Israel in the News Jul/Aug 2007

Arab MK Flees, Charged with Treason
ARUTZ-7—Former Knesset member Azmi Bishara faces allegations that he sold intelligence information to Hezbollah for several hundred thousand dollars during Israel’s Second War in Lebanon last summer. He is also suspected of stealing millions of shekels from Arab aid organizations and laundering the money through eastern Jerusalem moneychangers.

Hezbollah allegedly “depended on him as part of its strategy” in the war on Israel and even assigned him detailed missions. The Supreme Court received evidence of Bishara’s espionage and authorized the tapping of his phone, which security officials used to gather further proof of his alleged treason.

He fled the country this spring. Bishara faces life imprisonment or even a possible death penalty if convicted.

Jews Attacked in Jaffa
Five young, unarmed Israeli soldiers who stopped for ice cream in Jaffa after a day at the beach were attacked recently by 10 Arabs. They managed to drive away.

Jewish residents have been leaving Jaffa, which borders southern Tel Aviv, because Arabs have been routinely assaulting and threatening them as Hamas flags flutter from Arab windows, Arutz-7 reported.

“Jaffa is where modern Zionism began. It was Tel Aviv before Tel Aviv became Tel Aviv,” said Yisrael Zeira, head of Rosh Yehudi, a Tel Aviv-based organization for promoting Jewish education and values. He said Islamists recently held a rally in Jaffa to reaffirm their aim to take over the city and drive the Jews out.

Rosh Yehudi plans to send 15 religious Zionist families to live there this summer in hopes of bolstering the morale of Jaffa’s remaining Jews. In addition, it will establish a religious school and an office for organizing tours of Jaffa for Israelis, schoolchildren, and tourists.

Ad Seeks Bids on Iran Reactors
ARUTZ-7—The International Herald Tribune, owned by The New York Times Company, has run an ad seeking bids from corporations willing to build nuclear reactors for Iran.

The ad said, “All bids must be accompanied by a Bid Bond of twenty million Euros” and be delivered to representatives in Vienna or to the company’s office in Tehran on August 8, when they will be opened.

The vice president of Iran’s nuclear program said the tender presents an opportunity for Western nations to join in Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capabilities to “test the Westerners’ good will.”

The ad also ran in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Arutz-7 asked Haaretz’s advertising department whether it considered rejecting the ad. Manager Aviva Bronstein said Haaretz receives the International Herald Tribune as a finished product. “We sometimes don’t even see it until it is in print,” she said. “We do not review their ads, only those that appear in the Haaretz section of the paper.”

Anti-Zionist Picked for Israeli Film
ARUTZ-7—Film Director Eyal Sivan, an Israeli resident of France, has been chosen by Channel 8, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, and the Yehoshua Rabinovich Fund for the Arts to produce a film promoting Israel’s Jaffa brand citrus fruit. The film will be part of the project “Past and Present in Israel” for the country’s 60th anniversary celebration next year.

Israel Media Watch (IMW) has protested and said Sivan defines himself as “an avowed anti-Zionist” who has said he thinks that creating the State of Israel in its present form was “a historic mistake.” Sivan was also a signatory on a letter of “solidarity” that was sent by Israeli filmmakers to their Arab colleagues in Lebanon, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in the course of the Second Lebanon War, even as soldiers were fighting. IMW says Sivan’s film The Specialist showed senior Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in a favorable light. Sivan, said IMW, did not deny he had used cinematic manipulation to achieve this end.

Medical Tattoos
ARUTZ-7—To avoid errors in medical operations, Dr. Arik Kahane of Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv has developed a tattoo patch that will make perfectly clear which organ is to be operated on. When a leg, hand, lung, kidney, or other paired organ is to be operated on, confusion often develops as to which side of the body requires the treatment. The tattoo is to be pasted onto the correct organ or side of the body. Made in Israel, it is colored blue and reads, “Operate Here.” After approximately a week, it wears off.

‘Small Wall’ Campaign Begins
ARUTZ-7—Unknown to most visitors to the Western Wall, the remnant of the Temple compound extends to the north far beyond what they can see—and a campaign is under way to publicize the fact and improve conditions at the Kotel HaKatan, the small wall.

Above the Western Wall tunnels, near the Iron Gate entrance to the Temple Mount and on Temple Mount floor level, is an open area facing a short segment of the Wall. This is the Kotel HaKatan.

Though it is off the beaten track, it is actually considered holier than the familiar Western Wall plaza because of its closer proximity to the Holy of Holies of the ancient Temples. However, it is hard to get to, has no trappings of a holy site, and is not protected 24 hours a day. Arab children ride their bicycles and Arab women walk through with their shopping bags.

A no-littering sign has been erected, “but what we really want,” said an ad hoc committee, “is a sign saying that this is a holy site and that it should be treated appropriately.”

Hamas Seizes U.S. Weapons
Hamas recently hijacked three truckloads of American weapons intended for the Fatah party headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, reported WorldNetDaily.com.

“We obtained the U.S. weapons and will keep hijacking any assistance the Americans provide to Fatah,” said a Hamas spokesman.

WorldNetDaily said the last confirmed U.S. weapons transfer to the Palestinians “took place in May 2006 and consisted of 3,000 assault rifles, but WND reported multiple other transfers later were delivered to Fatah, including a cache of 7,000 rifles last January and about 8,000 assault rifles in February.”

Hamas told WorldNetDaily in January that it intended to capture a portion of the $86.4 million in aid the United States pledged to bolster Fatah and that it would attack Israel with the American-made weapons.

Seeing Fatah as the better of two evils, the United States sent the weapons to bolster Fatah in Gaza. However, said WorldNetDaily, “Hamas has reportedly won most battles against the U.S.-backed militias.”

The two terrorist organizations have been fighting each other since Hamas took control of the PA in 2006. Hamas now controls the northern Gaza Strip and has been launching rockets regularly into nearby Israeli communities.

Look Who’s Talking
Muslim leaders vowed in April to murder Americans, Jews, and every-one who refuses to submit to Islam but accused Judaism of being a bloodthirsty religion. To heighten the irony of the Muslim claim, the following also occurred that month:

• Four Muslims tortured, mutilated, and killed three Christian men in Turkey in a publishing house where they were preparing notes for a Turkish study Bible.
• The Muslim speaker of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Legislative Council prayed, “Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies…Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.”
• The Muslim terrorist organization Hamas called for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.
• A Muslim wrote a newspaper article that said suicide operations fulfill Allah’s wishes because Allah demands “the extermination of the Jews [which] is good for the inhabitants of the worlds [sic].”
• A Hamas spokesman said violence and murder, not negotiations, will “liberate” the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and “Palestine.”
• It came to light that the PA’s new 12th grade history textbooks have eliminated all mention of the Holocaust.
• Hamas television broadcast a new video encouraging Palestinian children to “carry the knife” and become terrorists and showed a dramatization of the four-year-old daughter of female suicide bomber Reem Riyashi singing to her dead mother and vowing to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

Meanwhile, Jewish doctors in Israeli hospitals treat Palestinians and Palestinian terrorists—free of charge.

Welcome to Vermont
If you look at it, it looks like BBC. I think it’s more mainstream and more objective than CNN.

So said Tim Nulty, director of the Burlington, Vermont, cable company Telecom, in discussing why he now carries the English version of the pro-Arab, Qatari-based Al-Jazeera television network. Al-Jazeera commentators have been known to describe Jews as apes and pigs, urge new Holocausts, and encourage suicide bombers. Accuracy in Media’s senior editor, Cliff Kincaid, said, “When al-Jazeera sought entry into the Canadian media market it was accused of providing a platform for hate-mongers, terrorists, anti-Semitism, and even Holocaust denial.”