NOBEL PRIZE FOR ARIEL SHARON?

Italian proposal: Nobel Prize for Sharon
Italian parliamentarian praises prime minister for making ‘historic decision’ in the interest of peace; world leaders laud Sharon
By Nir Magal
Ynetnews
August 22, 2005

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3131325,00.html

Does Ariel Sharon deserve a Nobel Prize? An Italian parliament member seems to think so. In an interview with an Italian news website over the weekend, center-right parliamentarian Giuseppe Caldarola proposed that Sharon be given the Nobel Prize for advancing the disengagement plan.

“The Israeli prime minister took a bold decision that speeds up the peace process, “Caldarola said in the interview. “It will be a good thing for the international community and international organizations if they appreciate and encourage it.”

The Italian politician said Israel is going through a very difficult period at this time and added the pain of the settler is “a serious thing, which should be respected.”

“It will be a mistake not to treat the prime minister’s actions as a deed that requires special recognition, such as a Nobel Prize,” Caldarola said.

When asked about his views on the disengagement plan, the parliamentarian characterized it as a plan of historic significance, and added “only with the passage of time will we be able to appraise its importance.”

“We are talking about a unilateral peace step, that if the other side responds to, could finally bring a chance for genuine peace,” he said. “A statesman who is capable of taking such a significant, such a painful move for his country, a statesman with such character, should be recognized.”

Caldarola also praised Sharon for realizing “the gesture of peace is the most important gesture in an attempt to change the situation in the Middle East.”

Caldarola’s colleague, Piero Fassino, also praised “Sharon’s brave decision. Caldarola in turn lauded Fassino as “a longtime friend of Israel and defender of the Palestinians.”

World leaders congratulate Sharon

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week to express his appreciation for carrying out the disengagement plan.

Berlusconi also conveyed his admiration for the prime minister and appreciation for taking such a brave step, and said his nation and political establishment would stand behind Israel and its residents.

Italy’s warm wishes are just one of several supportive messages Sharon’s office in Jerusalem has received over the past few days.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco sent Sharon a letter last week in which he too praised the prime minister for his decision to withdraw from Gaza.

“I would like to commend you for your prudence, long-range view and genuine commitment to reach - via negotiations - a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East.” he said. “I salute your government for its determination to overcome all domestic obstacles and difficulties.”

South African President Thabo Mbeki also congratulated Sharon by sending the prime minister an official letter.

“We salute your courage and assure you of our support as you dismantle the Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, and thus make an unprecedented contribution towards the just solution of the protracted and deadly Israel-Palestine conflict,” he said.

In addition, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised “the courage and determination of the Israeli government in formulating and implementing the disengagement process from its inception,” and expressed his hope that, “this step of yours will lead to the opening of a new chapter in the region. ”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair also sent Sharon his support and encouragement.

“I greatly admire the courage with which you have developed and implemented this policy. I believe you are right to see disengagement as an historic opportunity to pursue a better future for Israelis and Palestinians,” he said in an official letter to the prime minister.

“I look forward to working with you to help achieve this, and to continue working together towards a just and lasting peace, free from the scourge of terrorism,” he added.

A SOLDIER’S STORY

A Soldier’s Story
I did my duty in Gaza - and it left me pained but proud.
By Michael B. Oren
Editorial
Wall Street Journal
August 23, 2005

www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007146

Together with thousands of Jews, I sat on the flagstones before the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The time was midnight on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day on which, according to tradition, invaders twice overwhelmed the city’s defenders, destroying their Temple and crushing Jewish independence in Israel. Two thousand years later, a new Jewish state with a powerful army has arisen, yet Jews continue to lament on that day, and rarely as fervidly as now. For the first time in history--ancient or modern--that state would send its army not to protect Jews from foreign attack, but to evict them from what many regarded as their God-given land, in Gaza.

I would take part in that operation. In a few hours, I would leave my historian’s job and report for reserve service as a major in the army spokesman’s office. My feelings were, at best, ambivalent. I wanted to end Israel’s occupation of Gaza’s 1.4 million Palestinians and preserve Israel’s Jewish majority, but feared abetting the terrorists’ claim that Israel had fled under fire. I wanted the state to have borders that all Israelis could defend, but balked at returning to the indefensible pre-1967 borders. I honored my duty as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, but wondered whether I could drag other Israelis from their homes or, if they shot at me, shoot back.

Nothing in my 25-year army experience had prepared me for the horror of Jews fighting Jews, nor had any of the knowledge I’d gained researching Israel’s wars. The threat which the disengagement posed to the contemporary Jewish State weighed on me as I sat mourning the loss of its ancient predecessors. Then somebody greeted me: “Michael! Shalom!” I looked up into the smile of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, white-bearded with silvery sidelocks. He pumped my hand for several moments before realizing that I had no idea who he was. “It’s me, Amnon!”

I was dumbstruck. Back in 1982, when he was a handsome commando, Amnon had fought beside me in Beirut. Now he was a Hassid. We spoke of our lives’ divergent paths, and then, inexorably, about disengagement. He swore that God would either save the Gaza settlements or punish those who dismantled them. I told him where I was going at dawn. The fact that I, at my advanced age, was still doing reserve duty made Amnon laugh, but only briefly. With words that I would hear repeatedly over the following days, he asked me how I could violate my sacred army oath to “love the Jewish homeland and its citizens” and to “sacrifice all my strength, and even my life” to defend them? He reminded me that hatred between Jews had facilitated the Temples’ destruction, and excoriated me for bringing ruin on this, the third Jewish commonwealth. Amnon, his old warrior self again, assailed me, “You should be ashamed.”

Should I? In fact, the same code of ethics that binds members of the IDF also obligates them to “preserve the laws of Israel” and its “values as a Jewish and democratic State.” Both the government and the Knesset had repeatedly approved the disengagement plan as a means of safeguarding demographic and democratic integrity. In acting in accordance with those decisions, the IDF would be fulfilling one of its fundamental purposes. But could that charge be reconciled with the task of emptying and bulldozing Israeli villages? Could the army, which through successive wars strove to “protect the lives, limbs and property” of enemy noncombatants, now forcibly evict a civilian Jewish population?

These were the questions that challenged me and the 55,000 soldiers assembled in and around Gaza on the eve of the operation, the IDF’s largest since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The answers were far from initially clear. While passing several settlements, IDF vehicles--my bus among them--were attacked by knife-wielding youths who punctured their tires. They stood in the hiss of escaping air, wide-eyed and defiant, daring the army to retaliate. But the IDF exercised restraint. Better to let them blow off steam, we reasoned, before the real confrontation began.

Preparations for the mission meanwhile accelerated. At Re’im, a dust-enveloped tent city, an embedded American correspondent and I observed a battalion drilling their anti-riot techniques. Women and men, religious and secular, native-born Israelis and immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia, they had left their usual army jobs as teachers, flight engineers, and navigators to join the disengagement force. When asked about their feelings on Gaza, they insisted that their personal opinions were irrelevant, and that as soldiers, their duty was to carry out the instructions of the legitimately elected government. The assignment, they admitted, was tough, but essential to defend democracy.

That night, we watched the battalion’s officers, many of them combat pilots, poring over aerial photos of our targeted settlements, Badolah and Netzer Hazany. Booklets were passed out detailing the legal authority by which soldiers could request settlers to evacuate and arrest those who refused. We listened as the battalion commander reminded his soldiers of the three weeks’ intensive training they had received for this, and reiterated the need to show sensitivity to the settlers’ pain but also determination to achieve their objectives. He wished us all good luck. A few hours later, at 4 a.m., we moved out.

In a combat formation of twin columns we approached the settlements. With their gates barricaded, their houses swathed in smoke from burning tires and refuse, these looked, indeed, like battlegrounds. But we came unarmed, wearing neither helmets nor flakjackets but only netted vests emblazoned with the Menorah and the Star of David. For nearly a month, teams of IDF psychologists and rabbis had been quietly convincing settlers that disengagement was a reality and urging them to refrain from violence. Still, from behind the gate, youngsters pelted us with eggs and paint balloons, while many parents berated us with words reminiscent of Amnon’s--“You disgrace your uniforms!”--and worse, “You’re no better than Nazis!” The soldiers bore both the eggs and invective impassively, and when a bulldozer broke through the barricades, they filed into the streets.

More onerous challenges awaited them inside. The mother of a child who had been killed by terrorists had locked herself in his room, together with gasoline tanks that she threatened to ignite. Another family whose son, an Israeli naval commando, had fallen in Lebanon, was also hesitating to leave. In home after home, teams of officers and NCOs listened patiently while settler parents pleaded with them to change their minds and not to evict them, wailing and tearing their shirts in mourning. Women soldiers played with weeping children, telling them stories, hugging them. Eventually, though, each of the families was led onto the evacuation bus, leaving the soldiers emotionally drained but also resolved to proceed to the next household, the next excruciating tragedy.

The severest test of the battalion’s fortitude--and humaneness--occurred in Badolah’s synagogue, where the settlers were afforded an hour of parting prayer. But after two hours waiting in the blistering sun, the soldiers decided to enter. The scene that greeted them was shocking: settlers clutching the pews, the Ark and the Torah scrolls, or writhing on the floor. The troops tried to comfort them, only to break down themselves, and soon soldiers and settlers were embracing in mutual sorrow and consolation.

Ultimately, the settlers were either escorted or carried, sobbing, onto buses. But their rabbi, stressing the need for closure, requested permission to address the soldiers, and the battalion commander remarkably agreed. So it happened that 500 troops and 100 settlers stood at attention, with Israeli flags fluttering, while the rabbi spoke of the importance of channeling this sorrow into the creation of a more loving and ethical society. “We are all still one people, one state,” he said. Together, the evicted and the evictors, then sang “Hatikvah,” the national anthem--“The Hope.”

The disengagement from Gaza, originally scheduled to take three weeks, was completed in almost as many days. A few injuries were incurred, none of them serious, and no Israelis were killed. Only two of the troops refused to carry out orders, and in one case, a unit of religious soldiers stood and watched as their rabbi was evacuated. While the settlers’ overall restraint should be recognized, the bulk of the credit can only go to the IDF. Never before has an army relocated so many fellow-citizens against their will and in the face of continuing terror attacks with so extraordinary a display of courage, discipline and compassion.

I retain many of my forebodings about disengagement--the precedent it sets of returning to the 1967 borders, the inducement to terror. About the army’s role, though, I have no ambivalence. The same army that won Israel’s independence, that reunited Jerusalem and crossed the Suez Canal, has accomplished what is perhaps its greatest victory--without medals, true, and without conquest, but also without firing a shot. In answer to Amnon, I am not ashamed but deeply proud of the IDF, its strength as well as its humanity.

WHY SHARON’S CRITICS ARE CLUELESS ON GAZA

Why Sharon’s critics are clueless on Gaza
By Oliver Kamm
The Times of London
August 9, 2005

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1726863,00.html

The obdurate reputation of Israel’s Prime Minister is far off the mark. He is creating the conditions for peace

Towards the end of her premiership, Margaret Thatcher sent a congratulatory telegram for the 75th birthday of the Israeli statesman and polymath Abba Eban, asking rhetorically: “How can one not give Abba Eban his due?” Eban, famous for his unfashionably dovish views and dry wit, remarked: “Actually, there are quite a few people in Israel who think it’s possible.”

Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, will be thinking along similar lines after the resignation of his Finance Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in protest at Mr Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Mr Netanyahu worries that Israel’s removal of settlements will encourage terrorism. He declares: “I am not willing to be part of a process that ignores reality and blindly proceeds to establish a base for Islamic terror that will threaten the entire country.” While the Israeli Cabinet has approved the plan, public support for it has been slipping.

Mr Netanyahu’s concerns are not groundless, but they are misguided. The principal threat to Israel from suicide terrorism comes from the West Bank, not Gaza, while the moral and prudential arguments for an eventual Palestinian state are unassailable. The merit of Mr Sharon’s strategy is that he recognises these realities while having a shrewder assessment of how to realise them than his foreign critics generally allow for.

Mr Sharon is typically characterised outside Israel as an obdurate warmonger. When he became Prime Minister in 2001 The Guardian headline ran “Israel gives up on peace with Sharon victory”. Sir Gerald Kaufman, the senior Labour MP, in 2002 condemned Mr Sharon as a “right-wing thug” whose policies were “not only unacceptable in humanitarian terms, but … also seriously unsuccessful in dealing with the terrorism”. Last year Tony Baldry, the Conservative chairman of the Commons Select Committee on International Development, declared: “The construction of a security barrier higher than the Berlin Wall may bring the mirage of immediate security to Israelis, but the level of despair felt by Palestinians at being denied an ordinary life can only increase the supply of suicide bombers.”

Myths die hard. Increased security for Israeli civilians is not a mirage at all; Mr Sharon’s policies have been unambiguously successful in curbing terrorism. With the construction of a security barrier (not a “wall”, as anti-Israel campaigners habitually term it, but for most of its length a chain-linked wire fence that could be taken down within an afternoon) and the assassination of successive leaders of Hamas, the number of successful terrorist attacks within Israel fell by more than 75 per cent between 2002 and 2004. The breathing space that these policies have allowed Israelis has encouraged serious thinking about territorial compromise and the outlines of an eventual settlement with the Palestinians.

The dispiriting fact is that no negotiated two-state agreement is likely in the near future. Western commentators who speak of a two-state “solution” adopt a misnomer. A two-state arrangement, with Israel withdrawing to boundaries approximating the pre-1967 armistice line, is not a solution to the conflict, but an outcome of the end of the conflict. The end of the conflict requires something more deep-rooted: a changed relationship and mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians. As an Israeli analyst, Dan Schueftan, says: “At this stage, it is extremely difficult to imagine how any amount of European funding or sponsorship could produce a mega-gimmick convincing enough to persuade Jews, except in the hard-core Left, to consider a refurbished version of the Oslo act of faith after that failed so miserably.”

This is the context in which Mr Sharon’s plan should be assessed. Israel within its pre-1967 borders was militarily indefensible. After the Six-Day War, in which Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai, successive governments kept these territories juridically separate from Israel and treated them as bargaining counters for future negotiations. That consensus ended with the election of Likud governments in the late 1970s and 1980s, but since the collapse of negotiations at Camp David and Taba in 2000 and 2001 the political terrain has shifted again.

Israeli leftwingers have had to acknowledge the failure of the peace process established with the Oslo accord of 1993. Mr Sharon became Prime Minister because Yassir Arafat rejected the offer of an independent Palestinian state made at Taba, demanded a “right of return” for all Palestinian refugees — a course incompatible with Israel’s existence as a Jewish state — and declared a second intifada.

Mr Sharon, meanwhile, has taken the Right an important stage on from merely accepting the need for negotiations with the Palestinians, and has acknowledged that what he explicitly terms the “occupation of the West Bank” is untenable for Israel and for the Palestinians. His security measures have reinforced a consensus among Israelis for a strategy of defensive deterrence, withdrawal from settlements in Gaza, and direct negotiations for a Palestinian state. The prerequisites for a final settlement include Israelis’ confidence in the ability of the Palestinian leadership to crack down on terrorism and to make their administration of Gaza a success. Israel will feel secure enough to withdraw to the pre-1967 boundaries only when it no longer believes they are continuously threatened. On any realistic assessment, this will take time.

That is why Gaza is important. Mr Sharon knows that Israeli security is ill-served by the diversion of effort to protect 8,000 Jewish settlers among 1.3 million Palestinians. To the settlers’ anguish, he is evicting them as part of a wider plan to create the conditions for dialogue. The wisest course for politicians outside the region is to cease attacking Mr Sharon for not being able to create peace by fiat. The cause of confidence-building and direct negotiations has never wanted for meddlesome outsiders; it should be given a chance to flourish unaided.

BINYAMIN NETANYAHU’S RESIGNATION LETTER

Text: Netanyahu’s Resignation Letter
[Unofficial translation from Hebrew]
August 7, 2005

Mr. Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister Jerusalem

Sir;

From the first conversation when you presented your plan to me, I told you that I oppose unilateral withdrawal without anything in return, that in my estimation will strengthen the forces of terror. As a minimum I asked for the inclusion of the settlement blocs within the security fence before the beginning of the withdrawal and the holding of the Philadephi Corridor in our hands. In this way we would be neutralizing the impression that we are running away from terror and instead shows that we are choosing a new defense line in accordance with out national interests. In addition, we set that after then the Government would be able to consider if to decide on the evacuation in light of the reality developing in the area.

To my sorrow, the security fence has not been completed around the settlement blocs, the Philadelphi Corridor will be handed over to the Palestinians, and worse than that, we will allow the Palestinians to open a sea port that will be open to the terror boats.

To my disappointment, the Government ignores reality. As I warned, the Hamas is strengthening, the terror continues, the firing of rockets and mortars on our communities has not ended, and terror elements proclaim that they will move the rockets that drove us out of the Gaza Strip to Judea and Samaria, and from there will operate them until “the complete liberation of Palestine.”

I do not know when the terror will break out in full force. It is possible that it will take a month or two or a year or two. It is possible that the terror will first break out in Judea and Samaria. I hope that it won’t break out at all. But just as I warned in 1993 that the Oslo Agreement will bring attacks from Judea and Samaria and rockets from Gaza, so I unfortunately am convinced today that the current move will bring in the course of time to an increase in terror rather than a decrease. As you know full well, security officials also confirm that in the wake of the unilateral withdrawal they expect an increase in terror in the mid-run.

In summary: it is becoming increasingly clear that the unilateral withdrawal under fire doesn’t give us anything. The opposite; it endanger the security of Israel, divide the Nation, and sets the principle of withdrawal to the 67’ lines that are no defendable.

This is not the way to achieve peace.

I always thought that the withdrawal from Gaza is possible in an agreement or for a reasonable consideration. That is not the case now. Therefore, what are we receiving in return for the withdrawal? What are we receiving for uprooting families with their children, their homes, their graves! We will receive an Islamic terror base.

After the terror attacks in New York, Washington, London and Sinai, the world begins to understand that it is necessary to fight terror and not make compromises. The international community understands more and more that it is impossible to fight terror by running away from it, because the accumulating experience shows that the terror only strengthens and pursues us. And yet Israel, which showed the world the way to fight terror, now, goes in the completely opposite direction.

In recent months I hoped that the Government would open its eyes against this clear reality and change direction. But the opposite happened. A balanced Government that reflected the will of the People in the last elections has turned into a Government that carries out automatically policies that oppose the principles of the Likud and the mandate that we received from our voters.

Mister Prime Minister, you could have kept a balanced National Government. You could have prevented the splitting of the Nation. Over the course of months I asked for a national referendum that would maintain unity in the Government and the Nation. To my sorrow, you chose to oppose it, as before you chose to ignore the referendum of the Likud members that you initiated and whose results you promised to honor. Now, in these hard days before us, the need for reserve, control and responsibility from all parts of the Nation and the Government is greater than ever.

All this time I remained in the Government despite my growing opposition to the withdrawal given the developments. I did this as an attempt to minimize the dangers and damages resulting from the unilateral withdrawal. An attempt that to my sorrow has been exhausted. And I did it out of responsibility to my position as minister of the treasury. We are in the middle of carrying out a revolution of reforms and privatizations unprecedented in the market, which will strengthen the State of Israel and its economy. These days I completed the two last reforms, in banks and reducing taxes, and I prepared a responsible State budget that I developed in complete coordination with you.

When I entered my position two and a half years ago, the Israeli economy was on the edge of collapse. Today this economy is healthy, growing and vibrant. If the economic policies that I led are not changed, the growth will continue and reach all parts of the Nation.

Today we reached the moment of truth. There is a way to reach peace and security. Unilateral withdrawal under fire without compensation is not the way. I am not prepared to be a partner to a step that ignores reality and blindly advances the establishment of an Islamic terror base that will threaten the State. I am not prepared to be a partner to an irresponsible move that endanger the security of Israel, divides the Nation, sets the principle of withdrawal to the 67’ lines, and in the future even endangers the unity of Jerusalem.

Therefore I advise today of my resignation from the Government.

Best regards,
Binyamin Netanyahu

NAZI REMINDERS IN GAZA?

Nazi reminders in Gaza?
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 31, 2005

www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/07/31/nazi_reminders_in_gaza/

A reader e-mails a link to a news item from Gaza, where some Jewish residents have “tattooed” their national ID numbers on their arms, Auschwitz-style – a bitter gesture of protest against their forthcoming expulsion. My correspondent’s comment is blunt. “Misusing Holocaust language and imagery,” she writes. “Utterly disgusting -- makes me have less sympathy for them.”

In just over two weeks, tens of thousands of Israeli troops are scheduled to carry out Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” -- the forced evacuation of every Jewish resident in Gaza and parts of the West Bank. In a country deeply scarred by Holocaust memories, it was inevitable that the wholesale transfer of more than 9,000 Jews from communities where some of them have lived for decades would trigger angry -- and anguished -- comparisons to Nazism.

In the village of Elei Sinai, some residents plan to wear concentration-camp uniforms or yellow stars with the word “Jude” on the day they are expelled. A Likud Party faction opposed to disengagement calls it “an order the likes of which were last signed in German.” A member of Israel’s parliament set off a storm when he said, “Maybe we killed Eichmann for no reason, because he was also just following orders.”

Such Nazi allusions have been sharply condemned. The Anti-Defamation League called them an “inexcusable perversion of history,” and Yad Vashem, Israel’s renowned Holocaust research institute, warned that they “damage the memory of the Shoah.” Some of Sharon’s allies on the left, oblivious to such niceties as freedom of speech, even proposed making the non-historical use of Holocaust terminology an offense punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Let’s be clear: You don’t have to support disengagement to agree that the Nazi-talk is grotesque. The Israeli army is not the Gestapo. The peaceful Jewish residents who will be forced from the homes and land they love are not being sent to gas chambers. Sharon’s plan may be delusional -- instead of enabling Israelis to “disengage” from Palestinian violence, it will bring them more of it, and in deadlier forms -- but it isn’t the Final Solution.

And yet . . .

And yet there is no getting around the fact that Israel is about to become the first modern, Western nation in more than 60 years to forcibly uproot a whole population -- men, women, children, babies -- solely because they are Jews. There is no getting around the fact that the forthcoming expulsions are rooted in the belief that any future Palestinian state must be Judenrein -- emptied of its Jews. And while it goes without saying that Sharon and every member of his government abominate the Nazis and all they stood for, there is no getting around the fact that disengagement is meant to appease an enemy that has always regarded the genocidal hatred of Jews in a very different light.

Long before there were “occupied territories,” Haj Amin El-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of Palestine’s Arabs, urged Hitler to “solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries... by the same method that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.” When five Arab armies invaded the newborn Israel in 1948, the secretary-general of the Arab League vowed to wage “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

More than half a century later, what has changed? The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is the author of a book denying the Holocaust and claiming that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis against the Jews of Europe. Palestinian Authority TV broadcasts poisonous diatribes, like one Friday sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris. “The Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers,” he preached. “The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature and have been throughout history.”

Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza changes nothing, the senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahard said recently. He told an Italian newspaper that Israel’s existence would be unacceptable even if it were to retreat to the armistice lines of 1949. “In the end, Palestine... must become Muslim,” he insisted. “And in the long term Israel will disappear from the face of the Earth.”

The abandonment of Gaza and northern Samaria plays directly into the hands of the haters. The sight of Jewish troops expelling Jewish families from their homes and schools will do nothing to promote Arab-Israeli peace. It will reinforce instead the notion that any Jewish presence is intolerable on land the Arabs claim for themselves. And if that is an argument against Jewish life in Gaza, it is also an argument against Jewish life in Israel.

NO, WE ARE NOT BEHAVING LIKE NAZIS

No, we are not behaving like Nazis
Israel’s disengagement is the best hope for lasting peace in decades
By Isaac Herzog (Israeli cabinet minister, from the Labor party)
The Guardian
August 2, 2005

www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1540857,00.html

The coming days, weeks and months are going to be difficult for everyone in Israel and the Gaza Strip, but for the first time in decades there is genuine hope that this is the beginning of a process that can lead to a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

On August 15 Israel will begin withdrawing more than 8,000 of its citizens from the entire Gaza Strip and more than 300 sq miles of the northern West Bank. And it will happen, whatever obstacles are placed in our way.

We have had plenty of talk over the years, but progress towards peace and an end to this senseless violence will not happen through talk but through actions. And the disengagement is genuine, positive action - a step to break the deadlock, to reinvigorate the peace process. But this step does not come without pain and controversy. Indeed the strain on our democratic values has been considerable, with large parts of Israeli society refusing to accept the government’s bold move.

I recently received a letter from a former high-school teacher of mine in Tel Aviv. He was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by a British army unit in which my father served. He was criticising me for working on the government’s plan to withdraw from 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank. “How dare you pull Jews out of their homes?” he wrote. “This is just like what the Nazis did to us!”

Sadly, I am no longer surprised when a Jew compares me and other Israeli officials to Nazis. It has become part of the rhetoric of those who oppose withdrawal. What concerns me more than these comparisons is the fact that, while most settlers are likely to leave of their own volition, tensions here in Israel are starting to reach the point where a tiny minority may use violent resistance to try to foil the withdrawal.

Seen from the UK, the evacuation of 8,000 Jews from their homes may seem simple, straightforward even. But this disengagement will not be easy. Imagine the difficulty and controversy involved in relocating an entire town the size of Hartlepool or Maidstone, against the will of many residents, and you can begin to understand the complexity of the task ahead of us.

Yet, despite the difficulty, I believe Israeli democracy will face the challenge and be strengthened. The majority of Israelis continue to back the government as it embarks on this path because they are convinced that eventually the withdrawal will bear fruit - for Israel and the Palestinians. By withdrawing from Gaza, Israel will legally end the occupation of an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians. Israel will no longer need to set up checkpoints and roadblocks within Gaza, and evacuated settlements will provide desperately needed buildings to ease Gaza’s crowding. Most importantly, Israel will have shown that it is fully committed to a two-state solution.

Still, like all such undertakings, withdrawal is fraught with risks. While the disengagement plan should prove to the Palestinians and the Arab world that Israel is serious about peace and the creation of a viable Palestinian state, the withdrawal risks sending the wrong message: Palestinians may come to believe that terrorism is what forced Israel from Gaza.

Like many Israelis I am fearful that rather than leading to a reduction in terrorism, the disengagement plan may be used as an excuse by the Palestinian terrorists for further violence.

This is why it is critical that the entire Palestinian leadership face their own challenge and make it clear to their own people that Israel’s leaving Gaza does not represent a victory for armed struggle. Rather it is proof that peaceful means will bring Palestinians closer to fulfilling their hopes for independence than years of senseless violence have. Should the majority of Palestinians see the withdrawal for what it is - a bold step towards an elusive peace – then Israel’s move will reignite hope that a broader, negotiated two-state solution is possible.

Beyond rhetoric, it is imperative that Palestinian leaders prevent the terrorists trying to fire on Israelis during the withdrawal. Equally, they must ensure that the land Israel leaves behind does not fall into the hands of Hamas, but rather goes towards easing the plight of the refugees in Gaza.

At the end of the day, we in Israel will move beyond our present disagreements. I believe that those who oppose our withdrawal from Gaza, such as my old teacher, will eventually come to see why leaving Gaza was inevitable. Should we succeed in carrying out the withdrawal smoothly, peacefully and quickly, and if the Palestinians can control their own opposition forces and make democracy prevail, hope will be restored for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Israel would much prefer to be the first democracy in the Middle East rather than the only one.

(Isaac Herzog is the minister of construction and housing in the Israeli government)

FLAGS, POSTERS USED IN GAZA CREDIT BATTLE

Flags, Posters Used in Gaza Credit Battle
The Associated Press
August 2, 2005

www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Palestinians-Flag-Fight.html

The battle between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas over who will get credit for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is being fought in print shops, flag factories and back alley sewing workshops.

The Palestinian Authority has commissioned tens of thousands of national flags as well as mugs, bumper stickers and posters with the slogan “Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem” -- props for planned mass celebrations meant to portray the pullout as an achievement of the Abbas government.

Hamas is striking back, preparing for military-style victory parades. Hamas supporters are sewing thousands of martial uniforms and flags in the group’s trademark Islamic green and activists are buying up privately owned jeeps and pickup trucks to lead the marches.

The winner of the competition may well be the next ruler of Gaza.

Hamas, increasingly popular because of disaffection with government corruption and chaos, could make an even stronger showing in upcoming parliament elections if seen as the liberator of Gaza. That image could be reinforced if Hamas militants fire on Israeli soldiers and settlers during next month’s pullout. Hamas has claimed all along that its shooting, bombing and rocket attacks during the past five years of fighting have forced the Israelis out.

Most Palestinians appear to agree. In a survey of 1,320 Palestinians last month, 72 percent said Israel was driven out of Gaza by militant attacks. The poll, by the independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

However, the Palestinian Authority could make a comeback if it quickly delivers some achievements after the pullout, winning some freedom of movement for fenced-in Gazans and creating jobs. Much depends on Israel’s willingness to coordinate the pullout, but Palestinian negotiators complain Israel is dawdling.

“We are still in the middle of the competition,” said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, adding that Israel is undermining Abbas by delaying decisions on crucial issues, such as establishing a passage between Gaza and the West Bank, and new rules for border crossings.

While waiting for a deal with Israel, Abbas is trying to wrest control of the streets from the militants, at least symbolically.

Banners and posters of militant groups have been banned from public places, but removing them is an overwhelming job. Shop shutters and walls of houses across Gaza are covered with political graffiti and posters of gun-toting militants. Police have cleared a few areas in Gaza City, but militant art still dominates most streets.

The Palestinian Authority is spending $1.7 million on withdrawal celebrations. It has ordered tens of thousands of Palestinian flags, from small pennants to two-story banners, that are being sewn in small workshops across Gaza.

A Gaza City flag shop is sewing about 200,000 Palestinian flags. “They want the whole country to be carrying Palestinian flags,” said the owner, Tareq Abu Daya.

For the victory rallies, the government will give away to its supporters 128,000 pairs of blue jeans along with white T-shirts, either with Palestinian flags or pictures of the late Yasser Arafat. Posters, caps, mugs and bumper stickers are being printed with slogans such as, “The people liberate, the people rebuild” and “Our land is returning to us, so let’s protect it” -- all meant to portray the pullout as an achievement of the people, not a faction.

Palestinian officials acknowledge privately that the main objective is to challenge Hamas.

Hamas, meanwhile, is planning its own military-style victory parades. Tens of thousands of the group’s green flags and headbands are being sewn in private homes and hidden workshops; the larger factories have been told they would lose government contracts if they make Hamas flags.

A senior Hamas official said the group is also sewing more than 2,000 uniforms for parades. Palestinian intelligence officials said they believe Islamic militants are preparing ten times as many outfits.

“It’s not acceptable to limit this victory to the Palestinian Authority,” said Hamas spokesman, Mushir al-Masri.

Palestinian analyst Khalil Shekaki said the preparations don’t mean Hamas plans to take over Gaza after Israel leaves. “Hamas could achieve that by elections, if the Palestinian Authority fails to find solutions for corruption and chaos,” he said.

Many Gazans appear to have made up their minds about why Israel’s soldiers and settlers are leaving after 38 years of occupation. The militants may have speeded up the withdrawal, but in the end Gaza is such a miserable place that no one wants it, said Ziad al-Murannia, 54, a Gaza City shopkeeper.

“(The Israelis) don’t need it, and they don’t need us,” he said.

HAMAS PLANS VICTORY PARADES

Hamas plans victory parades
Terror group purchases 30,000 uniforms ahead of planned post-pullout celebrations
By Ronny Shaked
Ynetnews
August 7, 2003

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3110018,00.html

The Hamas is planning to hold a huge victory celebration after Israel completes its withdrawal from Gush Katif, including parades similar to those held by Hizbullah after the IDF pulled out of Lebanon.

Sources in Gaza said the terror group already purchased 30,000 uniforms ahead of the planned victory parades. The Hamas also acquired open vehicles, to be used in the expected rallies.

The movement is hoping to utilize the parades to convey the message that the Gaza Strip withdrawal is a direct result of the group’s military triumph over Israel.

The Hamas is apparently also planning to bring tens of thousands of its supporters to Gush Katif communities in order to celebrate there too, once the withdrawal is completed.

Sources in Gaza said Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas can ask the Hamas to refrain from celebrating and hold its fire before the IDF withdraws from Gaza, but would have difficulty exercising his influence on the group once the pullout is a done deal.

“From the moment IDF forces leave, there is no chance Abu Mazen (Abbas) would have control over the Hamas and its people,” one source said. “What’s more, the Hamas would attempt to take advantage of the evacuation in order to boost its influence and popularity on the Palestinian street.”

Meanwhile, IDF sources warned that the terror group continues to rearm itself despite the relative lull in violence. The Hamas is also continuing to develop weapons, produce Qassam rockets, and train more members, the sources said.

PALESTINIANS ORGANIZE SETTLEMENT TOUR FOR GAZANS

Palestinians organize settlement tour for Gazans
The Associated Press
August1, 2005

www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/01/africa/web.0801gaza.php

The Palestinian Authority has rented 200 vehicles to shuttle curious Gazans in and out of Jewish settlements after they are evacuated in mid-August, a Palestinian Cabinet minister said Sunday.

Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements will give Palestinians the opportunity to tour the red-roofed communities most of them have never visited, although many of the enclaves were established at least 20 years ago.

Mohammed Dahlan, the Cabinet minister responsible for preparing the upcoming withdrawal on the Palestinian side, said the settlements would be sealed to Palestinians for three days after Israel completes its evacuation to allow any ordnance or other dangerous objects to be removed.

“The Palestinian Authority will organize visits for ... people throughout the Gaza Strip who would like to visit the settlements,” Dahlan said in an interview published on the Palestine Press News Agency Web site. “We have rented 200 vehicles to be used in a shuttle system to the settlements.”

The settler homes are supposed to be demolished by Israel once the residents are removed.

The Palestinian Authority is preparing to manage and administer 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of hothouses to be left behind, Dahlan said.

He called on Palestinians who currently work in the greenhouses — some of the few hundred Palestinians permitted to enter the heavily fortified communities — to register with the Palestinian Labor Ministry so they will be able to continue working in the agricultural areas following the withdrawal.

If the greenhouses are destroyed, Dahlan said the Palestinian Authority has a plan to immediately rehabilitate the hothouses.

ISRAELIS POISON PALESTINIAN LANDS BEFORE WITHDRAWAL: DAHLAN

Israelis poison Palestinian lands before withdrawal: Dahlan
Xinhua
June 29, 2005

Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs Mohamed Dahlan accused on Wednesday the Jewish settlers for poisoning the lands in the settlements that Israel is intending to evacuate in mid August.

Dahlan told reporters in Gaza that the aim of poisoning the lands is to cause severe damages to them in order not to use them after the Israeli army withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

“We have definite information that the Israeli settlers are poisoning the lands in order to damage it and to prevent the Palestinians from using it in the future,” said Dahlan.

He asserted that he had addressed several world countries who want to see the withdrawal succeeding, which included a briefing on all the settlers practices against the Palestinian residents.

Asked about the settlers assaults on Palestinians west of Kahn Younis in southern Gaza Strip, Dahlan said “such attacks on Palestinians are not new, they took the Palestinians lands after they were protected by their army.”

“Instead of using force in order to prevent these assaults on Palestinian residents, the Israeli army is protecting them and help them repressing the Palestinians by tightening the siege imposed on them,” said Dahlan.

On terminals and crossings controlled by Israel, Dahlan said that there are still many outstanding issues that both Israel and the Palestinians have not yet agreed upon, adding that he hopes the Israelis would agree on easing the people’s daily life.

“In case Israel doesn’t ease its measures on crossings and terminals, this means that Israel is not withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, it means that Israel is deepening its occupation,” said Dahlan.

THE GAZA TEST: PALESTINIAN MUST ENSURE PEACEFUL PULLOUT

The Gaza Test: Palestinians must ensure peaceful pullout
Dallas News
Editorial
August 3, 2005

www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/080305dnedihamas.1218ece0.html

With its Gaza Strip withdrawal now in motion, Israel is undertaking a painful but necessary step toward peace with the Palestinians. Tragically – no, infuriatingly – terrorist hardliners in Hamas are threatening to destroy what the Sharon government is achieving at great political cost to itself and searing emotional pain for the Israeli public.

Israel is pulling its settlers out of land their government encouraged them to colonize a generation ago, after Israel seized the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Israelis support the withdrawal. It’s not a matter of altruism as much as it is accepting blunt reality: Israel cannot continue to protect these settlements forever. And handing occupied territory to the Palestinian Authority is a prerequisite for any meaningful and lasting peace settlement. It is in everybody’s interest that the Palestinians succeed in governing Gaza.

Trouble is, the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas is stronger on the ground in Gaza than the Palestinian government under Mahmoud Abbas, and there is reason to fear that Hamas, which refuses to make peace with Israel, will attempt to turn the Gaza Strip into a terrorist statelet. Palestinian officials recognize that their security forces have to secure lawful government control of Gaza after the Israelis leave or their credibility before the world will be shattered.

The Palestinians’ first real test may come when the formal phase of Israel’s withdrawal commences Aug. 17. Hamas and other terrorist factions have threatened to attack Israelis during the pullout, to make it appear that Jewish settlers are being driven out by terrorist fire. Israel made it clear last week that it would meet any such offensive with a massive military invasion.

None of this need happen. The Palestinians are about to gain full sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and the chance to govern themselves. All they have to do is hold their fire while the Jewish settlers retreat. If they do otherwise, the road to a permanent peace is a dead end for the time being. It’s their call.

THE COMING MEDIA FRENZY

The coming media frenzy
By Uri Dan
The Jerusalem Post
June 5, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1117937889545&p=1006953079865

I advise the new chief of General Staff, Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, to permit maximum media coverage of the evacuation and uprooting of the settlements in the Gaza Strip. First priority should be given to the Israeli media, since this is a matter of vital national importance, but the international press should also receive full access.

It is estimated that more than 4,000 foreign journalists and film units intend to cover the events of the withdrawal and destruction. I don’t think such a number of media representatives was present in Israel even during the bloodiest days of the Palestinian terrorist war against the Jews.

As a journalist I have covered many military campaigns, from the period of the reprisals, through the parachute attack on the Mitla Pass in 1956, to the crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973. I saw the well-oiled American organization in 1970 when I covered the war in Saigon, and the confusion in Cyprus during the successful Turkish invasion in 1974.

In Pristina, Kosovo, I was a step ahead of about 1,000 journalists who arrived with the NATO forces invading from Macedonia. As an employee of the Ministry of Defense in 1982/83, I authorized journalists to cover the IDF on the battlefield in Lebanon. In fact, few availed themselves of the privilege, since they were too afraid, preferring to concoct imaginary accounts.

However, I have never seen such a media onslaught as that awaiting us now in Gaza.

The media explosion resulting from the Internet and local TV networks throughout the world can explain the waves of media representatives flocking to Israel. The Government Press Office should make sure that suitable applicants for an Israeli press card receive one, giving priority to the American media, the most important as far as Israel is concerned.

Many journalists are too scared to cover a real war, and the IDF and police operation to evict Jews from their homes and flourishing settlements in the Gaza Strip seems to them to be less dangerous.

Above all, Jews fighting among themselves is excellent journalistic material for the many outlets, in Israel and abroad, that have reviled the settlers for years. Even some of the Israeli media, who long ago joined the Palestinian camp, is eagerly waiting for the moment when IDF and police personnel will break the settlers’ arms and legs.

No one knows how the cruel separation of the Jews from the Gaza Strip will play out. Will Hamas accompany the uprooting with shooting to prove the truth of its claim that it has evicted the Jews? Will most settlers leave of their own accord, thus avoiding a civil war between the Jews?

The most important thing: The journalists should all be required to sign an undertaking that any bodily injury or material damage caused them is their sole responsibility; they will thus be unable to submit claims against the Israeli authorities afterwards.

The withdrawal from Gaza does not resemble the uprooting of the Yamit region that, despite being very difficult and painful, permitted massive media coverage. In this case the majority of the Jews decided to destroy the dream of idealistic settlers, realized in Gush Katif, in return for the illusion of a certain future in Ramat Aviv, Herzliya Pituah, Savyon and Talpiot.

If the new CGS gives orders, despite all the difficulties, permitting full media exposure, he will avoid the creation of dangerous rumors of conspiracy should the situation degenerate into bloodshed. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has publicly warned that “there exists an atmosphere of civil war” and that he will do everything to prevent it.

It will also be necessary to be careful of agents provocateurs amongst the ranks of the journalists, belonging to both the extreme Left and Right and liable to spread rumors, intentionally or unintentionally, that will fan the flames during this unprecedented period in the history of the renewed State of Israel. Consequently the Israeli authorities should not rely on the efforts of self-appointed spokesmen, but should set up a control center that can constantly check the veracity of published information and react accordingly.

The hundreds of cameras and thousands of journalists will be able to determine whether the thousands of soldiers and policemen who arrive in convoys many kilometers long, will actually be capable of carrying out their missions, despite all the plans and exercises.

JEW VS JEW SHOWDOWN ATTRACTING MEDIA CIRCUS

Jew-vs-Jew showdown attracting media circus
Thousands of reporters descending on Gaza to cover plan to oust residents
By Aaron Klein
WorldNetDaily.com
August 1, 2005

www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45536

With about two weeks until Israeli forces attempt to uproot the Jewish communities of Gaza, media outlets from around the world are hunkering down here anywhere they can find space, as the potential for Jew versus Jew conflict remains high.

There are currently about 1,500 reporters in Gush Katif, the slate of Gaza’s Jewish communities scheduled for evacuation Aug. 17. That’s almost one reporter for every six Katif residents. An estimated 400 more journalists and photographers are expected to arrive in the coming days.

Media stationed in Katif include televisions networks from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Belgium, China, Japan, Sweden, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, and a host of other countries; journalists from over 75 major U.S. and European newspapers; and radio correspondents from across the globe. Over 200 freelance photographers and cameramen, and nearly 100 Israeli journalists are present as well.

Why is the world’s media centered on Gush Katif?

Katif resident and IsraelReporter.com blogger Shlomo Wollins said, “Because it’s hair raising. You have two massive forces charging at each other, and neither will be deterred. On one side, you have Sharon and his people, even though some don’t want to, who are swooping down to evict the Gush Katif Jews. On the other side, you have the residents and their many supporters from around the country who will do what it takes to stop this plan.”

According to prominent political strategist George Birnbaum, “it’s because it’s Jew versus Jew. So of course the world is interested. If you uprooted a group of people from their homes anywhere else it would be a war crime, but might not get attention. Here, it’s just considered fascinating. It’s a shame the media doesn’t focus this much attention on other important issues. If they reported on Dafour like this, the issue would be resolved.”

For Anita Tucker, a Katif spokeswoman and a longtime area resident, the media attention is heartening.

“The world is fascinated because this is the land of the Bible. This is where it all began. I think people around the globe look at us as heroes, standing up against an immoral plan to throw us out of our homes. We’re fighting against terrorism even when our own government fails to do so itself. This is a story of good versus evil. And everyone wants to know how it will all end, which side will prevail.”

With large numbers of people living in Katif on solidarity missions, housing is very tight. Journalists have been resorting to creative measures to find suitable accommodations, with few options remaining. Katif’s only hotel, the Palm Beach Hotel, is off limits. The site became an Israeli Defense Forces outpost in June following the forced removal of nearly 200 anti-withdrawal protesters. Even some community centers are filled with families who streamed in to protest the withdrawal.

Many reporters are renting rooms, including basements and attics, in private Gush Katif homes for large sums of money. The housing demand and the number of reporters from networks with sizable budgets has driven to record highs the cost of housing in an area that may be bulldozed next month. Landlords are asking for six months of rent up front.

Some networks scouted the area in mid-June and reserved their space early. A cameraman for a major news syndication service told WND the company is spending $23,000 to rent an attic that can accommodate fifteen. Ai Kim, from Chinese television, said his network is paying $7,000 for a small apartment in the Katif town of Neve Dekalim, where most reporters are living.

A reporter from an Israeli newspaper is sharing a room in a private home with a U.S. correspondent for $5,000. WorldNetDaily paid a similar amount for a small attic.

Eli Fastman, Jerusalem bureau chief for Fox News Channel, told WND his network is spending “several thousand dollars” for places inside and outside Gush Katif.

Some reporters are still struggling to find living space. Anne Bernard, Middle East bureau chief for the Boston Globe, is among those searching for a place to stay. Her options include a few rooms in a private Katif home for about $5,000.

“The difficulty is of course partly because of the demand. But it’s also hard to find housing because the people here are going through such a difficult time, and many just don’t want outsiders in their midst,” Bernard told WND.

Reporters shouldn’t get too comfortable in their new Gaza digs. As WND reported, despite multiple promises media access to Gaza’s Jewish communities would not be restricted during the upcoming withdrawal, Israel recently demanded as condition for entering the area that journalists first sign a contract they will depart before the evacuation.

Following the July 15 closure of Gaza, which was declared a military zone, the IDF spokesperson’s office faxed contracts to media outlets in Israel conditioning entry into the Gaza Strip on reporters agreeing to vacate three days prior to the withdrawal.

The contract, to be signed by individual reporters, states, “I am aware that in any case, I must leave [the communities slated for withdrawal] no later than Aug. 14, 2005.”

The agreement also requires reporters to coordinate their travel with the IDF, provide the IDF with continuous contact information, and agree to “leave the Restricted Area, without delay, immediately after being told to do so by the authorized IDF officials.”

The Foreign Press Association in Israel has taken issue with the restrictions. Glenys Sugarman, executive secretary of the Foreign Press Association, told WND: “We think the agreement is entirely excessive. If the settlers can stay until the 17th, why can’t the media? The obligations required by the forms represent an attack on journalistic freedoms and free movement of our members and disregard ongoing negotiations between us and the authorities to permit a core number of journalists to remain inside the area during evacuation.”

An IDF spokesman told WND that while reporters will not be allowed to stay inside Gaza’s Jewish communities during the evacuation, there will be daily media shuttles to the area. He would not say whether journalists would be allowed to travel freely once inside, or whether the shuttle would go to areas being evacuated or communities already emptied.

“There also may be some opportunities for reporters to be embedded with army units. We’re still working on that,” said the spokesman.

Still, some journalists are privately vowing to defy IDF regulations and hide out in Gush Katif. But they may have technical difficulties filing their reports. WND broke the story that in the first few days of the Gaza evacuation, Israeli forces led by the Southern District Police Command may shut off utilities, including electricity and phone lines, and block cell-phone service from Gush Katif to affect area residents who refuse to leave on their own accord.

“I was planning to send in my stories by e-mail,” said one Israeli correspondent who said she will attempt to stay during the withdrawal. “If that didn’t work, I thought I could read it off to our office on my cell phone. Now I don’t know what I will do.”

PA JOURNALISTS URGED TO CELEBRATE GAZA “RETREAT”

PA journalists urged to celebrate Gaza ‘retreat’
By Khaled Abu Toameh,
The Jerusalem Post
July 27, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1122344277313&p=1101615860782

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday called on Palestinian journalists to take part in celebrations over the Israeli “retreat” from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

“To all Palestinian journalists – let’s prepare for the day of joy that is approaching,” the syndicate said in a directive to its members.

“The moment of the beautiful truth for the Gaza Strip is nearing. Let the occupation leave our dear land in humiliation.”

The syndicate, which reaffirmed its ban from last week on covering clashes between rival Palestinian groups, urged Palestinian journalists to display “national and professional responsibility” in reporting on the disengagement.

“Let’s reflect the civilized and shining face of our struggling people,” the directive said.

“Let’s prove to the world during the retreat that our people, who sacrificed the blood of their women, children and elderly, are entitled to a special status.”

It said Palestinian journalists should report only on stories that boost the morale of the people.

“Let’s stop writing about our differences and let’s push toward enhancing national unity,” the syndicate added. “Let’s sing in praise of the victory and unity and let’s not forget the martyrs, the wounded and the widows.”

Last week the syndicate announced that Palestinian journalists would face “penalties” if they continued to cover clashes between Hamas gunmen and PA security forces in the Gaza Strip.

It said the media should not report on, photograph or film armed clashes and demonstrations and stressed the need to “publish activities that support national unity and protect the internal front.”

BILL GATES TO VISIT ISRAEL IN OCTOBER

Bill Gates to visit Israel in October
Microsoft’s founder will meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
By Ofer Levi
Globes
June 23, 2005

www.globes.co.il

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, the founder and driving spirit behind Microsoft, is slated to visit Israel in early October.

The visit is part of Gates’s annual tour of Europe, when he meets with market and government leaders.

Gates will apparently meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu. [* Tom Gross adds: Ehud Olmert is now acting Finance Minister.]

In the early Nineties, Gates actively participated in the decision to make Hebrew one of the central languages at Microsoft’s development center at Redmond. Since then, all Microsoft programs have been translated into Hebrew at a cost of $100 million.

Microsoft’s Israeli branch was founded in 1989 and today employs a workforce of 200 in Ra’anana and Haifa. Microsoft makes $120 million in annual sales in Israel.

ISRAELI PATENT BLOCKS ADS

Israeli patent blocks ads
Three local students develop software that mutes television during commercials
By Meir Turgeman
Ynetnews
June 14, 2005

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3098644,00.html

Sick and tired of commercials? Israeli students come to the rescue.

Three local third-year computer science students managed to develop a software that allows television viewers to record commercial-free shows and mutes the sound during ad time, newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.

“We were looking for a project for a school assignment that would also be practical and help the public,” said Tal Sharasta, one of the developers. “Then we realized that just as we start flipping channels the moment there is a commercial break, the entire nation does the same.”

This realization led to the innovative idea, namely creating a software that can spot commercials and circumvent them.

The software developed by the students works by spotting the TV station’s logo, which disappears once a commercial break starts. This allows the device to mute the sound once a show goes into a commercial break, and turn it on again once the show resumes.

The software can also be used through the Internet, so viewers can control the way they record their favorite shows even while at the office.

The developers, however, are still grappling with one problem - teaching the software to recognize promos for other shows and block them out, too.

Meanwhile, the software passed all the tests successfully and was presented to school officials a week ago. Now, the students hope to find an investor that would help them turn the patent to a commercial product to be offered in stores.

ISRAELI COMPANY TO EXPORT CAVIAR

Israeli company to export caviar
Researchers have developed a method of making sturgeon produce caviar earlier.
By Michal Raveh
Globes
July 4, 2005

www.globes.co.il

Galilee Caviar, a subsidiary of Dan Fish Farms, has begun to make caviar from sturgeon roe. The product, intended for export, has been developed with the support of the chief scientist at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, following prolonged research costing NIS 6 million.

Sturgeon, which mainly live in the Black and Caspian Seas, produce roe when reaching maturity at age 14. The research led to a method to bring maturity forward to seven to eight years.

Since sturgeon do not exist in Israel, Galilee Caviar will initially import sturgeons from Russia, which will be raised in fish farms at Kibbutz Dan. The first 20 kg of caviar produced was sent to experts. 100 kg will be produced for Christmas.

Galilee Caviar CEO Yigal Ben-Zvi said, “We will produce 4,000 kg of caviar a year, which will be sold for $500 per kg. We therefore expect $2 million a year in revenue.”

ISRAELI FIRM DEVELOPS ‘MIRACLE PILL’

Israeli firm develops ‘miracle pill’

Hypochondriacs can save time; Israeli company to manufacture pill that cures multiple illnesses
By Etay Gal
Ynetnews
July 17, 2005

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3113922,00.html

Take a pill, stop the sniffles, ease an upset stomach, cure AIDS, and call me in the morning.

Israeli start-up firm Intec Pharma has developed a capsule that can combine several types of medication at once and has completed its first round of tests, its director-general said on Sunday.

The pill contains material folding inside like an accordion that contain different substances. When swallowed, the pill releases the materials in order after it reaches the stomach or the intestines. This allows for less concentrated active substances inside, which can prevent side effects and lessen the number of required doses.

A single pill could contain medicine to combat AIDS, digestive diseases, Parkinson’s Disease, influenza and more.

Intec Pharma plans to market the capsule within five years.

BOBBIT’S SURGEON MOVES TO ISRAEL

Bobbitt’s surgeon is getting attached to Israel plastic
By Sam Ser
The Jerusalem Post
July 17, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1121568338644

It isn’t easy being known best for reattaching another man’s severed penis. But as Dr. David Berman, who was the surgeon in America’s famous 1993 John Wayne Bobbitt affair, says, “It’s good to be known for something.”

These days, Berman is hoping to be known for a successful aliya. He arrived in Israel with his wife and four boys on Wednesday, part of the Nefesh B’Nefesh double-landing at Ben-Gurion Airport which brought more than 500 new immigrants from North America. The Bermans brought their two dogs, two parrots, gerbil and chinchilla for what David’s eldest son calls the family’s latest adventure.

There have been other adventures as well, including Berman’s “instant transformation” from marginal Jew to Orthodoxy, and the conversions of his wife and children. He grew up “very Reform” in Toronto, he said, and “from the ages of 18 to 32 [I did] nothing; no High Holy Day services, no fasting on Yom Kippur. Nothing.”

It was while his wife Tina was pregnant with their first child that Berman’s parents sponsored an Aish HaTorah seminar in the hopes that David and his four siblings would show up and take a greater interest in Judaism. It worked, with all of them gradually becoming religiously observant.

“Something clicked,” Berman told The Jerusalem Post. “It was the first time that I had ever been exposed to the thought that you could actually be rational and believe in God. I [always] thought they were mutually exclusive. I didn’t see that it’s only more rational to believe in God.”

The Bermans would eventually move from a “very WASP-y town” in Virginia to a Jewish area of Potomac, Maryland. Tina converted with the boys – they are now ages eight to 14 – and took the Hebrew name Temimah, which she is using in Israel.

Although Berman has not yet taken on Israeli citizenship, he said he hoped to do so within a year. In the meantime, the 48-year-old is shuttling back and forth from Netanya to Potomac, hoping to keep his successful plastic surgery practice going. It has grown significantly since word got out that Berman had stitched up the member Bobbitt lost in a fight with his wife – although, he said, there wasn’t necessarily a connection.

“It isn’t as if people say, ‘Well, he did that, so I think I’ll have my mom go over and have her eyelids done,’” he said.

If his family adjusts well to the move to Israel, Berman said, he would like to set up shop in Netanya.

He could continue performing breast augmentations, tummy tucks, liposuctions and skin peels – or, considering the kind of reconstructive surgery that terrorism victims need, he just may go back to his roots in trauma medicine.

“I’m reinventing myself,” he said. “It’s not good to stay the same for your entire life.”

MOSHE DAYAN’S EYE PATCH FOR SALE

Moshe Dayan’s eye patch ends up for sale on eBay for $75,000
By Galit Yemini
Ha’aretz
July 25, 2005

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/604300.html

Several items of great Israeli historical interest have been trading on the online auction site eBay. The original eye patch worn by former defense minister and chief of staff Moshe Dayan has been offered for the sum of $75,000, while a hanukkiyah (multibranched candelabra) belonging to prime minister David Ben-Gurion and made from bullet cartridges is on sale for $12,500.

These particular items are being offered by Pasarel Israeli Art and Treasures of Natanya. Moti Sander, a partner at Pasarel, said that his company specializes in Judaica and jewelry, and that he had received Dayan’s eye patch from the minister’s personal bodyguard, who said that he had gotten it, together with a Smith & Wesson 38 revolver, minutes after the famed warrior died in 1981.

Though Dayan’s pistol appears on the eBay site, this is not for sale as the Web site forbids the trading of any arms. It is, however, for sale through Pasarel.

Ben-Gurion’s hannukiyah was made for the prime minister in 1948 by workers of the Ayalon Institute, which manufactured bullets, and there is a personal inscription to the statesman on it. Sander said that he found the item in the Jaffa flea market, and that he had it authenticated by the very man who made it – now a resident in a retirement home in Tel Aviv.

AMERICAN SOLDIER BECOMES IRAQI SHEIK

American soldier becomes Iraqi sheik
By Antonio Castaneda
The Associated Press
August 1, 2005

www.washtimes.com/world/20050801-121342-3729r.htm

Sheik Horn floats around the room in white robe and headdress, exchanging pleasantries with dozens of village leaders.

But he’s the only sheik with blonde streaks in his mustache -- and the only one who attended country music star Toby Keith’s recent concert in Baghdad with fellow U.S. soldiers.

Officially, he’s Army Staff Sgt. Dale L. Horn, but to residents of the 37 villages and towns that he patrols, he’s known as the American sheik.

Sheiks, or village elders, are known as the real power in rural Iraq. And the 5-foot-6-inch Floridian’s ascension to the esteemed position came through dry humor and the military’s need to clamp down on rocket attacks.

Late last year, a full-blown battle between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces had erupted, and U.S. commanders assigned a unit to stop rocket and mortar attacks that regularly hit their base. Sgt. Horn, who had been trained to operate radars for a field artillery unit, was thrust into a job that largely hinged on coaxing locals into divulging information about insurgents.

Sgt. Horn, 25, a native of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., acknowledges he had little interest in the region before coming here. But a local sheik friendly to U.S. forces, Mohammed Ismail Ahmed, explained the inner workings of rural Iraqi society on one of Sgt. Horn’s first Humvee patrols.

Sgt. Horn says he was intrigued, and started making a point of stopping by all the villages, all but one dominated by Sunni Arabs, to talk with people about their life and security problems.

Moreover, he pressed for development projects in the area. He boasts that he helped funnel $136,000 worth of aid into the area. Part of that paid for delivery of clean water to 30 villages during the broiling summer months.

“They saw that we were interested in them, instead of just taking care of the bases,” Sgt. Horn said.

Sheik Ahmed, Sgt. Horn’s mentor and known for his dry sense of humor, eventually suggested during a meeting of village leaders that Sgt. Horn be named a sheik. The sheiks approved by voice vote, Sgt. Horn said.

Some sheiks later gave him five sheep and a postage stamp of land, fulfilling some of the requirements for sheikdom. Others encouraged him to start looking for a second wife, which Sgt. Horn’s spouse back in Florida immediately vetoed.

But what may have started as a joke among crusty village elders has sprouted into something serious enough for 100 to 200 village leaders to meet with Sgt. Horn each month to discuss security issues.

And Sgt. Horn doesn’t take his responsibilities lightly. He lately has been prodding the Iraqi Education Ministry to pay local teachers, and he closely follows a water-pipeline project that he hopes will ensure the steady flow of clean water to his villages.

“Ninety percent of the people in my area are shepherds or simple townspeople,” said Sgt. Horn. “They simply want to find a decent job to make enough money to provide food and a stable place for their people to live.”

To Sgt. Horn’s commanders, his success justifies his unorthodox approach: No rockets have hit their base in the past half year.

“He has developed a great relationship with local leaders,” said Lt. Col. Bradley Becker, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment. “They love him. They’re not going to let anyone shoot at Sheik Horn.”

He has even won occasional exemption from the military dress code – villagers provide a changing room where he can change from desert camouflage to robes upon arrival.

There are downsides. In his small trailer on base, Sgt. Horn keeps antibiotics to take after unhygienic village meals.

“I still refuse to kiss him,” joked Col. Becker, referring to the cheek-kissing greetings exchanged among sheiks.

Sgt. Horn acknowledges that some villagers are offended at seeing a foreign soldier in clothing usually reserved for elders, but he says this has diminished over time.

The sheiks told Sgt. Horn they will give him an official document deeming him a sheik before he goes home in about two months. He plans to frame it.

And the robe? “Maybe I’ll put it in the closet and wear it on occasion,” Sgt. Horn said.

THE GREAT HUMMUS ROBBERY

The great hummus robbery
Masked men steal 75 tons of chickpeas, used to make hummus, from Kibbutz storage containers
By Avi Cohen
Ynetnews
July 19, 2005

www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3114931,00.html

Hummus shortage in the cards? Some 75 tons (165,000 pounds) of chickpeas, used to make hummus, were stolen early Tuesday from Kibbutz Einat in the Sharon area, with farmers incurring a loss of NIS 200,000 (about USD 45,000).

The robbery occurred after kibbutz members placed the harvested chickpeas in storage containers and left them overnight in the field.

A group of masked intruders arrived during the night, attacked the guard, tied him up and stole the crops.

Liel Tayar, responsible for the growing of chickpeas at the kibbutz, told Ynet the humus grains are grown throughout the year.

“After we picked them yesterday, we stored them in large baths,” he said. “We placed a guard at the site and this morning had planned to transfer the chickpeas to buyers.”

However, he said, the kibbutz received a message earlier that the guard had been tied up and the crops had been stolen.

Tayar said he believes the stolen stock would be sold either in Israel or in Palestinian territories. Notably, both Israelis and Palestinians are known as avid hummus eaters.

Agricultural equipment is often stolen from the kibbutz, Tayar added, but said such chickpea theft was unheard of.

Farmers at the kibbutz say they will continue harvesting the remaining chickpeas, but plan to find an alternative storage solution.

Meanwhile, police have launched an investigation into the incident. At present no suspects have been arrested.

MUSLIM THEMED ‘BEURGER KING’ OPENS

Muslim-Themed ‘Beurger King’ Opens
By Sophie Nicholson
The Associated Press
August 5, 2005

Muslims in France are having it their way with “Beurger King” - a new fast-food restaurant that caters to the country’s large Islamic population.

The bright and colorful eatery was launched in July in an eastern Paris suburb crowded with immigrants and dilapidated housing projects. Its name plays on the French word “Beur,” meaning a second-generation North African living in France.

The menu at Beurger King Muslim, or BKM, is standard fast-food fare: burgers, fries, sundaes and doughnuts, and prices are comparable to those at major chains. But the beef and chicken burgers are halal — meaning made with meat slaughtered according to Islamic dietary laws.

Waitresses wear Islamic head scarves, as do many of their customers.

Mouna Talbi, 24, traveled 55 miles to Clichy-sous-Bois with her husband and two small sons to try it out.

“I was so happy to come here that I had tears in my eyes when I walked in,” she said, watching her sons climb on colored blocks in the play area as she ate a halal burger.

After the success of Mecca Cola, a soft drink marketed to French Muslims, it was perhaps only a matter of time before a Muslim-themed, fast-food restaurant opened in the country with Europe’s largest Islamic population.

Talbi’s children always clamor for fast food, but this was the first time they’ve been able to order something other than fish, she said.

“A woman in Muslim dress feels at home here,” she said, sitting in a red tunic and matching head scarf.

Three Muslim friends from the Paris suburbs set up the restaurant after seeing similar restaurants in Thailand and Algeria.

They saw a demand for a clean, family-oriented halal fast-food restaurant that would offer an alternative to the big non-halal chains and the many downscale halal street vendors.

One of the founders, Morad Benhamida, 33, said he and his partners worked for almost two years on a business plan to convince French backers.

“I was shocked when my bank manager believed in the project straight away,” he said, sitting under an umbrella on the restaurant’s terrace.

He said the business plan showed the halal meat came from reputable wholesalers and was inspected twice daily. But he had not anticipated how successful the idea would be.

“I was very surprised because people really liked the restaurant, so much so that we have tripled stocks since opening a month ago,” he said. “It seems like magic.”

He is planning to hire eight new employees in fall, expanding his staff of 28.

In an area with high unemployment, people are grateful to find work. Some female employees said they took the job because they were allowed to wear head scarves, unlike workers in other French fast-food restaurants.

Female customers also seemed happy. Cherifa Halimi, 19, sat in a booth sipping drinks with four friends, all dressed in black flowing gowns covering all but their hands and faces.

“There are a few changes they could make to give the place a completely Muslim image,” Halimi said. “The television is OK, but there shouldn’t be any music.

“But I’d like to work here.”

Muslim diners said they felt more misunderstood in France since last month’s terror attacks in London.

“Even the media demonizes the image of Islam in this country,” Ahmed Talbi said, sitting in a booth opposite his wife. “People are afraid of terrorist attacks here, too.”

Customers, including non-Muslims, said the restaurant was not segregating Muslims but showing a normal, peaceful Muslim activity that was open to all.

“Both Muslims and other people feel at ease here,” Talbi said. “Maybe this kind of place will help to correct the bad image of Muslims and tell the world to stop talking nonsense about us.”

ISLAMIC TELEPHONE IN SYRIA SOON

Islamic Telephone in Syria Soon.
SANA
July 24, 2005

www.sana.org/english/headlines/24-7/islamic_telephone_in_syria_soon.htm

In cooperation with the Administration of the Islamic Telephone Service in Egypt Sheikh Khalid al-Jindi, al-Azhar Scholar, is due to kick off the Islamic Telephone Service in Syria on Sunday.

This step came in the framework of the smart network services that are presented by the General Communication Company in Syria.

This service is available in more than 15 countries in America, Europe and the Islamic world.

It participates in offering religious Fatwa services and helps in explaining the verses of the Holy Quran on phone.

“THERE IS NOTHING THAT AN ARAB LOVES MORE THAN A JEWISH DOCTOR”

Jewish doctor’s “secret links” to Arab leaders
Albawaba
August 2, 2005

www.albawaba.com/en/news/186708

Who would imagine?

It all began with some health problems and ended up in a strong and warm relationship that lasted for years between a senior Israeli doctor and prominent Arab figures and rulers.

In mid-July, the mass-circulation Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published in its weekend issue, a several page report on Prof. Mani and his secret encounters within the highest circles of the Arab world including close ties with the late Saudi King Fahd.

With the help of Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi, Israel’s Professor Moshe Mani would wrap himself up in a traditional Arab Jalabiya, and leap from one Arab leader to the other. According to the report, he went horse-back riding with the late Moroccan King Hassan, spoke with Sudan’s president Jaffer Numeiri – as he tried to convince him to assist Ethiopian Jews in coming to Israel through Sudan. Mani would celebrate in extravagant meals on yachts in Jeddah and other Arab cities, until the day he felt he had enough caviar…

For months, Prof. Moshe Mani, head of “Tel HaShomer’s Urology” department, would reportedly disappear from Israel and travel on to London, Rome or Geneva. He would secretly join others on Khashoggi’s private Boeing to various Mid-East and European destinations.

Upon his arrival, he would change into silk jalabiyas, which were made especially for him by top Riyadh tailors. His shoes were purchased in special fashionable stores in Morocco. “During all my visits to Saudi Arabia, I would wear this costume. That’s how I managed to fit into Khashoggi’s entourage without being suspected by anyone ever”, he said.

In a private air field in the Saudi capital, the limousines would await his arrival. None of his special Saudi patients knew that he was actually Israeli. Moshe Mani, born in Jerusalem, the son of a well-off family that included distinguished Rabbis and lawyers, with roots in Baghdad and Georgia, had undertaken a new identity during his secret journeys. With the help of a British passport that was issued in Rome – he had “turned into” a Palestine-born son of an Iranian mother and Italian mother. His new name was Manual Mani.

“When I had entered the Saudi experience, I informed the relevant people (in Israel), and an order from the prime-minister’s office came out to Tel HaShomer not to ask me any questions regarding my long absences. They (the hospital officials) were also ordered to save my position and salary, also if I were absent for long periods of time, and not to intervene (in my affairs)”.

“When someone tried to ask any questions, I would state that I was going to take care of patients in Iran - and that sounded reasonable. Throughout the years, we received many patients from Tehran that had kept in touch with me, so those patients basically served as my cover story”.

The road to the Saudi royal family began incidentally in 1978. Prof. Mani was asked by two of his friends to take part in a meeting with businessman and billionaire Khashoggi in the Iranian island of Kish. Khashoggi, “the wondering ambassador” of the Saudi Royal house, had a flourishing agricultural farm in Kenya (with Israeli experts and knowledge). The Iranian Shah was expected to offer him a tourist project in the island, but at the end, he hadn’t arrived.

After a week, one of Khashoggi’s aides phoned Mani, and asked him to come to Geneva for a meeting. There, in a fancy hotel suite, Khashoggi’s entourage awaited. The team included, among others, head of staff Bob Shahin, a Christian of Syrian descent who was married to a Jewish woman and “Sheikh Yousef” (whose true identity was later on revealed – he was actually Eugene Warner – a Jewish lawyer of Hungarian descent).

“Khashoggi knew the entire truth about me: that I am a Jewish urologist, that I live in Israel, and that I have roots in the Orient.”

“We discussed various medical issues, and at one point, when he mentioned problems of impotence that Royal Arab leaders suffered from, I scribbled on a piece of paper a picture that automatically caught his attention.”

“It was a picture of a prosthesis that we inserted in those days into male sexual organs of various patients that complained of chronic erection problems.”

According to Mani, Khashoggi grabbed the drawing and asked for a more detailed explanation. The Saudi billionaire told Mani that he was exactly what Khashoggi needed – a man like Mani that felt comfortable in the company of Arabs, one who speaks the language, has European gestures and is a doctor for “problematic” issues. Khashoggi reportedly invited Mani to join his entourage.

“There is nothing that an Arab loves more than a Jewish doctor”, Khashoggi said.

In October 1978, Mani arrived in Khashoggi’s palace in the Saudi Kingdom. Khashoggi took him to the palace of the Crown Prince. “It was Fahd”.

“I have been following media reports about the deterioration in his health in the past several weeks, and I doubt he is still alive”, Mani told Yediot last month. King Fahd died on August 1, 2005.

Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud suffered a major stroke in 1995 and since has been unable to perform his official duties; his half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, served as de facto regent of the kingdom.

On May 27, 2005, the Saudi government announced King Fahd had been hospitalized, with other sources claiming he was in a serious condition.

According to Mani, then-Crown Prince Fahd invited Khashoggi, Shahin, and Mani to the clinic. There, they discussed various global issues, the conversation was held in English. “Fahd was a very friendly host,” Mani said.

“Since I didn’t want to embarrass Khashoggi, I didn’t speak about politics”.

At one point, Fahd signaled to Mani to accompany him. The two entered the bedroom. “It was a gigantic mansion that was built inside the palace, with expensive furniture, a gigantic bed, designed closets and a desk”. Mani checked, listened to Fahd’s complaints, established a medical diagnosis and provided medical prescriptions. After two hours, Khashoggi told Mani, “You passed the test, there is chemistry. The Crown Prince is very pleased”.

The rumor about a visiting urologist spread among the princes, and the Israeli professor received invitations to attend elegant dinners that ended with Mani providing medical advice in closed rooms.

At one point in time, Mani felt he had enough of the life he was leading. He came to Khashoggi and told him he needed time off. This came after years of journeys to Saudi Arabia, as well as many stop-offs in various destinations, in which Saudi princes, as well as Crown Prince Fahd, had met him. A warm relationship was established between Mani and Fahd, according to the Jewish doctor.

During one of his visits to Saudi Arabia, Mani met Fahd’s half-brother, Abdullah, who has been the Saudi Kingdom’s de-facto ruler for the last 10 years. “I wasn’t asked to treat Abdullah, but I would attend events that he had attended. In contrast to Fahd, who was very friendly, Abdullah seemed to be quite cold and conservative. He wouldn’t let me get close to him, and there was no chemistry between us”.

Whether Mani was sent by the Mossad to Riyadh and other Arab capitals is a matter that wasn’t mentioned in the report, but, between the lines, one can understand that this may be the case.

Was Mani actually sent to “check out” other matters, besides the physical condition of Arab Royals and leading figures?

MAZAL TOV BECKHAM, YOU’RE JEWISH

Mazal tov Beckham, you’re Jewish

Finally, a world-class Jewish soccer superstar: English national team and Real Madrid halfback learns his mother comes from Jewish family – tattoos verse from ‘Song of Songs’ on his forearm to mark revelation

By Mody Kraitman
Yediot Ahronot
August 4, 2005

English soccer phenom and fashion icon David Beckham recently found out his mother comes from a Jewish family.

The enthused Real Madrid halfback, who has a large tattoo of a cross adorning his chest, chose to mark the revelation by adding another tattoo on his left forearm during a recent trip to Singapore, this time of a famous verse from the Song of Songs: “I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me.”

Beckham’s wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Adams, was so moved by her husband’s gesture that she decided to tattoo the same verse on the back of her neck.

A source close to the glitzy couple told the London-based “Sun” that of all his tattoos, Beckham regards the Hebrew verse to be “the most romantic.”

On Wednesday the “Daily Mirror” admitted it had slurred Beckham when it published an article a month ago saying the soccer star has been harassing his children’s former nanny, Abbie Gibson, on the phone.

The article was posted after Ms. Gibson had given the newspaper a special interview.

The newspaper and publishing house are set to pay Beckham compensation and legal expenses.

The nanny promised not to expose any additional details regarding the fling with her former boss; she revealed that, in the past, she and Beckham had sex but did not engage in intercourse.

HOLY BATH PASSPORT FOR MIZO JEWS TO ISRAEL

Holy bath passport for Mizo Jews to Israel
Web India
IANS
July 27, 2005

news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=101022&cat=Asia

Hundreds of tribal Jews in Mizoram in India’s northeast are giving finishing touches to a ritual bath under the supervision of Israeli rabbis that could serve as their passport to that country.

A team of rabbis, including Israeli architect-rabbi Doron Malka, is overseeing the construction of the ‘mikvah’, or Jewish ritual bath, in the state capital.

“It will take a few more days for the mikvah to be completed and after that the final process of conversion will begin,” Rabbi Hannock Avizedek, an Israeli preacher deputed by the Chief Rabbinate religious jurists, told IANS.

“A bath at the mikvah forms an important ritual in Jewish traditions and a holy dip is considered the final step towards becoming a complete Jew.” For a new convert, a divine dip at the mikvah is mandatory.

A similar ritual bath is also being constructed at Manipur.

The chief rabbi of the Sephardic Jews, Shlomo Amar, announced in Jerusalem in March that members of the 6,000-strong Bnei Menashe tribe in Mizoram and Manipur were descendants of ancient Israelites or one of the Biblical 10 lost tribes.

The recognition by Israel came in the wake of piles of applications from locals here seeking to migrate to Israel, which they say is their “right to return to their promised land”.

According to Israeli law every Jew enjoys the “right of return” - or the right of abode in Israel.

“Leaders of the Rabbinical Court will come from Israel and find out who are the people who can take a bath at the mikvah. There are strict rules to be followed and it is not that anybody who claims to be a Jew can take a dip,” Rabbi Avizedek said.

“Once the rituals are over, it will open the gates for people from here to migrate to Israel.”

Although recognised as Jews, tribal people here will have to undergo conversion rituals as they have been not been strictly following Judaism as practiced in Israel.

At least 800 people from Mizoram and Manipur have migrated to Israel during the past decade, the last batch of 71 people leaving for Jerusalem in May 2003.

The local tribal Mizos and some people in Churachandpur area of Manipur are believed to have very many things in common with the Jews in Israel. Like in any Jewish home in Israel, Mizo Jews also place the mezuzah or a wooden box containing verses from the Torah at the entrance of their homes, besides wearing the kippah or headgear during prayers.

“I am convinced the Mizos are Jews. There are lots of similarities between the Israelis and the Mizos,” said Zaitthangchungi, a local researcher and author of a book “Israel Mizo Identity”.

For people like Yonathan Ralte, a young college student in Mizoram, a holy dip could be a passport to Israel.

“I am learning Hebrew and other aspects of Judaism so that I clear the test for conversion. I want to go to my Promised Land soon,” Ralte said while voluntarily helping in the construction of the ritual bath.

STATE IGNORES JEWS AS THEY HAVE NO VOTES

State ignores Jews as they have no votes
By Sanjeev Devasia
Midday.com
July 6, 2005

web.mid-day.com/news/city/2005/july/113175.htm

The Jews in the city are upset that the census report of 2001 has no mention of their community in Mumbai or in the state. The tiny community, has just 6,000 members in Maharashtra, including those residing at Thane.

The community members feel the omission is indicative of the government’s neglect towards Jews.

“If they can give the figures of all other major religions in the country, I fail to understand why they cannot give the number of Jews in the city? Judaism is a major religion in the world and the powers here seems to have forgotten to mention the community in the census report,” said J S Solomon, solicitor.

Community members complain that even the small Parsi community finds a mention in the city, but Jews are nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, points out Solomon, the 1991 census report does mention the number of Jews in the state.

“We need to know the number of our brethren in the city. Is it because we are inconsequential in terms of a vote bank, that they have ignored us? We hardly have anyone to represent our case before the authorities,” said Benjamin Isaac, secretary of the Indian Jewish Federation.

“Besides, there has been a large-scale migration of community members in the past and we have a right to know their status,” Isaac adds.

“Jews have contributed a lot to this city and to the country. The census report has to mention the number of people belonging to our community like they do of any other major community,” said Levi Jacob, religious community worker.

Directorate of census operations, Maharashtra joint director R S Meena said that all major religions in the country are declared in the census report.

However, the data on religions such as Judaism may have been put in the ‘others’ category. We do not know the exact numbers of Jews in the city.

The figures may be available with the central office in Delhi. But we do not know, when it will be published,” she said.

If they can give the figures of all other major religions in the country, I fail to understand why they cannot give the number of Jews in the city? – J S Solomon, solicitor

We need to know the number of our brethren in the city. Is it because we are inconsequential in terms of a voting bank, that they have ignored us? - Benjamin Isaac, secretary, Indian Jewish Federation

Jews have contributed a lot to this city and to the country – Levi Jacob, religious community worker

* The Jews in state *

Population of Jews according to the Census report of 1991

Total Jews in Maharashtra: 3294

Greater Mumbai 2041
Thane 613
Raigad 402
Pune 209

“THINK OF LIFE AS YOU WANT IT TO BE”

World’s oldest living married couple celebrates another milestone
By Dianna Marder
JewishWorldReview.com
(KRT)
July 21, 2005

jewishworldreview.com/0705/oldest_couple.php3

At 105, Herbert Brown is impeccably dressed in a crisp blue shirt that brings out the color of his eyes but belies the strain of time on his frail frame. Given his time spent in a Nazi concentration camp and his run-in with the notorious Adolf Eichmann, it’s a wonder Brown has survived.

But here he is, in the one-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife of 74 years, the former Magda Fritz, who is 100.

Together, on July 15, their ages totaled 205 years and 293 days, making them – according to the Guinness Book of World Records – the oldest living married couple in the world.

Other couples have been married longer, and some individuals are older. On June 1, an English couple, Percy and Florence Arrowsmith, also 105 and 100 respectively, were named by Guinness as the oldest living married couple. But the Browns proved they beat the Arrowsmiths by a few days; on June 13, Percy Arrowsmith died, making the point moot.

Herb and Magda Brown now have this distinction, certified by Guinness.

“We met at a dance, and we fell in love right away,” Magda says, her face brightening as she recalls her days as a finishing school student in Vienna more than seven decades ago.

A sepia photograph shows Magda, 26, and Herb, 30, at their wedding in Austria in 1930.

When the Nazis came to power in 1938, the Browns’ lives were imperiled. Magda recalls soldiers entering her house and taking everything of value – even rooting through the laundry in search of hidden cash.

Herbert was sent to Dachau. Remarkably, with the help of Christians in the community and a Jewish charity, Magda raised money for his release.

He returned to Vienna but was required to report daily to a government office. One day a high-ranking Nazi official was at the office, conducting interrogations. Brown was forced to stand at attention, with his nose pressed to the wall, for two hours. And then he appeared before the official – who turned out to be Eichmann.

The couple fled to England soon after.

All this and more their daughter, Trudie Solarz, has documented and recounted on videotape for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation.

The Browns came to Philadelphia in 1940; Magda was a seamstress, and Herb worked at a factory sewing the shoulder seams on tuxedos.

Today, they live in an assisted-living apartment complex called Harbor View.

Magda is meticulously dressed by 6:30 every morning, complete with lipstick and pearls. Herbert’s face bears the scars of melanoma, and his hearing is fading. But he is content.

“He doesn’t talk much,” Trudie says, teasing her father. “But that’s nothing new. Mom never let him get a word in.”

Trudie learns over and puts her lips to her father’s right ear. “Don’t fall asleep!” she says. “You’re getting your picture taken.” He smiles on cue.

Believe what you will about the benefits of exercise (Herbert and Magda were dedicated mall walkers) and eating right (Herbert practically lived on raw carrots; Magda is a chocoholic).

Trudie says, with all due respect, that her father stays alive to give Magda something to do.

“She’s constantly straightening his collar and telling him what to eat.”

At Harbor View, where the staff is planning a celebration, Betty Lowery, the assistant activity director, asks Magda her secret of longevity.

“You have to be happy all the time,” Magda says. “Think of life as you want it to be.”

Swedish tabloid: Tel Aviv match puts soccer team in ‘death’s way’
By Talya Halkin
The Jerusalem Post
August 1, 2005

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1122863986828

“Malmo FC on death’s way,” was the headline given by the Swedish tabloid Expressen to an article covering the Swedish soccer team’s departure for Israel. Malmo faces Maccabi Haifa in a European Champions League match on Wednesday at Jaffa’s Bloomfield Stadium.

“Malmo will land in terror-struck Tel Aviv,” said the sub-headline of the article, which appeared in the sports section. The article’s centerpiece was an eye-catching graphic display showing the Swedish team members playing against the background of a photo depicting the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Israel.

The article described the route that Malmo team members would take on their way from the Dan Hotel on Rehov Hayarkon to the Bloomfield Stadium. Along this route, the article said, were the sites of several “spectacular bombings” – including the terrorist attacks on Mike’s Place and the Stage nightclub.

A map of Tel Aviv marked the sites of three suicide bombings along the Herbert Samuel Promenade, accompanied by photographs of each of the sites in the aftermath of the bombing and the number of wounded and dead.

The article was written by Expressen’s Israel correspondent Arne Lapidus, who has been covering Israel for the past 25 years.

Shaul Aizenberg, the press officer for the Israeli Football Association, said he could not speak on behalf of the association, but his personal opinion was, “Whoever wrote the article wasn’t writing it in the spirit of sport, but in the spirit of incitement against Israel.

“The article has nothing to do with their actual visit,” he said. “Personally, it made me feel really bad.”

Another source in the Israeli sports media told The Jerusalem Post that the article was “nothing but a cheap provocation on the part of the Swedish newspaper.” The source said the article had exploited a general trend among European teams not to want to play in Israel, and that the Swedish team in particular had had some reservations about coming to Israel.

Giving bad press to Israel, the source added, could also be a way of appeasing criticism of the team’s decision to come here by satisfying anti-Israeli sentiment among some of the newspaper’s readers.

“It’s also a way of getting everyone worked up before the game,” the source said.

A Swedish source associated with Expressen told the Post that the article’s sensationalist headline and graphics were obviously meant to be attention-grabbers.

Nevertheless, the Swedish source added, “It seems to me to be a very legitimate article. After all, whenever Israel comes to people’s minds it’s about security issues.”

Lapidus told the Post that “one had to take into account that the paper was a Swedish tabloid with a sensationalist bent.” He added, however, that the article was “a straightforward report about Israel’s security problems.”

“Ample space was given to quotes from Malmo team members saying they felt safe in Israel, and that they were not worried about their security,” Lapidus said. “The article also pointed out that Tel Aviv was undergoing recovery, while giving examples of the suicide bombings that happened near the hotel – the last one being only six month ago. This is an article showing that there are problems here, but also stressing that the situation has stabilized.”

The Israeli consulate in Stockholm and the Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

IRAN’S NEW PRESIDENT GLORIFIES MARTYDOM

Iran’s New President Glorifies Martyrdom
MEMRI
July 29, 2005

www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD94505

The act of martyrdom is often celebrated by the Iranian theocracy. Most recently, Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, in his second TV appearance since his election victory, spoke July 25, 2005 on Iranian Channel 1 in praise of “the art of martyrdom.”

The day after Ahmadi-Nejad’s TV appearance, the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published a report about his spiritual advisor, Ayatollah Mohammad Misbach Yazdi. The report advised Iranians on how to volunteer for the Iranian regime-sponsored volunteer martyrdom squad, and mentioned an Iranian women’s volunteer group that is dedicated to carrying out martyrdom operations against U.S., British, and Israeli forces.

The subject of Iranian martyrdom seekers was also the topic of a recent program on Al-Arabiya TV, which is discussed below.

Ahmadi-Nejad on the Art of Martyrdom

The following are excerpts from a speech by Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, which aired July 25, 2005 on Iranian Channel 1. In it, he praises martyrdom operations and states that Islam will conquer the world.

Ahmadi-Nejad: “We want art that is on the offensive. Art on the offensive exalts and defends the noble principles, and attacks principles that are corrupt, vulgar, ungodly, and inhuman.

“Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity.

“The message of the [Islamic] Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time. It is a human message, and it will move forward.

“Have no doubt... Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.”

US STILL INVESTIGATES IRAN LEADER

US still investigates Iran leader
BBC News
July 28, 2005

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4726273.stm

The US says it has concluded that Iran’s president-elect was a leader of the group behind the 1979 hostage crisis at its embassy in Tehran.

But it says it is unsure whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actively took part and is still looking into the matter.

Following Iran’s Islamic revolution, radical students stormed the embassy and held 52 staff hostage for 444 days.

Former hostages say they recognise Mr Ahmadinejad, but Iranian veterans of the stand-off deny he was involved.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: “In terms of the president, we’ve looked into the allegations that were made about his involvement in the 1979 hostage crisis.

“We know he was a leader of the student movement that organised the attack on the embassy and the taking of American hostages.

“However, we are still looking into whether or not he was actually one of the hostage-takers. That’s something we continue to look into.”

He added: “I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone, given the nature of the regime in Iran, that he might have been involved in this kind of activity.”

Mr Ahmadinejad beat moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round run-off of last month’s presidential vote. Washington said the elections were illegitimate.

The hostage crisis led to the breaking of diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran, which have not been restored to this day.

KURDS SEEK ARREST OF NEW IRANIAN PRESIDENT

Iranian accused in killing of Kurds
By William J. Kole
The Associated Press
July 3, 2005

www.washingtontimes.com/world/20050703-122550-4084r.htm

Iran’s newly elected president, already accused of taking American diplomats hostage 26 years ago, played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of a Kurdish opposition leader and two associates in Vienna, an exiled Iranian dissident said yesterday.

Austria’s daily Der Standard quoted a prominent Austrian politician as saying authorities have “very convincing” evidence linking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the attacks in Vienna, in which the Kurds were killed.

The reports follow recent accusations from some of the 52 Americans who were held hostage for 444 days in Iran beginning in 1979 that Mr. Ahmadinejad, a hard-line Islamist, was among the hostage-takers.

Neither Mr. Ahmadinejad nor his aides could be reached yesterday for comment on the claims about the Vienna killings, but the president-elect on Friday denied a role in the hostage-taking.

“It is not true,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “It is only rumors.”

Alireza Jafarzadeh, who runs Strategic Policy Consulting, a Washington-based think tank focusing on Iran and Iraq, said Mr. Ahmadinejad was a Revolutionary Guard commander who supplied the weapons used to gun down Iranian Kurdish politician Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou and two colleagues on July 13, 1989, in Vienna.

Mr. Jafarzadeh is a former U.S. representative for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The council is the political arm of the Mojahedin Khalq, a group that Washington and the European Union list as a terrorist organization.

Mr. Ghassemlou, the principal target, was secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. His delegation had been in Vienna for secret talks with envoys from the Tehran regime.

Mr. Jafarzadeh said his assessment was based on Iranian government sources “who have provided accurate information in the past.” He said Mr. Ahmadinejad helped organize the Vienna attack while serving in the Revolutionary Guard’s Ramazan garrison near the western Iranian city of Kermanshah.

“While he was there, he became involved in terrorist operations abroad, and he led many, many operations,” Mr. Jafarzadeh said.

In 2002, Mr. Jafarzadeh disclosed information about two hidden nuclear sites in Iran that helped uncover nearly two decades of secret atomic activity and stoked fears that Tehran was trying to build a nuclear bomb.

Der Standard reported yesterday that Peter Pilz, a top official with Austria’s Green Party, accused Mr. Ahmadinejad of traveling to Vienna a few days before the slayings to deliver the weapons to the Iranian commandos who carried out the killings. He said he wants a warrant issued for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s arrest.

Mr. Pilz could not be reached for comment yesterday, and calls to Austria’s Interior Ministry and the nation’s federal counterterrorism agency went unanswered.

Mr. Pilz said an unidentified Iranian journalist living in France was contacted in 2001 by one of the reputed gunmen, described as a former revolutionary guard who has since died. The gunman’s account -- which Mr. Pilz said strongly implicated Mr. Ahmadinejad -- was turned over to Austria’s federal Office for Counterterrorism and Constitutional Protection.

In another development, a top Iranian former secret agent told the Associated Press in Tehran yesterday that the hostage-taker in a 1979 photograph that has come under intense scrutiny is not of Mr. Ahmadinejad, but a former militant who committed suicide in jail.

Saeed Hajjarian, a top adviser to departing President Mohammad Khatami, identified the man in the photo dating to the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as Taqi Mohammadi.

Iran’s newly elected president has been accused of being a major participant in the taking of American hostages at the embassy.

Six former U.S. hostages who saw the president-elect in photos or on television said they believe Mr. Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The White House said it was taking their statements seriously. President Bush said “many questions” were raised by the accusations.

International media have compared photos of Mr. Ahmadinejad, who won a presidential runoff election the week before last, with a black-and-white picture of one of the hostage-takers, a young man with a thin, bearded face and dark hair that sweeps down across his forehead.

But Mr. Hajjarian said they were not the same person.

“This man is Taqi Mohammadi, a militant who later turned into a dissident and committed suicide in jail,” he said, pointing to the 1979 photo.

Mr. Hajjarian’s comment follows statements by a number of the former Iranian students who carried out the U.S. Embassy seizure and held Americans hostage that Mr. Ahmadinejad had no role in the operation.