has ruled with a firm hand. However, a small number of shadowy extremist groups have emerged as an opposition of sorts, seeking to enforce an even stricter version of Islamic law.
At nightfall Wednesday, the Jund Ansar Allah militants remained holed up
inside the apartment in Khan Yunis, while prominent Muslim scholars were
trying to negotiate their surrender. Hamas police kept reporters away.
Jund Ansar Allah warned on its Web site that the men in the building would blow themselves up if Hamas tries to move in. The statement said the men would not surrender until Hamas officials returned weapons confiscated from the group.
Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, came to public attention in June after it claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to attack Israel from Gaza on horseback. It is unclear how many members it and similar extremist groups in Gaza have.
The groups have criticized Hamas for not imposing Muslim law in Gaza and are upset that the Hamas regime had agreed to a cease-fire with Israel over the past six months.
Hamas has said it seeks to set an example and does not impose its views on others. It also says its violent struggle is against Israel, not the Western world.
The hard-line groups are perhaps the most serious opposition to Hamas, which has crushed the influence of its main rival, Fatah, since taking power in a 5-day civil war in June 2007.
61 hurt as blast rocks wedding of ex-Fatah man's relatives
Earlier Wednesday, a bomb exploded at the wedding of a relative of a former senior Fatah security official in the Gaza Strip, wounding more than 61 people, a hospital official said.
The explosion occurred late on Tuesday in Khan Younis during the wedding of a cousin of Mohammed Dahlan, national security adviser for President Mahmoud Abbas until the Gaza Strip was seized by Hamas.
Dahlan, reviled by Hamas supporters over crackdowns he led against the group when he was head of Fatah-dominated Preventive Security service in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, moved to the West Bank after Fatah lost control of the territory.
He did not attend the wedding.
Muawya Hasanein, a hospital official, said 52 people were wounded in the blast.
Ihab al-Ghussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip, said some 30 people were hurt, including the bridegroom, Mahmoud Dahlan.
In the West Bank, Mohammed Dahlan accused Hamas members of planting a bomb near the wedding stage. He said that after the explosion, they threw other explosives into the crowd and fired shots. Hamas denied any involvement.
A police spokesman said three people were arrested. He did not identify them.
A relative who took part in the celebration and asked not to be identified said the family believed that "hatred for Mohammed Dahlan" was the motive for the attack
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Last update - 14:36 22/07/2009
Israeli officials: Turkey PM too extreme to moderate Syria talks
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Tags: Peace Process, Turkey
Turkey is ready to resume its role as mediator in suspended indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, before leaving for a one-day visit to Syria.
Senior Israeli officials responded to the initiative by telling Israel Radio that while the negotiations should indeed be held, they should not be handled by Erdogan.
The officials pointed out that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called more than once to renew the negotiations without preconditions, anywhere in the region, and has made clear that all options with this regard were on the table.
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Benny Begin, a Netanyahu confidant, suggested Turkey's fierce criticism the offensive had damaged Ankara's role as a neutral negotiator and said any negotiations for a peace agreement would have to be conducted directly between Syria and Israel without a negotiator.
"If this is what they want and how they continue it will be hard to view them as a means for mediating or for conveying messages between us and Syria," Begin, minister without portfolio, told Israel Radio.
"The Syrians are posing preconditions, i.e. saying what the outcome should be from the outset, which of course is unreasonable."
Israel's previous centrist govermment held the last round of talks with Syria last year, under mediation of Turkey, with which has good relations.
Syria froze the contacts to protest Operation Cast Lead, and the negotiations have been frozen ever since.
"We feel a responsibility ... Requests to resume the process have started to come. We are working on the issue," Erdogan told reporters before leaving for Aleppo to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Erdogan, who last week met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara, was traveling with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Syria seeks the return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Israel wants a peace deal including diplomatic recognition by Syria and other political concessions.
But Israel has said Syria does not want a peace deal and has demanded Damascus stop insisting on the return of the Golan as a precondition for talks. Assad in May played down prospects of resuming talks, saying Syria did not "have a partner."
Syria and Turkey: Israel needs 'real political will'
After the talks between Assad and Erdogan on Wednesday, Syria's state-run news agency SANA said the two leaders discussed the need to achieve a just a comprehensive peace in the Middle East which requires the presence of a "real Israeli political will".
Assad said earlier this month that there is no real partner in Israel to make peace, stressing that a halt to settlements in the West Bank is
essential to restart talks.
Syria has said it is willing to resume the Turkish-mediated talks if they
focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. But Netanyahu has said he is not willing to cede the territory Syria wants.
A state-run newspaper reaffirmed in an editorial that Syria is keen to restore all the Golan Heights and would not agree to start negotiations from scratch.
"It's not in the interest of peace to waste time or efforts or to return to point zero under the pretext of preconditions," said the government's Al-Thawra newspaper.
"Moving toward negotiations means an endorsement of a full withdrawal from the occupied land," it added.
Assad said in a newspaper interview in March that the Turkish-mediated talks failed because Israel would not make a clear commitment to return all of the Golan up to the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret.
Assad said Israel wanted to keep some disputed land around the Galilee, its main water source.
Israel, for its part, demands that Syria end its support for the Lebanese
militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
Direct talks between Israel and Syria under U.S. auspices also failed in 2000 over the extent of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan.
Last month, President Barack Obama's special Mideast peace envoy, George
Mitchell, became the highest-level U.S. administration official to visit
Damascus since 2005. He acknowledged Syria's clout, declaring Damascus has a key role to play in forging Mideast peace.
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Last update - 21:14 22/07/2009
Netanyahu: Israel won't dismantle West Bank fence
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Tags: West Bank, Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel has no intention of dismantling the West Bank separation fence, which he called "a critical component of Israel's security."
"The separation fence will remain in place and will not be dismantled," Netanyahu told Knesset members.
Media reports in Israel on Wednesday indicated that the Palestinian Authority had relayed to U.S. President Barack Obama a demand that the fence be removed since the security situation in the West Bank had improved.
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Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters he had approached the United States on the issue. "The Israelis know that the wall adds to the complexities. It's part of the problem and not part of the solution," he said.
Netanyahu told lawmakers in the Knesset that the fence should be credited with restoring security and preventing the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers into Israeli towns. As a result, the fence should remain in place, the premier told MKs.
"I hear they are saying today that because it's quiet, it's possible to take down the fence. My friends, the opposite is true... It's quiet because a fence exists."
In his speech, Netanyahu said Israel welcomed "a certain improvement in the functioning of Palestinian security forces" in the West Bank. But he added: "The fence is important."
The prime minister was summoned to the Knesset after 40 MKs from the opposition parties signed a query requiring him to provide explanations for his diplomatic and economic policies.
Netanyahu also told the lawmakers that his government's defense policy had successfully deterred Palestinian Hamas gunmen in Gaza from launching Qassam rockets.
Israel's threat of responding to every rocket fired from Gaza was an effective change of policy that the prior regime did not implement, Netanyahu said.
"We are not ready to accept rocket and missile fire on the territory of the state of Israel," Netanyahu said. "From the moment I entered the prime minister's post there has been a response against every instance of shooting."
"This is the correct policy," Netanyahu said. "We cannot accept missile fire on Israeli cities as a fait accompli."
The prime minister added that Israel would insist on "effective demilitarization" of a future Palestinian state, and that an end to the conflict could only be reached in exchange for an end to all claims against Israel.
Netanyahu said Iran remains Israel's most pressing threat. The Tehran regime has not wavered from its intention to build a nuclear weapon, the prime minister said.
Israel is working to enlist wide swaths of the international community in forming a "united front" against Iran, which features "a brutal regime that oppresses its people," Netanyahu said.
Dramatic drop in West Bank attacks since fence built
Work on the barrier began in 2002, the height of a Palestinian uprising. Israel said the project was necessary to stop suicide bombers from reaching its cities. Palestinians called it a land grab that could deny them a viable state.
There has been a dramatic drop in the number of attacks in Israel over the past several years, a decrease security experts attribute to the barrier, Israeli and Palestinian Authority security steps and a change of tactics by some militant groups.
No suicide bombers have struck this year. In 2008, one person was killed in Israel by a bomber whom authorities said infiltrated from the West Bank through an area where the barrier had not been completed.
The International Court of Justice, in a non-binding decision in 2004, said the barrier was illegal and should be taken down because it crossed occupied territory.
The barrier, mainly razor-wired tipped fences but also comprises towering concrete walls, snakes through land Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Five conditions for peace
In his speech to Knesset, Netanyahu reaffirmed his government's five foundations for peacemaking with the Palestinians.
The following are Israel's demands, first voiced by Netanyahu last month, and the Palestinian position on each issue.
1. Palestinians must recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinians say such recognition could be perceived as abjuring a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees to land now in Israel. They say they are also mindful of the rights of Arab citizens of Israel.
2. Palestinian refugees must be resettled outside Israel.
Palestinians have long demanded that refugees who fled or were forced to leave in the war of Israel's creation in 1948 should be allowed to return, along with millions of their descendants. Yet Palestinian negotiators have signalled they would accept "a just and agreed-upon" solution for refugees as laid out in a UN resolution that mentions compensation for those who settle elsewhere.
3. The final peace agreement will end the conflict, and Palestinians can make no further demands on issues such as borders and refugees.
The Palestinians seek a final, lasting agreement that would meet all their national aspirations.
4. The Palestinian state must be demilitarised so as not to threaten Israel.
The Palestinians do not object to this demand, but say it should be discussed in negotiations with Israel.
5. Foreign backing, in the form of explicit international guarantees, for these security arrangements.
Again, the Palestinians say the issue can be sorted out in peace talks, as it was agreed upon in previous internationally backed agreements like the 2003 "road map".
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Last update - 13:33 22/07/2009
Israeli rabbis to U.S. Jews: Sway Obama administration in our favor
By Haaretz Service
Tags: U.S., Shlomo Amar, rabbis
A group of Israeli rabbis, headed by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, have sent a letter to U.S. rabbis and the President's Conference, urging them to exert political leverage in Israel's favor, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday.
"The American government pressures Israel to prevent Jews from building houses in extensive areas in the Land of Israel, which is very unfortunate," the rabbis wrote. "We ask you to make use of your political power to lobby the American authorities to reconsider this policy in the spirit of truly democratic justice, and give weight to halakhic considerations that are binding for the Jews."
Israel's previously cordial relations with the U.S. have been damaged by the Israeli government's insistence, in the face of U.S. opposition, that it can continue building within existing settlements.
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The signatories stressed that although it is an unusual declaration coming from religious figures, they have no intention to make a political statement.
"We would like to express our deepest regret, not from a political point of view, but rather a religious one, as the Torah stipulates the settlement and population of Eretz Israel," they said.
"While a person is allowed to reside wherever he wishes, Jews will not be allowed to reside in the territory of the future state," the rabbis also wrote, referring to the future of the settlement once a Palestinian state is established.
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Last update - 12:27 22/07/2009
Envoy to U.S.: Differences on settlements to be resolved soon
By DPA
Tags: Israel News, U.S.
There is no crisis in relations between Israel and the United States, despite a lingering dispute - which will be settled "soon" - over settlement construction in the occupied territories, Israel's new ambassador to Washington said Wednesday.
"There is no crisis in Israel-U.S. relations. Here we are talking about disagreements over certain subjects, very, very specific," Michael Oren told Israel Radio.
The interview took place against a backdrop of reports that the U.S. and Israel are on a collision course over Israel's insistence, in the face of U.S. opposition, that it can continue building within existing settlements.
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The White House has demanded that Israel halt all settlement activity.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that, while Israel will not build any new settlements, or expropriate any more land in the West Bank, it will continue construction in existing settlements in order to deal with the effects of population increase - a practice Israel calls natural growth.
The State Department summoned Oren over the weekend to ask for clarifications over an Israel plan to construct housing units on the site of a defunct hotel in HEADLINE">occupied East Jerusalem.
Oren however said there was "good will" between the two countries in attempting to solve the dispute.
"The spectrum of contacts, of cooperation, between the two countries is tremendous, deep and long," he said. "We do not feel any tensions."
"I am sorry to disappoint, but there is no crisis," Oren added. "We are talking about an extremely deep alliance (between Israel and the U.S.)"
He did not say when he thought the dispute would be resolved, but said he assumed it would be "soon."
Oren, American-born and an acclaimed historian, presented his credentials to President Barack Obama on Monday.
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Last update - 09:16 22/07/2009
Israel slams Clinton statement on nuclear Iran
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
Tags: nuclear weapons, Iran, U.S.
A key minister in the Israeli government criticized U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement on Tuesday that Washington would provide "a defense umbrella" for its allies in the Middle East in the event that Iran develops nuclear weapons.
Dan Meridor, Israel's minister for secret services, told Army Radio that the comments imply a willingness to reconcile with the eventuality of a nuclear-armed Iran.
"I heard, unenthusiastically, the Americans' statement that they will defend their allies in the event that Iran arms itself with an atomic bomb, as if they have already reconciled with this possibility, and this is a mistake," Meridor told Army Radio. "Now, we don't need to deal with the assumption that Iran will attain nuclear weapons but to prevent this."
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Clinton said on Tuesday that the U.S. has a plan to prevent Iranian domination in the Middle East if it gets the nuclear bomb.
"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer," Clinton said during a visit to Bangkok.
The U.S. has asked 10 uranium-rich countries to tighten their monitoring of sales of the mineral to Iran, according to a document obtained by Haaretz. The move is based on an American estimate that Iran's uranium reserves will run out by 2010. A senior American delegation will arrive in Israel next week for talks on the dialogue between Iran and Western countries, especially regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
The document was distributed by the U.S. State Department to 10 countries that produce yellowcake, a uranium concentrate used as a raw material for enriching uranium. The United States wants the countries to increase monitoring of the sale of yellowcake to Iran.
According to the document, "As a consequence of its geology, Iran's reported indigenous uranium reserves are insufficient to support its current nuclear reactor program for sustained period of time .... Calculations based on Iran's rate of uranium conversion thus far suggest that Iran will run out of yellowcake in 2010."
The document is defined as a so-called non-paper to be used in contacts with privately owned companies that produce the concentrate. It was sent to Russia, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Britain, Kazakhstan and three others countries.
UN sanctions prohibit the sale of uranium to Iran, but the United States fears that the Islamic Republic might be trying to acquire the material anyway. "Iran could soon begin, or may have already begun, to look for outside suppliers of uranium," the document says. "Extreme vigilance in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program is necessary given the requirements of the UN Security Council and the significant threat Iran presents to international peace and security."
The document also notes that given "Iran's publicly stated ambition to pursue its enrichment-related activities, we believe it critically important that the world's major uranium resource companies prevent all exports of uranium to Iran unless contained in fuel rods and for an established light-water reactor.
Beyond the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation that we all share and the specific requirements of the UNSC, we believe that nuclear cooperation - particularly the provision of raw nuclear materials - with Iran is a significant business and reputational risk."
It adds that "we urge companies subject to your jurisdiction not to facilitate Iran's nuclear ambitions by engaging in new business deals with Iran until all concerns regarding its intentions have been resolved and confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program has been established."
Next Wednesday, a senior U.S. delegation led by National Security Adviser James Jones will arrive in Israel. He will be accompanied by President Barack Obama's special Mideast adviser, Dennis Ross, who recently served as Clinton's special adviser on Iran.
The delegation will also include representatives of the CIA, Defense Department, Treasury and State Department. These officials were invited to Israel by National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, who will lead the Israeli side in what is said to be a continuation of talks held in Washington around three weeks ago.
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Last update - 08:36 22/07/2009
Romania to charge Israeli doctors for trafficking human eggs
By Marius Hosu, Dan Even, Yanir Yagna, Fadi Eyadat and Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
Tags: fertility clinic
Romania has stepped up the legal measures against the suspects in the ova trafficking scandal, which involves Bucharest-based Israeli fertility doctors.
The State Prosecution announced on Wednesday that 22 suspects - including Harry Mironescu (Miron) and his son Yair, who are the directors of the Sabyc fertility clinic - would be indicted.
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The head of the Romanian Medical Association on Tuesday compared the activities of the Bucharest fertility clinic, whose Israeli directors have been arrested on charges of trading in ova, to Nazi practices.
Professor Vasili Esterestua told Romanian TV that the Israeli-owned clinic "carried out medical experiments similar to those the Nazis did in Auschwitz," and was characterized by "severe ethical deficiency."
Accusing the Sabyc clinic of extracting ova from women as young as 15-year-old, Esterestua said the doctors "breached the very basic moral standards." He also said they were not licensed to practice medicine in Romania.
Esterestua's comments met with a mix of rage and amazement in Israel. The Israeli Consul in Bucharest, Lily Ben Haroush, said she would ask the Romanian authorities for explanations.
"I was absolutely appalled to hear that. There is absolutely no way to compare the two cases," she said.
On Tuesday, the brother-in-law of one of the detained doctors told Haaretz he believed they would be released soon.
The wife of Dr. Harry Mironescu (Miron), who with his son Yair is in a Romanian jail, flew to Romania on Monday morning. According to her brother, Bobby Yanko, "my sister is worried but she is not under pressure because she knows her husband will be released soon and back home to Ashdod."
Yanko said Miron has been operating in Romania for more than 20 years. In recent years he was joined by Yair, who studied medicine in the Balkan nation and specialized in plastic surgery.
Yanko suggested that another fertility clinic in Romania may have implicated Miron because of his success.
"This is a good man and not a criminal. They can say anything, but we're sure he'll leave Romania an innocent man," he said.
N., a 45-year-old Israeli patient arrested during the police raid of the Sabyc clinic, returned yesterday to Israel.
She said she had turned to the clinic after receiving a referral from Dr. Natan Levit, also under investigation in the affair. "I thought they were terrorists who were going to kill us," she told Haaretz about the raid. She said as soon as her treatment was over, police dragged her out brutally.
V., another patient, said police broke into the room where she was undergoing treatment, with Dr. Levit and the clinic's lab director, the Israeli doctor Genia Ziskind. She said she intends to sue the Romanian authorities.
V. visited the Sabyc clinic on the recommendation of the deputy head of the in-vitro fertilization department at Bnei Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Dr. Ilan Calderon. "He [Calderon] told me that the [egg] donors are young students, he told me what it would cost and why it was expensive. He said it was because of the medications the donors were given, and the time they spent in hospitals and the anesthesiologists. Obviously, I understood they were not doing this for free."
According to Channel 2, Romanian media reported that the total income of the clinic was 20 million euros, and that 20,000 euros in cash was found on the premises.
The telephone did not stop ringing at Dr. Levit's home. His patients were calling to express support for him, his wife Esther and daughter Chen. Some sent flowers with messages that read "Justice will out," and "Our hearts are with you."
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Did Norway promote a diplomat who compared Israelis to Nazis?
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: norway, nazis, israel news
A first secretary in Norway's embassy in Riyadh who compared Israelis to Nazis will return to Oslo next month with the title of Consul, after completing her posting, Haaretz has learned.
This contrasts with assurances by Norway's foreign minister that the diplomat had been recalled.
In January Trine Lilleng, then described by her foreign ministry as first secretary, sent an email through her official foreign ministry account with images of slain children said to have been killed in the Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza, juxtaposed with photos of Jewish Holocaust victims in seemingly correlating situations.
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In the mail, she wrote: "I always wondered why they didn't learn anything from the horror during WWII. Now I see what they learnt [mistake in original text]." As reported by Haaretz, the mail prompted opposition politicians to demand she be rebuked or recalled.
But an embassy employee told Haaretz two weeks ago that Lilleng was "sitting by her desk." The employee said Lilleng was a consul.
This does not represent a promotion, according to Ragnhild Imerslund, spokeswoman in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The title depends on the functions of the person in the actual position at the embassy. Ms Lilleng has been First Secretary ... In executing her consular duties she may use the title Consul."
But after Norwegian media reported about Lilleng's Holocaust inversion in January, the ministry emphasized that she belonged to the administrative staff as opposed to the diplomatic staff, according to Per Antonsen, a former veteran consultant on foreign policy to the Norwegian government.
"I doubt whether this would be considered a formal promotion, but it isn't the opposite either," he told Haaretz.
Commenting about Lilleng's actions, Imerslund said: "Ms. Lilleng voiced her personal opinion and in no case did she express the opinion of the - Norwegian government. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs - deeply deplores [these] views and comparisons."
When queried about steps to reprimand Lilleng, Imerslund replied that the ministry "will not comment on personnel matters related to individual staff," but added "the matter has been dealt with internally." She also said that Lilleng's assignment in Riyadh will expire in August.
This contrasts with Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store's statement in an interview with Maariv in February that Lilleng was "no longer working in Riyadh."
Imerslund, the spokeswoman, said that in the interview, Store "by mistake did say that Ms. Lilleng was no longer working in Riyadh. However, this was immediately corrected during the interview by the Minister's aide."
She added: "We therefore regret that [Maariv reporter] Shalom Yerushalmi chose to quote the minister the way he did." Yerushlami says that he does not recall receiving the correction.
After checking a recording of the interview, Yerushalmi said he did not find the correction. "If the aide's correction was made and omitted, then why didn't the Norwegians complain after the interview ran?" he said.
"Only in very rare circumstances does the ministry correct printed interviews and it did not happen in this case," Imerslund replied. Asked to arrange an interview with the aide, whom she identified as Haakon Svano, Imerslund said he could not be interviewed because he was "currently on summer leave."
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Last update - 17:49 22/07/2009
Hamas: We won't stand in way of PA-Israel deal
By Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff
Tags: meshal, israel news, hamas
Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal told a Russian diplomat a few days ago that his group would not stand in the way of a peace deal brokered between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel.
Meshal reportedly told Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov in Damascus that if Abbas comes to an agreement on a final settlement of the conflict with Israel, and if the agreement is approved in a Palestinian referendum, Hamas would not try to derail such an accord.
After the talks, Saltanov traveled to Israel, where he had two days of meetings with senior Israeli officials. Saltanov told his Israeli hosts that Meshal's comments were positive in nature and should be given the attention they deserve.
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Israel, for its part, has been unhappy about Russian contacts with high-ranking Hamas officials in the Syrian capital, and Israeli officials have expressed skepticism about Meshal's reported comments.
At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin said the more conciliatory tone which has been reflected recently in statements by senior Hamas officials does not reflect a real shift in the organization's ideological principles.
Several weeks ago, in a speech in Damascus, Meshal said Hamas would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel's pre-Six-Day War 1967 lines, but he did not say that Hamas would recognize Israel.
He also conditioned acceptance of the 1967 borders upon provisions including Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homes within Israel, conditions that Israel has refused.
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Despite tensions, U.S., Israel unite to track uranium to Iran
By Barak Ravid
Tags: israel news, iran, U.S.
The United States has asked 10 uranium-rich countries to tighten their monitoring of sales of the mineral to Iran, according to a document obtained by Haaretz. The move is based on an American estimate that Iran's uranium reserves will run out by 2010. A senior American delegation will arrive in Israel next week for talks on the dialogue between Iran and Western countries, especially regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
The document was distributed by the U.S. State Department to 10 countries that produce yellowcake, a uranium concentrate used as a raw material for enriching uranium. The United States wants the countries to increase monitoring of the sale of yellowcake to Iran.
According to the document, "As a consequence of its geology, Iran's reported indigenous uranium reserves are insufficient to support its current nuclear reactor program for sustained period of time .... Calculations based on Iran's rate of uranium conversion thus far suggest that Iran will run out of yellowcake in 2010."
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The document is defined as a so-called non-paper to be used in contacts with privately owned companies that produce the concentrate. It was sent to Russia, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Britain, Kazakhstan and three others countries.
UN sanctions prohibit the sale of uranium to Iran, but the United States fears that the Islamic Republic might be trying to acquire the material anyway. "Iran could soon begin, or may have already begun, to look for outside suppliers of uranium," the document says. "Extreme vigilance in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program is necessary given the requirements of the UN Security Council and the significant threat Iran presents to international peace and security."
The document also notes that given "Iran's publicly stated ambition to pursue its enrichment-related activities, we believe it critically important that the world's major uranium resource companies prevent all exports of uranium to Iran unless contained in fuel rods and for an established light-water reactor.
Beyond the responsibility to prevent nuclear proliferation that we all share and the specific requirements of the UNSC, we believe that nuclear cooperation - particularly the provision of raw nuclear materials - with Iran is a significant business and reputational risk."
It adds that "we urge companies subject to your jurisdiction not to facilitate Iran's nuclear ambitions by engaging in new business deals with Iran until all concerns regarding its intentions have been resolved and confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program has been established."
Next Wednesday, a senior U.S. delegation led by National Security Adviser James Jones will arrive in Israel. He will be accompanied by President Barack Obama's special Mideast adviser, Dennis Ross, who recently served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's special adviser on Iran.
The delegation will also include representatives of the CIA, Defense Department, Treasury and State Department. These officials were invited to Israel by National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, who will lead the Israeli side in what is said to be a continuation of talks held in Washington around three weeks ago.
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Last update - 21:01 21/07/2009
'Huckabee to air Fox News show from disputed East Jerusalem site'
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel News, Palestinian
Former U.S. presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee plans to broadcast his weekend show on Fox News from the site of a disputed Israeli construction project in East Jerusalem, a New York politician has told Haaretz.
New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Huckabee will air the talkshow during a solidarity visit to the site of the project, which is in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Hikind, who is active in right-wing Jewish causes, told Haaretz that dozens of U.S. activists will participate in the mission, in order to express their support for the project and the man behind it, Irving Moskowitz.
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A Fox News Channel spokesperson told Haaretz that this report was inaccurate, and that Huckabee was not planning to broadcast a show from Israel.
Israeli media outlets reported Sunday that the United States is demanding a halt to the residential project. Later in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had been surprised by the U.S. demand and that he refused to "cave in" on the matter.
Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build housing units in its place.
The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters.
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Last update - 16:39 21/07/2009
Deputy PM: U.S. should honor past deals on settlements
By The Associated Press
Tags: Israel News, West Bank, Obama
Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said Tuesday that U.S. calls for a freeze on West Bank settlement construction run counter to past agreements between the two nations and could undermine U.S. credibility.
Speaking to foreign reporters, Meridor said it was important for past understandings to be honored. "Otherwise, it would raise questions about the legitimacy of future agreements," he said.
"It is of great importance to us that what the American administration agreed to is not overlooked, not because of the contents of that agreement, [but] because of contents of agreements in the future," he said.
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U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Israel to halt all settlement construction as a confidence-building move to get stalled peace negotiations back on track.
Meridor, who is also intelligence and atomic energy minister, added: "We never had an agreement with the previous administration. We had an agreement with America.
"The agreement we had with the Americans is binding on us and them ... They should keep to the agreement."
The deputy prime minister's comments underscored the growing rift between Israel and the U.S. over the continued construction of homes in the settlements. Meridor, a respected veteran of Israeli politics, is considered one of the most moderate voices in the new government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would not build any new settlements, but that construction must be permitted inside existing settlements to accommodate what he calls natural growth in their populations.
Israeli officials and former White House official Eliot Abrams have cited a series of written and oral understandings reached with the Bush administration that appear to permit limited settlement construction.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, said in the West Bank Tuesday that, "What is required from Israel is to freeze all settlement activity... When Israel meets these demands, we will be ready to go to the final negotiations."
Meridor expressed hope that the differences would soon be bridged.
"In the coming weeks, I think that we will see, I certainly hope so, the resumption of negotiations," he said. He noted that Palestinians conducted three years of negotiations with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, while settlements expanded.
Nearly 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - areas conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six Day war and claimed by the Palestinians as part of a future independent state.
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Last update - 15:15 21/07/2009
Lebanon uncovers terror plot against UN troops
By Reuters
Tags: Israel News, Lebanon, UN
The Lebanese army said on Tuesday it had uncovered a militant Islamist network that had been plotting to carry out attacks against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and the army itself.
The army, in a statement, said it had detained the cell's 10 members. A security source said the men belonged to the Al-Qaida-inspired Fatah al-Islam group which fought a 15-week battle with the army in 2007.
The network, made up of members of different Arab origins and most of whom came from outside Lebanon, also planned to help "wanted terrorists" get out of the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp where many of them are holed up.
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The security source told Reuters the ringleader of the arrested group, a Syrian national, had been found with six forged passports.
"He traveled to six Arab countries in 15 days. His group was planning several attacks against a wide range of targets," the source said. Many of the men had taken up residence in Christian areas east of Beirut, he said.
The army statement said the network was also plotting attacks outside Lebanon.
At least 430 people were killed in the fighting between Fatah al-Islam and the army. Over half of those killed were fighters from the group and 170 were soldiers.
In December, the group said it feared its leader Shaker al-Absi had been killed in Syria and named another member to lead the group.
Last year, Syrian state television showed 12 alleged members of the group confessing that they had helped plan a suicide car bombing in Damascus that killed 17 people in September 2008.
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Last update - 11:26 21/07/2009
Ex-envoy to U.S.: Israel 'totally committed' to razing outposts
By Yuval Azoulay and Yoel Marcus, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
Tags: West Bank, settlers
Former ambassador to the United States Sallai Meridor said on Tuesday that Israel was "completely committed" to evacuating unauthorized outposts in the West Bank.
Meridor, who was recently replaced in his post by Michael Oren, told Israel Radio that Jerusalem and Washington had reached "certain understandings regarding what the Americans can live with and what Israel can live with."
"The Americans, unfortunately, have retreated from these understandings," Meridor added. "There was never a doubt that Israel's commitment on the matter of outposts was complete."
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Meridor was responding to Haaretz's report that the Israel Defense Forces and the police are planning to evacuate all illegal West Bank outposts in a single day.
As reported by Haaretz,
security authorities were in the midst of preparations for a lightning-quick evacuation of 23 unauthorized settler outposts, though the exact date of the operation has been kept secret by defense officials.
Rightist politicians warned on Tuesday that the plan would lead to "extreme" public strife and division.
Netanyahu's government committed to removing the outposts as part of an American-led drive to renew Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Outpost removal is also one of the tasks which Israel agreed to undertake as part of the road map peace plan.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad told Army Radio that the evacuation of outposts is liable to lead to bloodshed and civil strife. "News of this kind could push the settlers to extreme actions," Eldad warned. "The members of the coalition will also have to open up a front against the prime minister."
Likud MK Danny Danon said the planned evacuation would be "very bad."
"I don't believe that a Likud government headed by Netanyahu would lend its hand to a mass evacuation of Jewish settlers," Danon said. The lawmaker added that the government should engage settler leaders through dialogue in an effort to reach an accommodation on the issue of unauthorized outposts.
Another Likud MK, Tzipi Hotoveli, also called for talks with the settlers. "This step [of forcible evacuation] cannot be done outside the framework of a comprehensive plan for the unfreezing of construction in Judea and Samaria," said Hotoveli, invoking the biblical names which are used to refer to the West Bank.
"We've become accustomed to the fact that from every destruction and ruin we build ourselves up, and from all the bad things that have befallen Jewish settlement in the past, the people of Israel built itself and progressed," National Union MK Ya'akov Katz said.
"We do not despair because out of all these expulsions we grow stronger, and the fact of the matter is that we have 350 thousand Jews in Judea and Samaria," Katz said. "We are seeing the birth of Jews, thank God, and we do not despair nor do we panic."
IDF: No plans for lightning evacuation of outposts
The IDF said on Tuesday that it had received no orders from the political echelons for a lightning evacuation of West Bank outposts, and denied having begun preparatory operations for such a move.
Amid the increased tension between the United States and Israel surrounding construction in the settlements, Haaretz learned that the Israel Defense Forces was drafting a plan to evacuate 23 illegal outposts in one day.
"The IDF is subordinate to the political echelon and implements its instructions, but such an order was never received," the IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement.
The army was also said to be conducting preparations to forcibly evacuate the outposts in plan formulated by the security establishment, with the knowledge of Netanyahu.
The statement on Tuesday, however, described the drills in question as preparation for daily confrontations in the West Bank, and not designed to contend with imminent outpost evacuations.
In talks with the United States, Israel had said it would clear out 23 outposts built after March 2001 that it had told the George W. Bush administration it would evacuate five years ago.
So far as is known, a timetable has not been set for the evacuations.
Police on Monday evacuated three illegal structures in various outposts. In response, settlers torched Palestinian olive groves, threw stones at Palestinian cars and blocked roads around the West Bank.
Two Palestinians were lightly hurt, as were a soldier and a settler. Five settlers were arrested.
The first joint exercise to prepare for the large-scale evacuation was carried out last week. It involved the Border Police, the police and the IDF.
The drill, led by the Border Police, was held at a military base more than a week ago, with police and IDF participation. Senior officers, including the IDF's West Bank commander Noam Tibon, watched the drill.
The forces practiced handling mass riots and evacuating settlers entrenched in an outpost.
Police sources told Haaretz, "The difference between this drill and former ones is the extent of the forces that took part and the participation of the IDF and police along with Border Police."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has promised to clear out these 23 outposts, but said it was a matter of law enforcement and was not addressed in talks with the Americans over freezing settlement construction.
In practice, though, the political leaders know that evacuating the outposts meets U.S. demands, and that it will ultimately be part of a final deal. Associates of Barak say they sense the parties are close to an understanding, and that the first step will be evacuating the outposts. However, these statements were made before the crisis erupted over construction in East Jerusalem.
The IDF will try to keep its evacuation preparations, particularly dates, as foggy as possible. IDF leaders realize many soldiers identify with the settlers, and could potentially leak the plans to evacuation opponents. Therefore, as few people as possible will be let in on the plans.
While the IDF and the police managed to surprise settlers in December when they evacuated a house in Hebron, it will be more difficult this time around, because many more sites are slated for evacuation, and a large number of forces will have to be involved.
Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has said several times that he prefers the IDF not be on the front lines of evacuating outposts, and that police units specializing in crowd control should do the job.
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The painful cost to Israel of its settler adventure
By Bradley Burston
Tags: IsraelNews, Barack Obama
Click here for more articles by Bradley Burston
[This is the third installment in theOutpost Watch series]
___________________________
As friction between the Obama administration and Israel mounts over Washington's repeated calls for a freeze on settlement construction, anxious supporters of Israel's West Bank settlement enterprise ask one question with ever greater urgency and frequency:
Why should settlers have to pay the price for peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
The question is intended to be rhetorical, meant to dismiss and deflect pressure to curb expansion of West Bank enclaves.
But in a real sense, it is precisely the question of the moment. Why, in fact, should settlers be made to pay the price for peace?
The answer, in short: Because of what the settlement movement has cost us, cost Israel. And because of what it is costing Israel now.
1. The cost in dollars
The settlement movement has cost Israel some $100 billion over the past 40 years.
Setting aside the considerable waste and graft in building projects in the West Bank and Gaza, the cost to Israel's development has been incalculable. Settlement in remote areas has siphoned off critically needed funds for investment in employment, infrastructure, housing and social welfare in central Israel, the Galillee and the Negev.
Huge expenditures on West Bank road construction, including parallel highways intended only for use by Israelis, and roads built at great expense to remote and often illegal settlements, have taken a human toll as well. They have put off the upgrading of dangerous roads [designated "red highways"] within Israel, adding materially to one of the country's most lethal problems. Last year more than 440 people died on Israel's highways, more than 12 times the number of Israelis killed in terror attacks.
2. The cost to Israel's security
For decades, the enormous burdens of guarding settlements, policing roadblocks and maintaining the far-reaching bureaucracy of occupation have robbed the IDF of vitally needed resources of time and funding for military training.
In recent months, as Haaretz military commentator Amir Oren has reported, Prime Minister Netanyahu's wrangling with President Obama over settlement construction has been doing damage to the IDF's capability to face the threat posed by Iran.
3. The cost to Israeli democracy and the rule of law
The unwillingness of the settlement movement to brook compromise, even when in direct defiance of national consensus, and its explicit threats to exploit Israel's precarious political system to topple any democratically elected government which makes significant progress in negotiations with the Palestinians, places the very nature of Israeli democracy in doubt.
The double standard which for decades has favored settlers with inexpensive housing, heavily subsidized social services, and blind-eye building permits has long been accompanied by a kid-gloves approach regarding settler violence against Palestinians and their property.
4. The cost to Israel's diplomatic credibility
Both in established settlements and in outposts acknowledged by Israel as illegal, settlers and settlement planners have covertly bent and distorted zoning procedures, military directives, and government decrees in order to boost settlement, block Palestinian construction, agriculture, and access to employment, and effectively neutralize measures intended to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace progress.
Measures aimed at driving a secure wedge between settlers and Palestinians have had the effect of tarnishing Israel's international image, and have kept many nations from normalizing and strengthening diplomatic ties with Israel.
The settlers' rejection of all territorial compromise renders moot all proposals similar to the Arab League peace initiative.
5. The cost to Israel's relationship with the U.S.
With every move of ostentatious defiance mounted by the Netanyahu government, the Obama administration finds the Palestinian Authority a more reliant, cooperative, and businesslike partner for diplomacy and West Bank security.
The gratuitous machismo characterizing many of the declarations of right-wing parties, in particular the shrill back-benchers of Netanyahu's Likud and members of Avigdor Lieberman's indictment-shadowed Yisrael Beiteinu, has done little to win domestic backing in Israel, but has landed with dramatic and destructive effect in Washington.
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Last update - 10:51 20/07/2009
Playing with fire
By Haaretz Editorial
Tags: settlements, barack obama
The controversy surrounding the plan to create a Jewish enclave in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem is not another routine expression of the U.S.-Israel dispute over the settlements. The timing of the decision to build dozens of housing units in the Shepherd Hotel complex, at the height of efforts to reach an agreement on limited construction in the settlements, casts doubt over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's willingness to enter serious negotiations on a final-status agreement. The support he granted the construction project yesterday, despite the vehement condemnations of America and Britain, show he is prepared to endanger Israel's most essential foreign relations for a provocative initiative led by Irving Moskowitz, the patron of right-wing organizations in East Jerusalem.
U.S. President Barack Obama's opposition should not have surprised Netanyahu. The day after Jerusalem Day, when the prime minister declared the city is "Israel's united capital" and would remain forever under Israeli sovereignty, Washington clarified that authority over East Jerusalem would be resolved only through negotiations on a final-status agreement.
Netanyahu's agreement to hold talks based on the principle of "two states for two peoples" must also include readiness to discuss Sheikh Jarrah. Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Arab states cannot be expected to normalize relations with Israel while the latter embarrasses them with construction projects in East Jerusalem.
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Particularly infuriating is the government's claim that Israel is allowing the Arabs of East Jerusalem to settle in Jewish neighborhoods. Unlike Jewish right-wing organizations - which work to settle Jews in, and take control of, the eastern part of the city - Palestinian residents look to the Jewish areas due to a lack of housing and public services in their own neighborhoods. Since 1967 Israel has expropriated 35 percent of East Jerusalem in order to construct 50,000 housing units in neighborhoods intended primarily for Jews. During the same period, fewer than 600 housing units were built for Palestinian residents with government support.
Construction for Jews in East Jerusalem is inflicting tremendous diplomatic damage on Israel. Netanyahu and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat are playing with fire under the transparent cover of "normal authorization for private construction." Freezing construction at Shepherd Hotel is no less essential than evacuating the outposts and freezing settlement construction beyond the capital's municipal area.
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OU disavows pamphlet claiming Vatican-Hezbollah conspiracy
By Raphael Ahren, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Jewish World
The Orthodox Union has apologized for the publication of a booklet its staff distributed to Israeli soldiers, implying that the Vatican organizes tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to kill Jews.
The New York-based group said in statement that endorsement of the book was unauthorized and that it regretted its involvement.
The OU has subsequently rescinded the endorsement and "disavow[ed] any connection to the views expressed in it."
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Monday's statement came on the heels of a Haaretz report about the book, which purports to be the testimony of "a Hezbollah officer who spied for Israel," and was published by the OU in cooperation with the chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu.
"Upon investigation," the group stated, "it has been ascertained that this endorsement was made by staff at the OU's Israel branch office, and was never submitted to, nor approved by, senior Orthodox Union management."
While maintaining that the Haaretz report "sensationalized the book's contents," the OU admitted "there is no doubt that some of what it contains is antithetical to the well-known views of the OU regarding respect for other faiths and their leaders... The Orthodox Union expresses its sincere regret to those of other faiths who may have been embarrassed or offended by the publication of this work."
The religious group's senior leadership has ordered an internal review to ensure ?that such a situation is not repeated," the statement continued.
According to the book, "On Either Side of the Border," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was invited to join a delegation touring France, Poland, Italy and the Vatican, as the narrator explained he knew the pope "identified with Hezbollah?s struggle."
The booklet, which an Eliahu aid says is factual, also implies that European politicians and journalists ostensibly work against Israel.
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Last update - 10:06 21/07/2009
Punk rock's secret Jewish roots
By Judy Berman, The Forward
Tags: Jewish world, Israel news
Punk rock's most revered founders include a yeshiva alum named Tamas Erdelyi and a Bronx Jew known to his family as Richard Blum.
No, they weren't managers, producers or label honchos; Erdelyi and Blum are living legends of the mid-1970s punk rock scene, widely celebrated for their bands? revolutionary three-chord masterpieces.
Both men are also better known by their stage names, Tommy Ramone and Handsome Dick Manitoba.
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Ramone, the sole surviving member of the Ramones, and Manitoba, frontman for the Dictators, were hardly the only Jews to shape the movement, as a capacity crowd learned in a program at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, located in Manhattan?s Chelsea area. Lenny Kaye, who's a guitarist for the Patti Smith Group, and Blondie co-founder Chris Stein joined Manitoba and Ramone in a panel discussion on ?Loud, Fast Jews? of New York punk rock.
Kaye, who also served as moderator, warmed up the panelists by asking about their family backgrounds and bar mitzvah memories before moving on to more difficult topics, such as the movement?s controversial appropriation of Nazi imagery. But one central question pervaded the evening?s discussion: How much did Jewish culture influence punk rock?
As the musicians acknowledged, it seems counterintuitive to draw parallels between Judaism and punk: The stereotypes attached to each culture seem mutually exclusive. "You don?t expect Jews to be good in the scuffle of anti-establishment movements," Kaye said. "Jews were groomed for white-collar jobs.? His parents did not consider making music a "real job,? he recalled. ?Jews aren't supposed to be tough guys,? Manitoba added. "They?re supposed to go to school and be nebbishy."
Although Jews have made countless contributions to American popular music, Harold Steinblatt, YIVO?s director of cultural affairs and the June 11 event's organizer, noted that punk was unusual because so many of its progenitors were Jewish.
New York's pioneering punk scene found its headquarters at CBGB, an East Village dive that served as both performance space and clubhouse before it closed in 2006. The bar?s proprietor, Hilly Kristal, along with CBGB's fixture and the city?s central punk icon, Joey Ramone (né Jeffrey Hyman), was born into a Jewish family. So was the genre?s forefather, Lou Reed. British punk?s notorious ringmaster Malcolm McLaren is the son of shmatte factory owners. Is this merely a coincidence, or is there something particularly Jewish about the music itself?
"There is a sense of being an outsider in music," Kaye said, just as growing up in a religious minority may have isolated some Jews who became punks. In a later phone interview, he also cited the cultural influences he had derived from Judaism ? "a love of the minor key, a sense of community and clan." The setting for the music was important, too, he said, because ?CBGB?s was a kind of strange ghetto with its own vocabulary and customs.?
Panelists also praised the influence of Jewish artists, entertainers and activists on punk music. Ramone credited Bill Gaines's Mad Magazine and pulpy EC Comics for teaching him that "sometimes being outrageous is important." Kaye pointed to the Jewish radical tradition and the folk music of Israeli kibbutzim, while Manitoba reminisced about the Catskills comedians of his youth. "I?m sure that what I spit back has a little Shecky Greene in it," he admitted, chuckling.
But Stein - and all the panelists, to varying degrees ? worried about overstating the connection between punk and Jewish religion and identity. "My Jewishness has always been there, but it's not an integral part of me," he said. Raised in Brooklyn's Flatbush area by secular parents, Stein dismissed punk's ties to Judaism as "just another facet for people to analyze."
Perhaps because so many punks assumed stage names in the '70s, most were unaware of how many other Jews participated in the scene until 2006, when Steven Lee Beeber published "The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's: A Secret History of Jewish Punk" (Chicago Review Press). As Kaye explained, musicians were so wrapped up in absorbing and creating various religious modes of rock 'n' roll that individuals' cultural and spiritual backgrounds seemed beside the point.
Sometimes, what Kaye referred to as punk's use of "shock imagery" even could appear to be antisemitic. Yet when bands referenced Nazism, as Manitoba?s Dictators did in their song "Master Race Rock" (1975), the intent was to satirize and reclaim noxious words and images. "There's a cathartic effect when you take your deepest fear," Ramone told the audience, "and either make humor of it, or, in an artistic sense," transform it. Ramone believes that few artists were truly antisemitic, although he never endorsed plastering swastikas on everything from clothing to concert fliers. "The whole thing that became called punk ? we never had any control over it," he said.
Manitoba compared the use of Third Reich imagery by punk rock bands to Mel Brooks's films, which poke fun at Nazis. During the panel, he confessed to crying when he watched "Schindler's List," and said he would be upset to learn that ?Master Race Rock? hurt anyone. Later, in the phone interview, he told of visiting Arturo Vega, the designer famous for creating the Ramones logo, who had an Andy Warhol swastika painting hanging on his wall. "It was his idea of art. I didn?t like it, but I laughed at Mel Brooks," Manitoba said. "?There really is no universal morality for what is truly funny."
Judy Berman is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn.
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Last update - 23:38 20/07/2009
Israel envoy: UNIFIL cooperated with Lebanese infiltrating Israel
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel news, Lebanon
United Nations peacekeeping troops in Lebanon did nothing to stop a group of Lebanese citizens from crossing the border into Israel, said Israel's envoy to the international body.
Hezbollah "allowed" 12 Lebanese civilians to infiltrate a few dozen meters into Israeli territory on Mount Dov on Saturday near Shaba Farms, raising a Lebanese flag. They returned to Lebanon shortly thereafter. The Israel Defense Forces said it did not respond because the civilians were unarmed and not dangerous.
In a letter of complaint to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, envoy Gabriela Shalev said that witnesses had also reported seeing the troops cooperating with the infiltrators.
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This type of action "demonstrate[s] an escalation and a pattern of behavior in Lebanon, that must be confronted," Shalev wrote. She added is a clear violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701., which brought a cease-fire to the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The border between Israel and Lebanon in the area is not fenced. IDF lookouts said the group, which included children, also had a Hezbollah flag, but did not raise it.
Israeli forces were placed on alert and the IDF informed UNIFIL command of the matter, asking them to intervene. By the time the UNIFIL force went to the site, the group was on its way back to Lebanese territory.
Government officials dealing with the Lebanon issue say UNIFIL soldiers encounter armed Hezbollah fighters or are detained by them, but the incidents do not appear in the reports submitted to the Security Council.
On Saturday it was reported that that area residents prevented UNIFIL soldiers from searching an abandoned building near the building that blew up last week, in which it is believed Hezbollah stored weapons, against the UN resolution.
A government source in Jerusalem said UNIFIL learned a few months ago about the cache of Katyusha rockets that exploded in the southern Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim last Tuesday.
The source said UNIFIL had precise information about the cache and a number of other installations where Hezbollah is storing rockets, but that UNIFIL had done nothing.
A discussion is scheduled in the UN Security Council for late August on renewing UNIFIL's mandate in southern Lebanon; Israel hopes last week's explosion will show the need to strengthen UNIFIL. Israel believes that UNIFIL could sharpen its rules of engagement and act more forcefully with the Lebanese army in southern Lebanese villages.
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Last update - 22:10 20/07/2009
U.S.: No unilateral moves in East Jerusalem
By Natasha Mozgavaya, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
Tags: Obama administration
The United States believes that unilateral moves on the part of either Israel or the Palestinians could prejudice the result of final status negotiations, the State Department said on Monday.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. has made clear to Israel that it views construction in East Jerusalem with the same opposition that it has for settlement activity in the West Bank.
"This is not a new issue, those issues came up a number of times," Crowley said, confirming that a construction project in East Jerusalem had been a topic of conversation last week during a meeting between senior U.S. diplomats and Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
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"We've made our views known to Israel. This kind of construction is a type of issues that should be subject to permanent-status negotiations," Crowley said, adding: "We are concerned that unilateral actions taken by the Israelis or the Palestinians cannot prejudge the outcome of these negotiations."
U.S. officials said Oren met with Deputy Secretary of State for Management Jacob Lew, who told him that Washington was troubled by the project in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which would see 20 apartments developed by American millionaire Irving Mokowitz.
The spat emerged publicly on Sunday when Netanyahu told his cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in unified Jerusalem.
"We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn't be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem, he said, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city indisputable.
American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority that the United States views East Jerusalem as no different from an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction.
The special U.S. envoy for Middle East peace, George Mitchell, will departs for the
region this week amid these new signs of tension between the U.S. and Israeli governments over settlement construction.
Mitchell, a former U.S. senator, plans to visit Israel, the Palestinian territories and several neighboring countries, including Bahrain. His itinerary was still being worked out Monday.
He will head for the region as the administration tries to build Arab support for a resumption in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, a mission complicated by American divisions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements.
Dissension flared anew over the weekend when Netanyahu rejected a U.S. demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem.
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to be settlements and an obstacle to peacemaking because they complicate a possible division of the city. Israel does not regard them as settlements because it annexed east Jerusalem after capturing the area in 1967. The annexation has not been recognized internationally.
Settlements on captured lands claimed by the Palestinians are a major sticking point in relations between Israel and the Obama administration. Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to about 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is an especially volatile because it is the site of key Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. The Palestinians want the traditionally Arab sector of the city to be the capital of their future state. The Palestinians have refused to restart peace talks until Israel halts all settlement expansion.
Mitchell has been attempting to negotiate a deal under which Israel would at least temporarily freeze settlement activity in a bid to bring the Palestinians to the table and attract Arab concessions toward Israel.
Several options have been discussed, including a six-month freeze that would allow Israel to finish construction on some settlement projects that have already been contracted, but officials say no deal has yet been struck.
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Last update - 17:47 20/07/2009
Lieberman trip to South America aimed at curbing Iran influence
By News Agencies
Tags: Iran, South America
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's trip to South America this week is in part at stemming Iranian influence there, deputy Danny Ayalon said on Monday.
Lieberman leaves later Monday for a 10-day tour in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Colombia.
In Argentina, Lieberman is slated to attend a memorial marking the 15th anniversary of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured 200. That attack came two years after a bomb flattened the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and killed 29 people.
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Argentine officials claim Iran orchestrated the attack and that Hezbollah
agents carried it out. The United States and Israel also say Iran is behind the bombing. Iran has denied involvement.
During his visit, Lieberman plans plans to address the issue of Iran's infiltration, said deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon. In particular, he will discuss the close ties Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales have built with Tehran.
The visit is meant to emphasize the high importance the Foreign Ministry
ascribes to Latin America, a statement from the ministry said.
Chavez and Morales are both fiercely opposed to Israeli and U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East.
According to a secret Israeli government report revealed last month, Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program.
The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran's nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.
"There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program," the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions. It added, "Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran."
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said in its latest global terrorism report that lax controls in the border region between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay provide a safe haven to Islamic extremists and Hezbollah in particular.
A top U.S. military commander also said earlier this year that Hezbollah has been active in the drug trade across the Colombian border.
"We have been seeing in Colombia a direct connection between Hezbollah activity and narco-trafficking activity," said Navy Admiral James Stavridis, who oversees U.S. military interests in the region as head of U.S. Southern Command.
Colombia said last October that it had smashed a drug and money-laundering ring suspected of shipping funds to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has denied links to drugs and money-laundering and described allegations as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at harming its image.
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Last update - 16:40 20/07/2009
Romania mayor outrages Jews after parading as Nazi
By Reuters
Tags: Nazis, Israel news, Romania
The mayor of a Romanian city has outraged Jewish and pro-democracy groups after he goose-stepped with his son in World War Two German uniforms during a weekend fashion show.
Wearing Nazi uniform is illegal in Romania, which denied participating in the Holocaust until 2004 when it accepted the findings of international commission that Romanian authorities killed up to 380,000 Jews in territories under their control.
The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism sent a letter on Monday to the country's general prosecutor urging an investigation of Radu Mazare, 41, mayor of Black Sea city port Constanta, for breaking the law and instigating a child to follow his example.
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Mazare said the uniform had no swastikas and was the uniform of a German infantry general and nothing to do with the SS.
"I was inspired from the Valkyrie movie ... I wanted to dress like a Vehrmacht general because I've always liked this uniform, and admired the rigorous organisation of the German army," newspaper Evenimentul Zilei quoted him as saying.
Under pro-Nazi Marshal Ian Antonescu, Romania became a German ally in 1940 but switched sides just before war ended.
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Last update - 15:17 20/07/2009
Police: Lone surviving Mumbai attacker pleads guilty
By Reuters
Tags: Mumbai, terror, israel news
The lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in November and raised tensions between India and Pakistan pleaded guilty in court on Monday, police said.
Pakistani citizen Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, pleaded guilty in a Mumbai court and was recording his confession there, the police officer overseeing the probe into the attacks told Reuters.
"Yes, he has pleaded guilty in court today for the November attacks during a hearing," senior police officer Rakesh Maria said.
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Kasab, who had been videotaped carrying an AK-47 assault rifle while carrying out the assault on Mumbai's main train station, had been charged with 86 separate offences including murder and waging war against India.
"He has confessed to his role and the fact that he was involved in the attacks that killed so many people during the attacks, the planning and the execution," Maria told Reuters.
Kasab had pleaded not guilty in May. He was the only one of the 10 gunmen captured alive during the Nov. 26-28 attacks on targets including two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and the train station.
India has charged 38 people including Kasab over the attack, but most of the accused are in Pakistan, the Indian government says.
New Delhi has demanded Pakistan take concrete action against the perpetrators of the attacks before it will consider reopening five-year old peace talks it broke off after the attacks in November.
The assault on India's financial capital raised tensions between the nuclear rivals who have been to war three times since their independence from Britain in 1947.
Both sides have exchanged angry rhetoric since the attack, with India saying the gunmen must have had support from official Pakistani agencies. Islamabad denies that, but has acknowledged that the raid had been launched and partly planned from Pakistan.
It has detained several Islamist leaders, including some whom India has named as planners of the guns-and-grenade assault on Mumbai.
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Last update - 14:45 20/07/2009
Abbas: Israel trying to Judaicize East Jerusalem
By DPA
Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday accused Israel of destroying the Islamic and Christian character of Jerusalem, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of a U.S. demand to halt a proposed housing project in East Jerusalem.
"The holy city is today facing real dangers, while there are attempts to turn it into a full Jewish city by changing its Islamic and Christian landmarks," a statement published Monday by the official Wafa news agency quoted Abbas as telling Palestinians in Bethlehem.
He accused Israel of "digging under every corner in the city, which would cause a real danger to its historic and religious constructions, mainly the al-Aqsa Mosque."
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And, he said, Israel's policy "of demolishing houses or confiscating them, as well as imposing heavy taxes on its Muslim and Christian residents and preventing them from building, aims at forcing them to leave the city."
Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, and annexed it shortly afterwards.
Palestinians however want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state, and say the Jewish neighborhoods Israel has built there cut the city off from the rest of the West Bank.
On Sunday Israeli media reported that the U.S. has demanded Israel not proceed with a plan to build housing units on the site of the Shepherd Hotel, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
The hotel had been bought in the mid-1980s by US businessman Irving Moscowitz, a supporter of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Netanyahu responded to the U.S. demand by telling his cabinet that Israel "cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem."
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Last update - 13:02 20/07/2009
Iran's 'friend of Israel' VP denies reports of his resignation
By DPA
Tags: Israel News
An entry on the website of Iran's newly appointed vice-president Monday denied a local television report about his resignation.
Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie's website categorically denied Sunday's resignation reports as a lie by enemies aimed at tarnishing the new government's image.
He was appointed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last Thursday as first vice- and de facto acting president.
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The appointment led to widespread criticism even within pro-Ahmadinejad circles due to remarks by Rahim-Mashaie in 2008 that were perceived to be pro-Israel.
In particular, it was his remark that Iran was also friends with the Israeli people that sparked harsh political protests and calls for the resignation of Rahim-Mashaie, at that time vice-president and head of the country's tourism agency.
But Ahmadinejad ignored the criticism and defended his vice-president, who is also his son's father-in-law, although the president is known for his anti-Israel stance, controversial remarks that Israel should be wiped from the map of the Middle East and for calling the Holocaust a "fairy tale."
Rahim-Mashaie's appointment as acting president was therefore regarded as a provocative move, especially as his remark on Israe was also harshly criticized by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The report on his resignation was carried only by Press TV, the English-language network of state-television IRIB, which quoted an ambiguous source, and some foreign news agencies.
Ahmadinejad has already replaced three of his vice-presidents and reportedly also plans to change almost half of his cabinet members.
The president has faced criticism from his opponents, including opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi, for making ideological choices in his administration rather than using qualified ministers.
The first change was the appointment of Ali-Akbar Salehi as vice-president and head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization. Salehi is a technocrat and ideologically not close to the president.
The rest of the cabinet members will be introduced to parliament in early August. Observers expect heated debates with the deputies who have to approve the choice of ministers.
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Last update - 10:55 20/07/2009
30 Israelis probed over human egg trafficking in Romania
By Haaretz Service and Reuters
Tags: Romania, Israel News
Some 30 Israelis were detained for questioning on Monday in Romania on suspicion they were involved in the trafficking of human eggs.
The suspects were detained during a raid on a fertility clinic in the capital Bucharest, but most of them were subsequently released on bail.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yossi Levy said that two Israelis were still undergoing questioning, and that the matter was being monitored by the ministry. "We have full confidence in the authorities over there, and I am convinced that this affair will be concluded quickly and effectively," he said.
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Israel's ambassador to Romania, Ilan David, said that four doctors were still being questioned. He explained that the raid was carried out in light of suspicion that the clinic was operating without the proper permits.
David said furthermore that under Romanian law, egg donation was permissible as long as no payment was exchanged, and as long as the extraction of the eggs was done in an authorized facility. The clinic raided Monday was not authorized to extract eggs.
David added that most of the detainees were women, and stressed that they had not been arrested, but only brought in for questioning.
"The group was focusing on identifying foreign couples eager to resort to reproduction techniques and on grabbing Romanian (women) aged 18-30 to donate ova for 800 to 1,000 lei (e270 to e335)," Romania's department for fighting organized crime (DIICOT) said in a statement.
DIICOT said it had detained Harry Mironescu, a gynecologist and de facto head of the clinic, his son Yair Miron and Borzea Cecilia, a Romanian employee, for 24 hours and launched a criminal investigation against them.
Romanian television said the clinic had carried out about 1,200 in vitro fertilization procedures since opening in 1999, and that the main beneficiaries were Israeli, Italian and British couples.
In vitro fertilization, used by couples who cannot conceive normally, involves fertilizing eggs outside the body and placing them in the uterus for a normal pregnancy. If a woman's eggs are infertile, a donor must be found to provide fertile eggs.
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Last update - 10:03 20/07/2009
Melbourne film festival rejects Ken Loach anti-Israel pressure
By Haaretz Service
British director Ken Loach has withdrawn his film Looking for Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival to protest Israeli funding of another film participating in the festival.
Loach demanded that the festival reject the Israeli Embassy's sponsorship of Tatia Rosenthal to visit the festival to answer questions about her animation feature $9.99, but the festival organizers refused, saying that they would not bow to "blackmail," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Earlier this year, the Edinburgh Film Festival returned a 300 pound grant from the Israeli embassy due to pressure from the renowned director.
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ABC quoted Australian federal Labor MP Michael Danby as having applauded festival organizers for standing up to Loach, and saying that "Israelis and Australians have always had a lot in common, including contempt for the irritating British penchant for claiming cultural superiority."
He also said that it does not make sense to boycott Israeli films in order to make a political point against their country's government.
"Some people in Israel have been very critical of the Israeli film industry because of the way many films have been critical of the Government's actions in the Occupied Territories," he said.
"Why would you stop showing films that ask serious questions of the Israeli government in order to spite that very government?"
Melbourne International Film Festival chief executive Richard Moore insisted that as an independent arts event, the festival would not capitulate to political pressure.
"MIFF understands that that this issue is a particularly emotional one for people, but we will not participate in a boycott against the state of Israel, just as we would not contemplate boycotting films from China or other nations involved in difficult long-standing historical disputes," ABC quoted him as saying.
"Mr Loach's decision is part of an orchestrated campaign to target events that are in receipt of financial support from the state of Israel. Loach requested that we join the boycott and as an independent arts organization. MIFF has refused," he said.
Loach has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and its actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
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Last update - 09:37 20/07/2009
Israel extradites alleged KKK man to U.S.
By Reuters
Tags: KKK, Micky Louis Mayon
Israel extradited a suspect to the United States on firearms charges on Sunday, despite his denial he belonged to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
"No. I'm not. I'm not affiliated with any group whatsoever," a handcuffed Micky Louis Mayon, who was arrested in Tel Aviv last week, told reporters when asked if he was a member of the Klan.
U.S. citizen Mayon, 33, was speaking as police escorted him for extradition from Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport. An interior ministry spokeswoman later confirmed he had been deported.
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"You know what they accuse me of. But it's not what I did. Absolutely not true," Mayon said, when reporters pressed him on whether he hated Jews and black people.
He said he had enjoyed his stay in Israel - especially "the Israeli girls" - and wanted to "come back."
Mayon fled the United States after he was suspected of burning the car of a judge who had ordered he stand trial on the firearms charges.
The Israeli Interior Ministry said on Monday law enforcement units were told by Interpol that Mayon belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, described by the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League as a racist, anti-Semitic movement.
Mayon was being sought by U.S. marshals on two arrest warrants. Charges included illegal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment and flight to avoid apprehension.
The ministry said Mayon arrived in Israel as a tourist in January 2008. He was issued a one-month visa and stayed on illegally.
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Last update - 09:17 20/07/2009
Germany to honor Nazi officers who plotted to assassinate Hitler
By The Associated Press
Tags: Germany, Adolf Hitler
German leaders on Monday will honor the plotters of a celebrated army attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, 65 years after they were executed.
In ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the July 20, 1944, coup attempt, officials will lay wreaths at the Bendlerblock building, now the Defense Ministry, where Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg and three others were executed shortly after their plan to kill Hitler with a briefcase bomb failed.
There will also be an hour of commemoration at the Berlin Ploetzensee Memorial Center for the victims of the Nazis.
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On Monday night, there will be a swearing-in ceremony for 400 recruits of the Bundeswehr in front of the Reichstag, which will be attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Immediately after World War II, the July 20 plotters were widely viewed as traitors, a label the Nazis gave them that stuck for many years. Even now, historians still argue about their motives and - given their conservative views and early support for Hitler - their commitment to democracy.
But the day's significance has become increasingly accepted in Germany, as wounds over the war heal and the rest of Europe grows comfortable with reunified Germany's place in it.
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Last update - 06:27 20/07/2009
Rabbi Michael Melchior slated to become next WZO head
By Cnaan Liphshiz
Tags: world zionist organization
Rabbi Michael Melchior is slated to head the World Zionist Organization as of next month, after Kadima chairperson Tzipi Livni invited him to join the organization on her party's ticket, Haaretz has learned.
The WZO has been without a chairperson for several weeks, since Zeev Bielski resigned after becoming a Kadima Knesset member. The job is hence under Kadima's control.
Melchior may become chairman on August 3, at a meeting of the organization's steering committee comprising 22 representatives of Zionist movements and political parties. The selection is expected to be confirmed next year by the Zionist Congress.
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Instead of putting forth one her own party members, Livni asked Danish-born Melchior - head of the dovish religious Meimad movement - to replace Bielski. "The offer was made out of the recognition that Melchior is a man of stature with a deep understanding of the Diaspora," said David Breakstone from the Conservative movement, Kadima's partner in the WZO alliance which supports Melchior's nomination.
But a prominent WZO member said: "It's sad that Kadima has so few worthy men and women that it can't even propose its own candidate."
Melchior's name came up as a leading candidate about a month ago, and his candidacy was agreed upon by a majority of the 22 representatives, including Likud and Gil, the pensioners' party. However, according to some sources, that deal may be falling apart. "I heard that some of the people who agreed on my nomination are rethinking the deal now," Melchior told Haaretz. "I suppose party interests are legitimate, but I was touched when Kadima offered to give up a seat for me though I made it clear that I would not join the party. It's unusual in Israeli politics."
Mizrachi, also represented in the 22-member forum, did not sign the deal and opposes the nomination, World Mizrachi Chairman Zevulon Orlev told Haaretz.
The World Zionist Organization - which runs a number of projects including the Hagshama program for instilling Zionist leadership in young Diaspora Jews - received an annual budget of a $7.3 million in 2008.
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Last update - 06:09 20/07/2009
Akiva Eldar / What Netanyahu wants from Obama's 'self-hating Jews'
By Akiva Eldar
Tags: settlements, netanyahu
Who is to blame for the latest dispute with the United States over the new neighborhood going up in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah area? Mayor Nir Barkat? Certainly not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood behind him? Ridiculous. Any child knows that everything is the fault of other Jews: Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two American administration officials who are inciting President Barack Obama against their own people.
This is not the first time that "self-hating Jews" have given us trouble. In negotiations over the separation of forces agreement in the 1970s, U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the scion of a family of Jewish refugees who had escaped from Nazi Germany, earned the anti-Semitic epithet "Jewboy" in Israel. At the end of the 1980s, when president George H.W. Bush dared to argue that the peace process does not jibe with settlement expansion, the Shamir government instigated a campaign against "the 'Jewboy' trio": Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller and Dan Kurtzer. Now it is the turn of Obama's Jewish confidantes to be the scapegoats.
It is easy to imagine what an uproar there would be in Jerusalem if an Arab leader or newspaper dared to claim that an American president was favorable to Israel because of the influence of a Jewish adviser. Netanyahu, who spent many years in the United States, knows very well the extent to which Jewish administration officials in key positions are sensitive to the slightest hint of dual loyalty - to their birthplace and their historic homeland. It turns out that for him, politics bends the iron-clad rule that "all Jews are responsible for one another."
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To satisfy the settlers, he permits himself to hurt people whose only sin is that they are trying to promote the goals enshrined in the platform of his senior coalition partner - the Labor Party.
We want our Jews in the administration to be blind to the settlements and deaf to the complaints of the Arabs. Take Elliott Abrams, for example, who was in charge of Middle East affairs in the Bush administration. Abrams, who is identified with the neo-conservative right, made an important contribution to legitimizing a good many dubious Israeli acts. He was an excellent salesman for the "no partner" theory, and the guiding spirit behind the indulgent policy toward the flourishing of settlements. He recently publicly criticized the two-state vision of the president who had hired him, among other things, to promote that vision.
Back during his election campaign Obama made it clear that he did not have to join Likud to be a friend of Israel. Opinion polls in the United States revealed that the views of most Jews are closer to the attitudes of organizations like the Reform movement, American Friends of Peace Now and J Street, which support a two-state solution and eschew Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's doctrine - and above all, largely object to the settlements.
The conversation Obama held with representatives of the Jewish community last week confirms that Netanyahu is drafting them for the wrong war. Even his oldest supporters did not attack the president's position on the settlements, and made do with a complaint about the high profile given to disputes over the issue of natural growth in the settlements. One of the guests at that meeting said that history showed that exposing the differences between the U.S. and Israel does not help to advance peace.
"This was not my reading of the lessons of the last eight years," Obama responded without flinching. Moreover, he said he would not shy away from a willingness to pressure all parties, including Israel, if that is in the best interests of the United States and Israel. Obama did not hesitate to tell his Jewish interlocutors that beyond the special commitment to Israel's security, his policy would be completely even-handed. If it became necessary, Obama said, he would speak to Israelis, as he had done to the Arab and Muslim world, to help them to achieve some kind of self-reflection.
Obama has internalized what his predecessors refused to understand: the traditional supporters of the Israeli right are growing old, or losing their relevance. They are giving way to younger, liberal forces who identify with Obama's values. In the "best" case, Netanyahu's incitement against the "self-hating Jews" will do to them what his whispered comment in the ear of Rabbi Kaduri "those leftists are not Jews" did to Israelis a decade ago - it turned them against him.
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Last update - 09:09 20/07/2009
U.K. envoys: The Israelis don't listen to us
By Nir Hasson
Tags: east jerusalem, israel news
British diplomats touring the Shepherd Hotel recently in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah expressed concern about Israeli construction plans there, particularly in light of the site's close proximity to the British consulate in East Jerusalem.
The tour, which also included American diplomats, was led by Jerusalem city councilman Meir Margalit of Meretz, who is also active in the Committee Against House Demolitions. During the visit, Margalit said, the British diplomats asked their American colleagues to pressure Israel on the issue and take the lead in applying international pressure to stop settlement building.
"The British said explicitly - the Israelis don't pay attention to us, but if you apply pressure, there is a chance," Margalit recounted. The U.K. envoys also expressed concern that construction activity so close to the consulate could lead to an intelligence leak.
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The area was acquired in 1985 by American Jewish philantrhopist Irving Moskowitz and designated for private housing. Two weeks ago, the local planning council approved the construction plan, which calls for the erection of two residential buildings of 20 housing units stretched over a 3,000-square-meter area.
The council recognized the hotel building - which in the 1930s and 40s served as the compound for the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini - as a historic site and designated it for renovation.
Eitan Geva, the Israeli legal representative of Moskowitz, said he was surprised by U.S. opposition to the project, which he characterized as "commercial," and not "ideological."
The Jerusalem municipality commented: "The district planning committee is working according to equitable criteria, and grants building permits to both Jews and Arabs, without regard to the religion, race or nationality of the recipient. The acquisition of property is conducted according to law, and the site has been granted the necessary authorizations."
Sarah Kreimer, associate director of Ir Amim, an Israeli non-profit organization engaged in issues affecting Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem, said yesterday, "All of these small developments constitute a sequence, the goal of which is to encircle the Old City from every direction - Sheikh Jarrah, Wadi Joz, the Mount of Olives, Ras al-Amud, Silwan and the Armon Hanatziv promenade," she said.
"In each of these places, plans are being advanced for construction whose ultimate purpose is to disconnect the Old City from Palestinian Jerusalem," she said.
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Amir Oren / Netanyahu-Obama spat harming IDF capability on Iran
By Amir Oren
Tags: iran, barack obama, nuclear
In the summer of 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the Israel Defense Forces hastily conceived a plan - without precise intelligence and with no developed, operational plans - to raid the missile sites in western Iraq that threatened Israel, Benny Gantz was the commander of the elite air force commando unit Shaldag. The military coordination with the region's overlords, the Americans, was minimal if not non-existent. Deputy chief of staff Ehud Barak expended much of his energy in maneuvering for the removal of Gen. Doron Rubin, who headed the headquarters for special operations.
In the summer of 2010, with Barak (perhaps still) defense minister and Gantz as the deputy chief of staff, the missile threat from the east will loom larger, though on the other side of the equation, both our capability to act from afar and our relations with the American army will have improved.
Of the U.S. army's 10 unified combatant commands, five are preparing for a possible confrontation with Iran. These include U.S. Central Command, whose forces control much of the Middle Eastern theater; U.S. European Command, which borders Centcom and whose jurisdiction includes Turkey and Israel; U.S. Special Operations Command, which is responsible for building and deploying commando units; U.S. Strategic Command, which deploys bombers and missiles from land bases and submarines; and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, which builds forces on land, sea, and in the air.
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Officers who are studying methods for thwarting nuclear programs are analyzing how the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor was destroyed in the Israel Air Force raid in 1981. According to official U.S. army publications, the American military and the IDF have cooperated in drawing up joint study plans, held conferences, and taken part in joint symposia. Gantz - who is Israel's military attache in Washington and whose deputies include the attaches to land, sea, and air forces as well as intelligence and research and development - also relies on the services of a liaison officer to the special forces and the Marines, Lt. Col. Avi Gil, who was the operations branch officer in the Paratroops Brigade during the height of America's war on terror. Gil commanded the Paratroopers' reconnaissance battalion as well as the undercover unit Duvdevan.
Two months, ago, the American military hosted the current head of the operations branch, Gen. Tal Russo, whom they knew from his experience in the Shaldag special forces unit, Sayeret Matkal and Maglan. At the Pentagon, Russo met his counterpart, Lt. Gen. John Paxton from the U.S. Marines. During his visit to the special forces bases in Florida and North Carolina, Russo met with Admiral Eric Olson; his deputy, Lt. Gen. David Fridovich; and Vice Admiral William McRaven, who commands the secretive JSOC special forces headquarters. Olson and McRaven served as commanders of the Navy SEALs. Olson, who visits Israel on occasion, was also a UN observer in Israel and Egypt, and when McRaven wrote a research paper on six impressive commando operations during and after World War II, he dedicated the last, and most instructive chapter, to the Entebbe raid.
Last year, GOC Southern Command Yoav Gallant - who during the 1990s was McRaven's and Olson's counterpart as commander of Shayetet 13 - paid a visit to the American Special Operations Command. Gallant was joined by Col. Hertzi Halevy, the commander of the Paratroopers Brigade and the former commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit.
The IDF and the American special forces have been engaged in a long-running initiative which includes information sharing, joint training exercises and intelligence upgrades. The American reports often quote Brig. Gen. Itai Brun of the operations branch.
Brun heads the Dado Center for military thinking in Glilot. He is known to take part in American war games that focus on "hybrid threats" posed by semi-guerilla and semi-military groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Brun lectures on the lessons learned by the IDF in Lebanon and Gaza within the context of the West's struggle with countries like Iran, Syria, and Iraq.
One can surmise that American officers are careful not to reveal any more information than what the civilian echelons above them say. At the same time, it is reasonable to assume that the professional dialogue, which is held in conjunction with various military bodies, yields an important basis for understanding the needs and solutions required for times of crisis. Even if the talks are limited to exchanges of opinions and brainstorming without getting entangled in joint operational planning, nobody wants to be surprised if there is escalation in the region, with Iran inching closer to attaining nuclear weapons and after a confrontation. If the discussions only deal with the day before and the day after, then it will be possible to bypass the day itself.
The weakness in Israeli-American relations stems from the rift at the top. Without prior planning by the military bodies, diplomatic coordination will be of no benefit, not even the partial, limited coordination that we saw during the 1991 war. But the Israeli prime minister's bickering with the U.S. president over the nonsense surrounding the settlements is harming the IDF's capability in dealing with its most vital missions.
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Last update - 04:05 20/07/2009
'No difference to U.S. between outpost, East Jerusalem construction'
By Akiva Eldar, Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury
Tags: israel news
The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
This clarification came in the context of a growing crisis in U.S.-Israel relations over the planned construction of some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."
"United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people in the State of Israel, and our sovereignty over the city is not subject to appeal," he continued. "Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city. This has been the policy of all Israeli governments. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city's east. This is the policy of an open city."
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Saying that Israel could not accept Jews being forbidden to live in anywhere in Jerusalem, Netanyahu added: "I can imagine what would happen if someone proposed that Jews could not live or buy in certain neighborhoods of London, New York, Paris or Rome. A huge international outcry would surely ensue. It is even more impossible to agree to such an edict in East Jerusalem."
Asked to comment on these remarks, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, said the administration is trying to reach an agreement with Israel on settlements, and "the negotiations are intense," the Associated Press reported.
Later Sunday, Netanyahu met with his advisors to discuss Israel's response to Washington's demand.
"I was surprised by the American demand," a source present at the meeting quoted him as saying. "In my conversation with [U.S. President Barack] Obama in Washington, I told him I could not accept any restrictions on our sovereignty in Jerusalem. I told him Jerusalem is not a settlement, and there is nothing to discuss about a freeze there."
"In my previous term [as premier], I built thousands of apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem, defying the entire world," Netanyahu added. "Therefore, it is clear that I will not capitulate in this case - especially when we are talking about a mere 20 apartments."
Other ministers also criticized the American stance at the cabinet meeting. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for instance, termed it "puzzling," while Interior Minister and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai declared that "no agency in the world can stop construction in Jerusalem."
And Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the ministers that the PA and its security services are engaged in widespread efforts to keep Palestinians from selling land in Jerusalem to Jews. He also said that Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar has allocated $21 million to Hamas activists to buy buildings and establish infrastructure in Jerusalem.
Washington's objections to the Shepherd Hotel project were first voiced by senior State Department officials at a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last Thursday, in response to a request by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The officials complained that the construction would change the neighborhood's demographic balance and harm its Palestinian residents.
Oren responded that the land in question was privately owned, having been purchased in 1985 by American Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, and the project has received all the necessary permits from the Jerusalem municipality.
Also Sunday, Abbas' bureau chief, Rafiq Husseini, said he hoped the U.S. would not back down on its demand for a complete settlement freeze, including in East Jerusalem.
In an interview with the Nazareth-based radio station A-Shams, Husseini said, "from our standpoint, there is no room for a compromise [on this issue], and we expect the American administration to stick to the determined stance that envoy [George] Mitchell expressed as far back as 2001. Any compromise that enables continued construction ... will do nothing whatsoever to advance the diplomatic process."
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Last update - 19:15 19/07/2009
Report: Iran's 'friend of Israel' VP resigns amid outcry
By News Agencies
Tags: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei
Iranian Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, whose appointment sparked an outcry because of previous comments in which he said Iranians were friends of Israelis, resigned Sunday, local media said.
State-run English language Press TV said Mashaie "no longer wanted the job" of first vice president and had resigned because of the row.
There was no immediate confirmation of the decision.
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had come under fire from leading hardliners for naming Mashaie as his top deputy on Thursday.
Analysts say Ahmadinejad's decision to appoint Mashaie, to whom he is related by marriage, suggests that the president has a small entourage of people he trusts.
In rare public criticism, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, an Ahmadinejad ally and member of the top legislative body, said Ahmadinejad had shown "a twisted face to clerics and elites" by appointing Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie as vice president last Thursday.
"Ahmadinejad should not challenge conservatives with such decisions. I request the President to replace him before more criticisms are made," the hardline cleric was quoted as saying by the Khorasan newspaper.
Many hardline lawmakers and clerics, including several top clerics, had called on the president to dismiss Mashaie for his comments. Ahmadinejad, already at the center of a post-election crisis, remained defiant. He said Mashaie's comments had been "misrepresented."
Mashaie, previously one of several vice presidents and in charge of a culture and tourism body, angered hard-liners in 2008 when he said Iranians were friends of all people in the world - even Israelis.
The row ended after Iran's most powerful figure Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who backs Ahmadinejad, said in September the remarks "are not right but the dispute should end."
Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, and most hard-liners consider the country Iran's archenemy.
A hardline editor seen as close to Iran's top authority also criticized Ahmadinejad's choice of the first vice president, which unlike ministers does not need approval of parliament.
"Ahmadinejad's appointment of Mashaie as his first vice president brought shock, regret and concern to his voters," said Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan daily.
"It is necessary for Ahmadinejad to take back the first vice presidency from Mashaie," Shariatmadari wrote in the daily.
Mashaie also came under fire for hosting a ceremony in November where women in traditional dress carried in Muslim's holy book, the Koran, to music, an action deemed insulting to Koran.
Lawmaker Hamid Rasai said Iranian society was very sensitive over Mashaie, a close relative to Ahmadinejad through marriage.
"I believe it would have been better if he had not been appointed," the Etemad-e Melli newspaper quoted Rasai, an ally of Ahmadinejad, as saying.
A pro-reform lawmaker said Ahmadinejad could be impeached over his decision.
"Now lawmakers can question Ahmadinejad or even impeach him for this appointment," the newspaper quoted Dariush Ghanbari as saying. Analysts say Ahmadinejad's impeachment is unlikely, as parliament is dominated by hardliners.
Ahmadinejad was re-elected in a June presidential vote, which stirred the largest display of internal unrest in Iran, the world's fifth biggest oil exporter, since the 1979 revolution and exposed deep rifts in its ruling elite.
Defeated moderate candidates say the vote was rigged in favor of Ahmadinejad, who has called the vote "the world's freest election".
But there are still many hardliners who back him such as Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi who said in remarks published on Saturday that the Iranian government drew its legitimacy from "the Almighty God."
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Last update - 13:04 19/07/2009
Can Muslim-Jewish relations ever improve?
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward
Tags: jewish-muslim relations
Efforts to bring together Jewish and Muslim communities hit another snag when an imam at a major Muslim conference gave an incendiary speech in which he said Jews were to blame for the Holocaust.
The speech came during the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, which was attended by rabbis who have been trying to build closer relations between Muslims and Jews.
At one of the conference's 70 sessions, Warith Deen Umar, a New York imam, spoke critically of Jews, saying that the Holocaust happened to the Jews "because they were serially disobedient to Allah."
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He also said that a small handful of Jews around President Obama "control the world." ISNA immediately condemned the tenor of the comments. This was enough for some of the Jewish figures in attendance, but not enough for the Jewish terrorism hunter who brought the comments to light.
The divide comes in the context of a broader debate in the Jewish community about how far to go in dialogue with Islamic groups. One strong view has been presented by Steve Emerson, head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and a skeptic when it comes to close ties between Jewish groups and the major American Muslim organizations.
Emerson has argued that ISNA and other Muslim groups are not as moderate as Jewish groups would like to believe. It was Emerson's project that released a record and transcript of Umar's comments, and he immediately rejected ISNA's apology.
"I think they have fooled the Jewish groups," Emerson told the Forward. "They haven't changed."
But Rabbi Marc Schneier, president and founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and a keynote speaker at the ISNA convention, said that Islamic groups are too often condemned based on extreme outliers.
"When you have 99.999% of the people saying good things and one person saying other things, you shouldn't magnify the words of that one person," Schneier said. "It is time for the Emersons of the world to understand that the process has begun and that while there may be bumps on the road, the process has begun."
Emerson shot back that "Rabbi Schneier is involved in legitimization of extreme Islamist groups for years. He wouldn't tell a good group from a bad one, even if he got hit on his head by jihad."
ISNA, the largest representative Muslim body in the United States, has been engaged in an active dialogue with the Union for Reform Judaism for the past two years. Leaders of both groups spoke at gatherings of their counterparts, and their joint project, Children of Abraham, formulated a guidebook on interfaith relations.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs adopted in March a resolution endorsing dialogue with the Muslim community, and Schneier has been active in twining mosques and synagogues to encourage dialogue.
ISNA's national convention, which took place in Washington on the July 4th weekend and drew several thousand participants, featured a senior White House official for the first time. Valerie Jarrett, President Obama?s senior adviser on public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, praised ISNA for its interfaith outreach.
Umar's speech came during a session that was named after a new book he is touting, titled "Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace." Umar, the former head of the New York State prison chaplain program, is no stranger to controversy. In 2003, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy report about how Umar spread extremism within the prison system. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Umar referred to the terrorists as martyrs. He also published a book titled "Judaiology" that spoke about the "inordinacy of Jewish power" and stated that Jews "play mind games" to deceive the non-Jews.
In his July speech, Umar took issue with the fact that Obama's first choices for White House positions were Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod. Both men are Jewish, though Umar wrongly described them as Israeli. "Why do this small number of people have control of the world?? he asked.
He then moved to speak of the Holocaust, providing his own explanation for its cause: "These people were punished. They were punished for a reason, because they were serially disobedient to Allah."
ISNA leaders were quick to issue a statement condemning his language and stressing that it does not reflect the group's opinion of other religions.
"We would like to set the record straight and state our complete rejection of all prejudicial views and bigoted stances toward the Jewish community and any other community of faith," ISNA?s president, Ingrid Mattson, said in a statement.
Louay Safi, executive director of the group?s Leadership Development Center, told the Forward that Umar was scheduled to speak about peace and to demonstrate how Muslim and Jewish communities can live in peace. Safi said that Umar, like other speakers, was vetted based on his proposed topic, not his past.
"We were very surprised when we heard about it," Safi said, adding that the group will now look for ways to make sure that such mistakes do not occur in the future.
Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com
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Last update - 12:09 19/07/2009
Palestinian police wound two in West Bank raid on Hamas
By Reuters
Tags: Hamas, Israel news, Fatah
Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas shot and wounded two people on Sunday during a raid to arrest a Hamas member in the West Bank, local residents told Reuters.
A security source said fighting erupted after residents of Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah tried to prevent security forces from detaining Halil Ali, 37, who was taken into custody.
The two wounded men, Ali's cousin and uncle, were being treated in hospital. Their injuries were not life-threatening.
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"He was asked to go to meet Palestinian security forces who wanted to question him, but he refused because he was scared as he knew that he could be jailed and tortured," Ali's brother Nidal said.
Tensions between Hamas and the Western-backed Abbas's secular Fatah faction have increased since the Islamist group took control of the Gaza Strip in a brief but bloody civil war two years ago. Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank.
Both sides accuse each other of arresting men from the other faction and of torturing detainees. Last month, nine people from the two factions were killed in fighting in the West Bank town of Qalqilya, where Abbas's forces carried out arrests.
For months, Fatah and Hamas have tried to agree a power-sharing deal in Egyptian-brokered reconciliation talks but have repeatedly missed deadlines for an agreement.
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PA fears U.S. will let Israel keep up settlement construction
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: Israel news, East Jerusalem
WASHINGTON - Palestinian officials said on Saturday they were worried the U.S. administration was close to an interim agreement with Israel on settlement construction.
According to information that has reached the Palestinian Authority, Israel will not completely halt construction in the settlements but will limit it drastically to the point of almost stopping it. In exchange, Arab countries will implement previously discussed concessions - among them, allowing Israeli planes to cross their airspace and opening diplomatic missions.
The PA will discuss this with U.S. special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah this week.
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Sources in the PA said that "half-solutions" are unacceptable and that Israel must completely stop construction in the settlements.
The Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam reported on Saturday that Mitchell is to inform PA President Mahmoud Abbas by phone that the U.S. administration has been unable to obtain Israel's consent to stop construction completely.
Senior Palestinian officials have been following ambiguous statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has hinted that an agreement with Israel is in the offing.
Senior officials say American assent to even limited Israeli construction in the settlements would once again damage the American position as an honest broker in the Middle East. U.S. President Barack Obama told American Jewish leaders last week that his clear position against settlements has strengthened his position as an honest broker with the Arabs.
Over the past few days, Abbas has reiterated concerns over continued construction in the settlements, saying he would not renew negotiations with Israel as long as such construction persisted. However, senior Palestinian officials said that soon after the Obama administration reaches an agreement with Israel and the Arab countries, it intends to renew negotiations on a final status agreement. If the PA refuses to join, as Abbas apparently articulated, it will appear to be obstructing the peace process.
In any case, the PA will probably seek to postpone talks until after the Sixth Fatah Congress and general elections, scheduled for August 4. Sources in the PA said talks between Hamas and Fatah, which were to resume between July 25-28, would probably be postponed until after the Fatah Congress opens in Bethlehem.
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Last update - 09:20 19/07/2009
WZO suspected of giving settlers Palestinian land
By Amos Harel
Tags: Palestinians, Jewish Agency
Attorney General Menahem Mazuz has told police to investigate workers from the World Zionist Organization's settlement division on suspicion of knowingly allocating private Palestinian land for construction in the settlement of Ofra, Channel 2 reported on Friday.
Mazuz ordered the investigation in light of information revealed in a High Court of Justice petition filed by five Palestinian landowners, Channel 2 said.
The Palestinians, the heirs of the original owners, petitioned the High Court against the construction of five houses on their land, in southern Ofra.
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Ofra is north of Ramallah, in the northern West Bank.
Construction was well underway when the petition was submitted, with the help of human rights groups Yesh Din and B'Tselem. By the time of the hearing, the houses were already occupied.
During the hearing, the state's representatives conceded that the buildings were on private Palestinian land.
The Justice Ministry wrote a letter to Yesh Din member Dror Etkes, informing him it was launching an investigation.
The settlers who purchased the land showed the court their contracts with the settlement division, which stated that the land was transferred to the settlement division by the Civil Administration official in charge of abandoned property in the West Bank.
The settlement division in turn transfered it to Ofra's partnership organization, which sold it to the Israelis.
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Last update - 22:52 19/07/2009
'U.S. tells Israel to halt East Jerusalem building'
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Tags: settlements, Israel News
The United States has told Israel it must halt an East Jerusalem construction project in accordance with the Obama administration's demands for a complete freeze on settlement building, Israeli radio stations reported on Sunday.
The State Department summoned Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren over the weekend to advise him that the project developed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz should not go ahead, according to both Israel Radio and Army Radio.
Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build housing units in its place. The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters.
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The approval, granted by the Jerusalem municipality earlier this month, allows for the construction of 20 apartments plus a three-level underground parking lot.
In response, Oren told the State Department that Israeli construction in East Jerusalem was no different than in any other part of the country.
Jerusalem could not be considered along the same lines as settlements, he said, adding that Israel would not accede to this demand.
The Jerusalem municipality issued a statement following the report, saying the purchase was legal and it had acted with full transparency in granting building permits.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy had no immediate comment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion, no matter the U.S. requests.
Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting that Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel and that all citizens are allowed to purchase property in any part of the city they choose.
This is the policy of an open city, he said, and Israel would not accept a stance that counters that civil right.
The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in the east of the city to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
Israel regards communities in the area annexed during the 1967 Six-Day war to be a legitimate part of the state.
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said on Saturday they were worried the U.S. administration was close to an interim agreement with Israel on settlement construction.
According to information that has reached the Palestinian Authority, Israel will not completely halt construction in the settlements but will limit it drastically to the point of almost stopping it. In exchange, Arab countries will implement previously discussed concessions - among them, allowing Israeli planes to cross their airspace and opening diplomatic missions.
The PA will discuss this with U.S. special Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Ramallah this week.
Sources in the PA said that "half-solutions" are unacceptable and that Israel must completely stop construction in the settlements.
The Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam reported on Saturday that Mitchell is to inform PA President Mahmoud Abbas by phone that the U.S. administration has been unable to obtain Israel's consent to stop construction completely.
Senior Palestinian officials have been following ambiguous statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has hinted that an agreement with Israel is in the offing.
Senior officials say American assent to even limited Israeli construction in the settlements would once again damage the American position as an honest broker in the Middle East. U.S. President Barack Obama told American Jewish leaders last week that his clear position against settlements has strengthened his position as an honest broker with the Arabs.
Over the past few days, Abbas has reiterated concerns over continued construction in the settlements, saying he would not renew negotiations with Israel as long as such construction persisted. However, senior Palestinian officials said that soon after the Obama administration reaches an agreement with Israel and the Arab countries, it intends to renew negotiations on a final status agreement. If the PA refuses to join, as Abbas apparently articulated, it will appear to be obstructing the peace process.
In any case, the PA will probably seek to postpone talks until after the Sixth Fatah Congress and general elections, scheduled for August 4. Sources in the PA said talks between Hamas and Fatah, which were to resume between July 25-28, would probably be postponed until after the Fatah Congress opens in Bethlehem.
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Israel: UN learned of Hezbollah arms cache months ago
By Barak Ravid, Zvi Bar'el, Amos Harel and Jack Khoury
Tags: Hezbollah, Israel News
UNIFIL learned a few months ago about the cache of Katyusha rockets that exploded in the southern Lebanese village of Hirbet Salim last Tuesday, a government source in Jerusalem said. The source said UNIFIL had precise information about the cache and a number of other installations where Hezbollah is storing rockets, but that UNIFIL had done nothing.
A discussion is scheduled in the UN Security Council for late August on renewing UNIFIL's mandate in southern Lebanon; Israel hopes last week's explosion will show the need to strengthen UNIFIL. Israel believes that UNIFIL could sharpen its rules of engagement and act more forcefully with the Lebanese army in southern Lebanese villages.
Government officials dealing with the Lebanon issue say UNIFIL soldiers encounter armed Hezbollah fighters or are detained by them, but the incidents do not appear in the reports submitted to the Security Council.
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On Saturday it was reported that that area residents prevented UNIFIL soldiers from searching an abandoned building near the building that blew up last week, in which it is believed Hezbollah stored weapons, against UN Security Council resolution 1701. A Lebanese security official said dozens of civilians surrounded UNIFIL vehicles and blocked the road leading to the building. The UNIFIL forces retreated with the assistance of the Lebanese army.
Earlier, Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech marking a year since the exchange of Lebanese prisoners for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev; the Hezbollah leader said Israel still held one Lebanese prisoner and a number of bodies, and that there is still uncertainty surrounding the disappearence of four Iranian diplomats.
Nasrallah said he would continue working to bring back all Lebanese prisoners and remains from Israel, implying that the Lebanese government is not up to the task.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah "allowed" 12 Lebanese civilians to infiltrate a few dozen meters into Israeli territory on Mount Dov on Saturday near Shaba Farms, raising a Lebanese flag. They returned to Lebanon shortly thereafter. The Israel Defense Forces said it did not respond because the civilians were unarmed and not dangerous.
The border between Israel and Lebanon in the area is not fenced. IDF lookouts said the group, which included children, also had a Hezbollah flag, but did not raise it.
Israeli forces were placed on alert and the IDF informed UNIFIL command of the matter, asking them to intervene. By the time the UNIFIL force went to the site, the group was on its way back to Lebanese territory.
Security officials say the civilian incursion was intended to draw attention away from the explosion, which embarrassed Hezbollah, as it revealed the presence of weapons in southern Lebanon.
A senior defense official told Haaretz that he believed Hezbollah does not want to escalate the situation in the north, but that the group was seeking to attack Israeli targets abroad.
The infiltration of civilians onto Mount Dov is also apparently connected to Saudi and American pressure on Syria to demarcate its border with Lebanon to bring about an Israeli withdrawal from Shaba Farms. Such an Israeli withdrawal would neutralize Hezbollah's justification to continue to remain an armed group to liberate occupied Lebanese territory. Nasrallah is not part of these diplomatic efforts and views them as an Israel-American-Saudi "plot."
Hezbollah says the government and foreign interests are not the "owners" of the Shaba Farms "project," and if anyone is to make political hay from an Israeli withdrawal, it must be Hezbollah.
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