Israel in the News Mar/Apr 2006
Arab Construction
ARUTZ-7—As the government declares “war” on unauthorized Jewish communities, Arabs, funded by the Palestinian Authority (PA), are deciding Israel’s future borders through unhindered illegal building.
Unauthorized Arab building projects are going on all over Gush Etzion, the settlement bloc south of Jerusalem that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly claimed would remain in Jewish hands. There are 7,380 Arab violations.
Official PA vehicles travel freely in the areas between Gush Etzion’s Jewish towns. The areas are worked day in and day out using heavy equipment, such as bulldozers, tractors, dump trucks, and large teams of workers. They are focusing on state lands (land purchased by the Jewish National Fund prior to the state on behalf of the Jewish people) and on “survey” lands (lands whose status is unclear due to their lack of registry in the lands authority, much of them state lands as well). New roads are being paved, dirt paths are being widened, land is being indiscriminately plowed, and terraces are being built to seize legal control of the land, all with the financial backing of the PA and international donors under the guise of assisting Palestinian farmers.
A large sign has even been erected in the area, displaying the logos of the PA and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Arab MK Says, ‘Wipe Out Israel’
ARUTZ-7—Israeli-Arab Knesset Member Azmi Bishara told an Arab audience in Lebanon that Arabs are the original residents of the land and urged Israelis to leave and “take their democracy” with them.
“I will never recognize Zionism even if all Arabs do. I will never concede Palestine. The battle is still long. Return Palestine to us and take your democracy with you. We Arabs are not interested in it,” Bishara stated at a Lebanese book fair in Beirut. Ironically, Bishara has announced his intention to campaign for re-election to the Knesset in the party that he founded, the National Democratic Assembly.
Several years ago Bishara appeared with Hezbollah terrorist leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and called for a “united Arab nation” to come together against Israel. MK Michael Kleiner of Herut stated, “In any normal country, they’d put him in front of a firing squad. It’s inconceivable that an Israeli Knesset member would encourage Arab states to launch a full-scale war against us.”
High Priest’s Robe Completed
ARUTZ 7—After much hard work and research, the techelet (azure blue) robe of the high priest has been completed by the Temple Institute and is ready to be worn in a Third Temple.
The blue coat, or me’il techelet as it is called in the Torah, sports 72 golden bells alternating with 72 pomegranates attached around its hem, woven of blue, purple, and scarlet wool. It will join the already completed ephod and choshen (breastplate), featuring the 12 precious stones associated with the 12 tribes of Israel. The commandment to make such a robe appears in Exodus 28:31–35.
“This is the first robe woven entirely out of techelet in nearly 2,000 years,” Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute told Arutz-7. The Institute plans to embark on another major project: the production and supplying of the Torah-specified white garments of the ordinary priests for every male, Jewish descendant of Aaron. “Every kohayn from all over the world will be given the opportunity to register and order his own uniform so that he can be ready to serve in the rebuilt holy Temple,” Richman said.
Terrorist Film Wins Award
Paradise Now, a film about two Muslims on a suicide mission to murder innocent Jews in Tel Aviv, has won the Golden Globe award for best foreign film. With hatred for Israel as the dominant theme, the film demonizes Israelis and sympathetically “humanizes” the suicide bombers in their mission to win back “Palestine” for Allah.
Arutz-7 reported, “The main characters blame Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and Shechem, the area’s largest city, for their motivation to carry out the attack.” Daniel Pipes said the film “white-washes Palestinian suicide bombing,” and a film critic for The New York Times said it “risks offending viewers in the same way that humanizing Hitler does.”
Entertainment Weekly praised the movie for “the dignity bestowed on a pair of Palestinian suicide bombers.”
Smuggling Soars
ARUTZ-7—A recent report shows a 900 percent increase in the number of antitank missile launchers Arab terrorists have brought into Gaza from Egypt since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in August, compared with the preceding seven months.
In addition, an estimated five tons of explosives have made their way into Gaza since August, as well as 5,000 rifles and handguns, and more than a million bullets. In one official’s estimation, 90 percent of the explosives used by terrorists are brought in from Egypt. He said Egypt has become so important to Hamas, “if you would ask them what they would be willing to give up, assistance from Egypt or Syria, they would prefer to give up Syrian, but not Egyptian aid.”
Israel-India Ties Grow Stronger
ARUTZ-7—In 1992, when India opened its embassy in Israel, trade between the two countries amounted to $2 million. Today, said India’s ambassador to Israel, it stands at $2.7 billion—a 2,700-fold increase. He predicted that bilateral trade between the two would jump to $7 billion in two or three years.
Munich: An Anti-Israel Travesty
It takes a Hollywollywood ignoramus to give flesh to the argument of a radical anti-Semitic Iranian.” So wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer about Steven Spielberg, whose $70 million blockbuster film, Munich, trashes not only the moral character of Israel’s Mossad agents but Israel’s claim to the land as well.
The Iranian, of course, is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
“Even more egregious than the manipulation by character,” wrote Krauthammer, “is the propaganda by dialogue. The Palestinian case is made forthrightly: The Jews stole our land and we’re going to kill any Israeli we can to get it back Those who are supposedly making the Israeli case say…the same thing.”
“Munich, the massacre,” Krauthammer said, “had only modest success in launching the Palestinian cause with the blood of 11 Jews. Munich, the movie, has now made that success complete 33 years later…carrying the original terrorists’ intended message to every theater in the world.”
Spielberg’s screenwriter, Tony Kushner, is an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist Jew who routinely charges Israel with ethnic cleansing, calls the creation of Israel a “historical, moral, political calamity,” and believes the Jewish state has systematically tried to destroy the “identity of the Palestinian people.”
According to Andrea Levin, writing for CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), Kushner is also involved with a radical antiwar group, Not in our Name (NION), that opposes U.S. policy in Iraq and “Palestine.”
