Israel news from within Israel

[Shammu]

Arab plan explained in Hebrew ads
20 November 2008

The Palestinian Authority has placed a full-page advert in Israel's Hebrew newspapers to promote an Arab peace plan first proposed in 2002.

The advert for the Arab peace plan that
appeared in Israel's Hebrew press
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/middle_east_enl_1227201598/img/1.jpg

The Saudi-backed initiative offers Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for an end to Israel's occupation of land captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

It also proposes what it calls a just solution for Palestinian refugees.

The Israeli government has noted "positive aspects" in the plan but has not formally accepted it.

In a BBC interview coinciding with his presidential visit to the UK, Israeli President Shimon Peres praised the plan as a "sea-change" in Arab policy.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak meanwhile said it could "serve as the basis" for negotiations.

Renewed interest in the Arab plan has arisen after a year of Israeli-Palestinian talks made no tangible progress and indirect contacts were revived between Syria and Israel, but also without achieving anything concrete.

Peace Now, and Israeli campaign group, welcomed the publication of the adverts.

"On behalf of a majority of Israeli citizens who support peace with the Palestinian people on the basis of a two state solution - we embrace the Arab Peace Initiative and urge both governments to endorse it and negotiate the final status agreement in its spirit," a statement from the group said.

Countering 'distortion'

The PA advertisement appears in the three main Hebrew dailies and is headed by the Palestinian and Israeli flags.

The text reads: "Fifty-seven Arab and Muslim countries will establish diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for a full peace accord and the end of the occupation."

The advert includes the full text of the seven-point initiative and is framed by the flags of 50 Arab and Muslim countries.

ARAB PEACE PLAN
Adopted by Arab League in 2002 and relaunched in 2007
Calls for "full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967"
All Arab states would establish "normal relations... with Israel" and "consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended"
Calls for a "just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem"

Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said it was aimed at explaining the Arab peace initiative to the Israeli public.

He suggested that Israelis were unfamiliar with the details of the plan and have only heard partial and distorted versions from Israeli officials.

The Arab peace plan, originally devised by Saudi Arabia, was adopted by an Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002 and re-launched at the Riyadh summit in 2007.

Israeli reports described the direct appeal to Israelis by Palestinian leaders over the heads of Israel's politicians as an extraordinary event.

Many Israelis agree on returning most of the land occupied in 1967 but hold strong views on two elements of the plan - making East Jerusalem capital of a future Palestinian state, and discussing Palestinian refugees in the context of a peace deal.

Israel has proclaimed all Jerusalem, including the occupied eastern half, as its "eternal, undivided" capital, and has rejected any responsibility for the flight of refugees during conflicts since 1948 when Israel was founded.

Arab plan explained in Hebrew ads

[Shammu]

Prospect of Israel war on Iran 'stronger'
Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:09:25 GMT

Israeli intelligence sources say the prospect of military action against Iran has increased significantly in the past few weeks.

Israeli sources told the Times on Friday that in the past few weeks Tel Aviv has witnessed an increase in the chances of launching an airborne attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

The revelation comes as Israeli military officials recently sent mixed signals about a calculated attack on Iran.

In a Wednesday interview with German weekly Der Speigel, Israeli Air Force Commander General Ido Nehushtan claimed that his forces were ready to follow any order to bring Iran's nuclear program to a halt.

"The IAF is a very robust and flexible force... ready to do whatever is demanded," he said.

Former Israeli military general Moshe Ya'alon, meanwhile, claimed that Tel Aviv has the 'right capabilities' to launch a successful strike on Iran.

"[A strike] is not the end of the game. Then, we should follow it up with a viable, sustainable military operation to target the facilities [serving] the regime's interests, and not allow the regime to rehabilitate itself," he said.

The head of the Israeli military's Diplomatic-Security Bureau Amos Gilad, however, said a military attack on Iran would pose a 'considerable challenge'.

"Iran is a country with smart people that have capabilities... It really would be a considerable challenge," he said.

Israel's military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin also dismissed an Israeli plan to strike Iran, saying the world financial crisis and Barack Obama's election as the next US president have dissipated the chances of wiping out the Iranian enrichment program.

Any military attack on Iran would require US cooperation as it would almost certainly involve Israeli warplanes flying through the Washington-controlled Iraqi airspace.

The Iranian armed forces have repeatedly warned that any attempted violation of Iran's territorial integrity would be a 'suicidal folly'.

"After failure in its 33-day-war on Lebanon, Israel has realized that any effort or movement against Iran would have devastating consequences," the top Iranian military commander Yahya Rahim-Safavi said on Sunday.

Prospect of Israel war on Iran 'stronger' 

[Shammu]

I heard from a Messianic Jew (Voice of Israel) and Israeli news source, they believe something might happen before the next administration comes to power. This is a clear case for the Israelis "Easier to ask forgiveness after than permission before" with Obama.

[Shammu]

Israel Bans International Media from Gaza, Arrests Human Rights Activists
By CHERRIE HEYWOOD (Middle East Times)
Published: November 19, 2008

GAZA CITY, Gaza -- Israel has banned foreign journalists from entering Gaza to cover the deteriorating humanitarian situation there as the country 's complete closure of the territory enters a third week.

Several groups of European parliamentarians were banned last week from passing through Israel's Erez border crossing into Gaza to assess the situation on the ground and to hold meetings with Hamas leaders.

Three international human rights activists were also forcibly arrested, by the Israeli navy, from Palestinian fishing vessels in Gaza's waters.

AP head, and Israeli Foreign Press Association chairman, Steven Gutkin said journalists had called him complaining of being refused entry since last week.

Since then, he said, the association had appealed to the government to allow access, with no success.

"We consider it a serious problem for freedom of the press. We think that journalists have to be placed in a special category. A blanket ban on people going into Gaza should not apply to journalists," Gutkin added.

"We are hoping that this is not the start of a policy of banning journalists from Gaza. We would like to point out that when times are tough, and when things heat up, it is important for journalists to be able to enter."

A BBC media crew was also refused entry last week.

Conny Mus, a reporter from the Dutch television station RTL was told telephonically by Israeli military officials that he and his crew would be able to enter Gaza.

However, upon arrival they were kept waiting for five hours and then eventually informed they would not be able to cross over.

"They put our names on a list and we waited for five hours at the border," said Mus. Only then was their request denied.

Although journalists have been barred from entering Gaza in the past, this has normally been for limited periods only, not the current lengthy and complete blackout.

The Israeli foreign ministry said no order had been issued to prevent journalists from going to Gaza.

"There is no decision not to allow journalists in," said Peter Lerner, the spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.

Israel closed all of Gaza's borders on Nov. 4. This followed a cross-border military raid into the Gaza strip by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to allegedly destroy a tunnel which the IDF said was meant to smuggle Israeli soldiers.

However, hundreds of underground tunnels connecting Egypt's Sinai Peninsula with the Gaza strip have been in place for over a year.

These are used to smuggle in everyday necessities which Gazans rely on for their survival due to Israel's hermetic closure of the territory. Weapons are also smuggled in.

Following Israel's military incursion into Gaza, Palestinian resistance organizations launched a salvo of rockets into Israel.

In the ensuing Israeli attacks and Palestinian counter-attacks 20 Palestinians were killed while two Israelis were lightly injured.

Israel has also stopped most international aid from entering Gaza causing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis with the U.N. Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA)'s warehouses running out of food.

Half of Gaza's population of 1.5 million is dependent on emergency rations from UNRWA for survival.

Gaza's main power plant was also forced to close on Thursday after Israel refused to allow any fuel in. Seventy percent of Gazans experienced electricity blackouts.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, alarmed at the severest restrictions imposed on aid getting into Gaza in its history, called incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and asked him to reverse the restrictions.

Meanwhile, three human rights activists from Italy, Britain and the United States were arrested by the Israeli navy as they accompanied Gazan fishermen off Gaza's coast. They were nowhere near Israel's territorial waters.

Under the Oslo Accords of 1994 Gazan fishermen were permitted to go 20 kilometers out to sea to fish. Forty thousand Gazan fishermen and their dependents rely on these fisherman being able to earn a livelihood from Gaza's coast.

Following Hamas' takeover of the territory in June of last year Israel limited this distance to six kilometers and has enforced it rigorously.

Those who risk going further out are regularly shot at and arrested with a number being killed in the past. Their boats are often destroyed and many have been forced out of business.

The desperate fishermen have been forced to play a game of Russian Roulette in an attempt to earn a livelihood as many of the larger shoals of fish on which they are dependent are found beyond the six kilometer limit.

The activists had accompanied the fishermen on several fishing expeditions in a bid to provide some international protection.

Hitherto, the Israeli navy shot high pressure water cannons at the fishing boats causing damage and several injuries.

Machine gun fire was also sprayed around the boats in an attempt to intimidate them.

But following three successful voyages by siege-breaking vessels from Cyprus, defying the Israeli navy and carrying European parliamentarians, journalists and human rights activists, the Israelis decided to crack down.

After three Israeli naval vessels surrounded the three fishing boats on Tuesday, 15 Palestinian fishermen were forced to strip naked and swim in the icy winter waters toward the naval vessels and were then taken in for interrogation.

The internationals were taken to Ben-Gurion airport where they are expected to be deported.

Israel Bans International Media from Gaza, Arrests Human Rights Activists

[Shammu]

Israel, Arrests Human Rights Activists

I'm sorry, I find this funny.


"Human Rights Activists" are always going after Israel. Why don't they (Human Rights Activists) try a nation where muslims are the main religion?

[sparky88uk]

Christians bring Iranian Jews to Israel
Posted 11h 34m ago



Some Israelis believe the country should not align itself with a group seen as an extreme element of American society, while others have charged that the evangelicals' goal is ultimately to convert Jews to Christianity, a charge the evangelicals deny.

Iranian Jews to Israel

Hello I read your article and got to the bottom just to find that an evangelical group has denied that they wish to convert the Jews they bring to Israel to Christianity, surely they either are not Christians at all or they have some other agenda, because as I remember we are to preach the Gospel to all men and it is to the Jew first and then the gentile, but either way the future is already laid out and many Jews will be saved either now or in the future at a time and place of God's choosing.

[HisDaughter]

Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

jewishworldreview

If Likud wins in Israel, how badly will the two new leaders of the alliance clash?

Barack Obama spent the first week after being elected president of the United States planning the next four years. Yet, even though the office is occupied by somebody else until January, the pundits are already predicting the next administration's trouble spots.

At the top of the list is the outcome of the Israeli elections scheduled for this winter. If Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu is sent back to the prime minister's office, we are told, a major conflict with the Obama White House is inevitable.

The assumption is that an Obama administration will regard "Bibi" Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace and that he will personally blow up the U.S.-Israel alliance.

HISTORY OF CONFLICT

The Israeli left has promoted the myth that Netanyahu destroyed the peace process after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. But the true story is that the Oslo Accords were doomed from the start because of Yasser Arafat's insincerity and the continuation of Palestinian terror after the peace was signed.

Though Clinton did just about everything to prevent the Likud leader from winning the 1996 Israeli election except moving to Israel and voting himself, the two managed to co-exist warily for three years. Despite his "hard-line" reputation, Netanyahu wound up signing supplements to the Oslo treaties: the 1996 Hebron agreement and the 1998 Wye Plantation accord. He also sent an emissary to Damascus to discuss Syria's willingness to make peace in exchange for the Golan Heights.

However, his bellicose rhetoric is remembered more than his diplomacy. Contrary to Theodore Roosevelt's advice, Netanyahu always spoke loudly while carrying a very small stick. But there was no mistaking the fact that the Clinton administration despised the Israeli. Bibi's warm relations with Clinton antagonist, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Christian Evangelical supporters of Israel deepened the distrust between the two governments. When Netanyahu was bounced out of office by Labor's Ehud Barak in 1999, the White House did little to disguise its jubilation.

Now, almost a decade later, Netanyahu is on the verge of a remarkable comeback. A combination of Likud and other right-wing parties has a better chance of putting together a governing coalition next year than does current foreign minister Tzipi Livni of Kadima and its potential allies.

With the Obama foreign-policy team likely to be comprised of either retreads from the last Democratic administration or others equally committed to pushing hard for Israeli-Palestinian peace, trouble with the Likudniks is on the horizon.

But, despite predictions of doom and gloom, is an Obama-Bibi blowup inevitable?

Not necessarily.

Though the idea that the new president will prioritize the comatose peace process and seek to bludgeon Netanyahu into submission may be a fantasy of some of Obama's fans on the Jewish left, it disregards his innate pragmatism.

Clinton committed himself, without reservation, to the concept that Yasser Arafat was a peacemaker rather than a two-faced terrorist. On the other hand, Obama arrives in the Oval Office with no such loyalty to the powerless Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas. To suggest that rather than concentrate on more-urgent issues, Obama would risk any of his hard-won political capital on such a slender reed as Abbas is absurd.

Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Obama and his people are inherently hostile to Netanyahu, why would it make sense for the next president to try to force Israel into a corner when the prospects for peace are so bleak? With the Palestinians hopelessly split between the weak Abbas and his Hamas rivals who control Gaza, there is no way that any Israeli government, even the current Kadima-led coalition that is desperate to achieve an agreement, could do so.

After all, the reason why Bibi may be headed back to the prime ministership is the failure, not only of the Oslo process, but also of Kadima's unilateral withdrawal concept.

Ariel Sharon left the Likud and formed the centrist Kadima Party in 2005 because Netanyahu and his followers wouldn't support the withdrawal from Gaza. His attempt to end the old left-right split in Israeli politics was initially successful, but the the pullout was a disaster. It led directly to the creation of a Hamasistan that bombarded Israeli towns like Sederot. A similar retreat in the West Bank under the current circumstances is unthinkable. This failure of unilateralism has left many Israelis looking back to Likud for leadership.

There may be disagreements between Obama and Netanyahu, but the top foreign-policy item in the Middle East, outside of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not the dead-in-the-water talks with the Palestinians, but something on which Obama and Netanyahu may well agree: the threat from Iran's nuclear weapons program.

While the Republicans made much of candidate Obama's ill-considered offer of talks with Iran, Obama also pledged never to allow the Iranians to achieve nuclear capability. If Obama doesn't keep that promise, he will have far-bigger problems in the region than not liking Netanyahu.

A chastened Bibi — who won't want a repeat of his difficulties with Clinton — and Obama will both have good domestic political reasons to avoid unnecessary conflicts with each other.

EAGER FOR CONFRONTATION

Rather than the White House being the one spoiling for a fight with Israel, the trouble may instead come from those American Jews who despise Netanyahu and are eager for a confrontation.

The left-wing J Street lobby is committed to pushing Israel hard to revive negotiations, even though anybody who's paying attention to the facts on the ground there knows that both Fatah and Hamas are uninterested in peace. But the lobby's agenda has little to do with the realities of the Middle East and everything to do with American Jewish politics.

J Street's real goal is to undercut the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and, if possible, to supplant it as the voice of American Jewry on Israel. J Street's financial backers were strong supporters of Obama and hope to have a voice in the administration.

A Netanyahu victory in Israel will give them an opening, since they will seek to deprive a Likud government of the sort of support Israelis expect here. Since AIPAC will have to stand up for Netanyahu — an Israeli who has been routinely and wrongly depicted in the American press as an extremist — as it has for every past prime minister, J Street hopes to profit from the comparison.

The test for Obama may not be so much whether he and Bibi disagree on policy, but whether the president allows some of his Jewish supporters to maneuver him into a superfluous dispute that has nothing to do with the vital interests of either country.

The fate of the U.S.-Israel relationship in the next four years may rest on the question of whether Obama will let the gadflies of J Street start a battle that serves neither the cause of peace nor that of his administration's political agenda.

[Shammu]

 Security increase in tense Hebron

Israel has increased security in the West Bank city of Hebron ahead of a Jewish pilgrimage there.

This comes at a time of increased tension in Hebron, where hundreds of Jewish settlers live in the heart of the Palestinian city.

A number of them are currently defying an Israeli high court order to leave a building in the centre of the Palestinian city.

On Wednesday, a mosque and Muslim cemetery were defaced by settlers.

Israeli troops later painted over the offensive graffiti. A soldier was injured in scuffles with settlers, the army said.

Pilgrimage

About 20,000 Jews are expected in the Hebron over the next two days to commemorate the death of the Matriarch Sarah.

The dispute over the strategically located building has raised tensions even higher than usual between settlers and Palestinians in Hebron.

Settlers say they bought the building legally from its Palestinian owner, although he denies the claim.

The Israeli Supreme Court has ordered them to leave the building and set a deadline of Wednesday 19 November for them to go or face a forced eviction.

About 500 settlers live in enclaves in central Hebron in an area under full Israeli military control. The town has about 170,000 Palestinian inhabitants.

Hebron governor Hussein al-Araj urged Israeli authorities to halt the violence and enforce the court decision.

The ministry of defence has said it will implement the order but legal opinion is reportedly divided on whether it must do so within one month.

Hebron is home of some of the most hardline religiously motivated Jewish settlers, and correspondents say the authorities are concerned about the possibility of violent retribution if they are evicted by force.

All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Security increase in tense Hebron

[Shammu]

Olmert 'to be charged' with corruption
November 26, 2008
Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem

Israel’s Attorney General announced today that he was planning to bring criminal charges against Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Prime Minister, for fraud, abuse of confidence and falsification of documents.

Menachem Mazuz, the Attorney General who investigated the Prime Minister on several corruption cases, said that Mr Olmert could be indicted over allegations that he submitted duplicate billing of travel expenses. The case was one of several scandals that forced Mr Olmert to submit his resignation.

No date has yet been set to formally charge the Prime Minister, said the Justice Ministry. Mr Olmert will first be offered a hearing to defend himself, after which the Attorney General will make his final decision on the indictment.

Mr Olmert is suspected of double and occasionally triple-billing organisations for private flights taken during his term as Mayor of Jerusalem and Industry and Trade Minister from 2003-2006. Police believe that while Mr Olmert received state funding for work trips, his flight co-ordinator, Rachel Risby-Raz, and former bureau chief Shula Zaken asked one or more other public bodies to finance the same flights. Each organisation believed it was supporting Mr Olmert’s working trips abroad, and was not aware that other parties were also footing portions of the bill.

Mr Olmert tendered his resignation in September to fight the graft allegations against him. He remains at the head of a caretaker administration, but an indictment against him could increase pressure to leave office before the February 10 election.

Though Mr Olmert has maintained his innocence on all the charges, public opinion has turned against him as police questioned him on 10 separate occasions in recent months. Mr Olmert is also suspected of steering tens of millions of pounds’ worth of state funds towards a company owned by his former law partner, Uri Messer, and unlawfully accepted cash-stuffed envelopes from a US businessman.

Mr Olmert has consistently maintained his innocence of all of the accusations against him. There are fears that an indictment against Mr Olmert could also affect his party’s showing in the upcoming elections. Recent polls show the Kadima Party, now led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, slipping behind Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the right-wing Likud Party.

Polls published earlier this week showed Likud would gain 34 seats in the 120-seat parliament, up from its current 12, followed by Kadima with 28. Kadima currently has 29 seats. The poll forecast the once-dominant Labour, headed by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, winning just 10 seats.

In internal party elections, Tzipi Livni was elected head of the party. Ms Livni was unable, however, to form a coalition, triggering early elections for February 10.

The announcement came after Mr Olmert wrapped up a visit to Washington where he held out hope for a last-minute peace deal with the Palestinians. The Prime Minister returned from White House talks with President Bush just hours before the justice ministry announcement.

Olmert 'to be charged' with corruption

[Shammu]

Defense establishment gives enemy hope that Israel's end is near
By Israel Harel
27/11/2008

When it comes to obtaining quality intelligence from Israel, Iran, the Arab countries, the Palestinians and even Western countries do not have to work hard or risk much. The Israeli defense establishment provides free operative, tactical and sometimes strategic intelligence.

The defense establishment believes, for example, that "despite the heavy price" that Israel will pay in terms of uprooting settlements in the Golan and in bringing the Syrians back to the Kinneret (Haaretz, November 23), an agreement with Syria must be advanced. In addition to service to Bashar Asad's intelligence service, the defense establishment also provides political intelligence to other bodies, such as the new administration in the United States, about what Israel is willing to give up, and thus lets slip out of her hands a comfortable bargaining position toward generous compensation in terms of security in exchange for this strategic concession.

Besides the recklessness and foolishness of giving up state secrets, the security establishment must be asked: What does this issue have to do with you? Your job is to provide the government with intelligence evaluations about the enemy, not to provide the enemy with intelligence about us. Operative conclusions, certainly those involving clearly ideological issues such as leaving the Golan Heights, destroying settlements and exiling their inhabitants, are off-limits to the defense establishment, certainly in public.

The political arena is where the future of the Golan Heights will be decided. The moment the "defense establishment" recommends giving up the Golan, it climbs fully onto the bandwagon of the left. The defense establishment cannot claim that its recommendation is "professional;" it seems that there is no danger expected from Syria in the foreseeable future. But even if that is not the case and war is a concern, the job of the army is to fight and protect the settlements, not recommend withdrawal and the uprooting of settlements so it might flee from these obligations.

With its recommendation, the defense establishment also exposes Israel's fears of standing "almost alone" in the face of an "existential threat from Iran." Even if these fears are justified, why give this intelligence to the Iranians? And why reveal to them that Israel has failed in garnering the support of allies in the battle against them.

True, even without us, the Iranians sense hesitation on the part of the United States and Europe, but we have also read and heard Iranians argue that this hesitation is intentional ambiguity. Then the Israeli intelligence comes and removes any doubts for the Iranians: It is neither a ruse nor a trap. Israel is "almost alone." Bravo.

At the beginning of October, the defense establishment volunteered intelligence to Hamas about Gilad Shalit. "No military option has been created for his release... and the price of the deal is 1,400," referring to prisoners, among them 450 whose identity is to be determined by Hamas according to reports, and "we must pay... even if it is with the release of terrorist murderers." The enemy concludes from this serious leak that the Israel Defense Forces is helpless and is ready to pay any price Hamas imposes. And as for us, the citizens - the defeatist leaks reveal the lack of motivation at the top to fight is what gives hope to the enemy that Israel's end is near. And that, not the Jewish presence on the Golan Heights, endangers the future of Israel.

Defense establishment gives enemy hope that Israel's end is near

[Soldier4Christ]

IDF preparing options for Iran strike

The IDF is drawing up options for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities that do not include coordination with the United States, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said Israel is preparing a wide range of options for such an operation.

"It is always better to coordinate," one top Defense Ministry official explained last week. "But we are also preparing options that do not include coordination."

Israeli officials have said it would be difficult, but not impossible, to launch a strike against Iran without receiving codes from the US Air Force, which controls Iraqi airspace. Israel also asked for the codes in 1991 during the First Gulf War, but the US refused.

"There are a wide range of risks one takes when embarking on such an operation," a top Israeli official said.

Several news reports have claimed recently that US President George W. Bush has refused to give Israel a green light for an attack on Iranian facilities. One such report, published in September in Britain's Guardian newspaper, claimed that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert requested a green light to attack Iran in May but was refused by Bush.

In September, a Defense News article on an early warning radar system the US recently sent to Israel quoted a US government source who said the X-band deployment and other bilateral alliance-bolstering activities send parallel messages: "First, we want to put Iran on notice that we're bolstering our capabilities throughout the region, and especially in Israel. But just as important, we're telling the Israelis, 'Calm down, behave. We're doing all we can to stand by your side and strengthen defenses, because at this time, we don't want you rushing into the military option.'"

The "US European Command (EUCOM) has deployed to Israel a high-powered X-band radar and the supporting people and equipment needed for coordinated defense against Iranian missile attack, marking the first permanent US military presence on Israeli soil," Defense News wrote. The radar will shave several precious minutes off Israel's reaction time to an Iranian missile launch.

In a related article at about the same time, TIME magazine raised the possibility that through the deployment of the radar, America wants to keep an eye on Israeli airspace, so that the US is not surprised if and when the IAF is sent to bomb Iran, a scenario Washington wants to avoid.

The US army sent 120 EUCOM personnel to Israel's Nevatim Air Base southeast of Beersheba to man the new radar.

Last week, Iran's nuclear chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh revealed that the country was operating more than 5,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and would continue to install centrifuges and enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel for the country's future nuclear power plants.

"At this point, more than 5,000 centrifuges are operating in Natanz," said Aghazadeh, who is also the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. This represents a significant increase from the 4,000 Iran had said were up and running in August at the plant.

The Islamic republic has said it plans to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment that will ultimately involve 54,000 centrifuges.

Israeli officials said last week that the drop in oil prices and the continued sanctions on Iran were having an effect, although they had yet to stop Teheran's nuclear program. The officials said that while Iran was making technological advancements, it would not have the necessary amount of highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb until late 2009.

"There is still time and there is no need to rush into an operation right now," another Israeli official said. "The regime there is already falling apart and will likely no longer be in power 10 years from now."

The IAF was preparing for a wide range of options, OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan recently said, adding that all it would take to launch an operation was a decision by the political echelon.

"The air force is a very robust and flexible force," he told Der Spiegel. "We are ready to do whatever is demanded of us."

On Monday, Teheran dismissed the possibility of an Israeli strike, saying it didn't take Israel seriously.

"We think that regional and international developments and the complicated situation faced by Israel itself will not allow it to launch military strikes against other countries," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told reporters in Teheran, according to the Press TV Web site. "Israel makes threats to promote its psychological and media warfare," he said.

[Shammu]

Messianic Jews detained at Ben-Gurion
Dec. 14, 2008
Matthew Wagner , THE JERUSALEM POST

A director of the US Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations and his wife were detained Sunday at Ben-Gurion Airport by Interior Ministry officials amid allegations he is involved in illegal Christian missionary activity.

It is illegal in Israel to proselytize among minors. It is also prohibited to engage in missionary activities among adults when economic incentives are offered.

After over eight hours of detention, Jamie Cowen, a former president of the union, and his wife, Stacy, were permitted to enter Israel only after they agreed to sign a document that they would not engage in missionary activities during their stay.

The Cowens are in Israel to visit their two daughters, one of whom is an Israeli citizen. The other is in the process of obtaining citizenship after she and a group of other Messianic Jews won a Supreme Court case against the state.

The Cowens and their daughters all identify as Jews but believe that Jesus is the messiah.

"This type of religious discrimination would be expected of Iran, not Israel," said Jamie Cowen, a US immigration lawyer, a few hours after he was released by immigration police.

"In the US we imprison individuals suspected of terrorism. Here apparently one can be jailed for his religious convictions. This is a case of blatant discrimination against basic rights. It is a story of a bureaucracy run amok. Someone has to crack down and bring in people of integrity."

Cowen said he had visited Israel about 10 times, and had been active in social causes via the Knesset Social Lobby.

"I've brought $100,000 in humanitarian aid to Israel. We've provided lone IDF soldiers with about $50,000 in aid. This is unbelievable," he said.

The Interior Ministry, which directed the police to arrest the Cowens, said they had classified information regarding missionary activity.

"The Immigration and Population Authority has reliable information that the Cowens were involved in missionary activity prohibited by Israeli criminal law during their last visit to Israel," a ministry spokesman said.

"This is the reason they were detained. As soon as they agreed to refrain from any missionary activity they were allowed in."

The Cowens arrived in Israel on a flight from Frankfurt at 3 a.m. They were arrested at passport inspection and placed in detention at the airport.

"As an immigration lawyer I have visited many detention facilities for illegal immigrants. This one was particularly dirty, smelly and overcrowded," Cowen said.

According to Cowen, the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations has 90 member congregations with membership ranging between 50 and 400 per congregation.

Calev Myers, founder and chief counsel of The Jerusalem Institute, which provides legal advice and representation to messianic Jews, said the Interior Ministry was filled will clerks who identified with a strictly Orthodox definition of who is a Jew.

"During the years that Shas controlled the ministry they made sure to appoint clerks who were willing to carry out their policies," Myers said.

"As a result, Israel is the only Western country where basic freedom of religion is denied. Today those who being discriminated against are messianic Jews. Tomorrow it will be Conservative and Reform Jews."

Myers said anti-missionary organizations such as Yad Le'achim often tipped off Interior Ministry officials regarding messianic Jews attempting to enter the country.

However, Meir Cohen, a Yad Le'Achim activist, said that while it was true that his organization did provide the ministry with information, they were not involved in the Cowens' case.

Cohen said the ministry had its own intelligence unit that gathered information on missionaries and on messianic Jews who were ineligible for Israeli citizenship due to their religious convictions.

The Supreme Court has ruled that Jews who embraced Christianity are not eligible for Israeli citizenship. However, the court has also ruled that people who are not Jews according to Orthodox standards, but who are eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return do not forfeit this right if they adopt Christian beliefs.

Messianic Jews detained at Ben-Gurion

[Shammu]

Nazi hunters give U.S. Holocaust Museum trial documents
By The Associated Press
17/12/2008

The paper had yellowed, its edges frayed. But it clearly bore the
signature of Lithuanian policeman Aleksandras Lileikis, ordering a Jewish woman and her 6-year-old daughter to be shot in a Nazi death pit in 1941.

With that, the U.S. Justice Department was able to prove an elderly Massachusetts man had decades earlier committed Nazi war crimes and to order him from the U.S.

The death warrant was one of about 50,000 Justice Department trial documents donated Tuesday to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The bound copies of evidence papers, hearing transcripts and court orders show how the department's Office of Special Investigations hunted down Nazis hiding in the United States over the last three decades and deported them.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey called the documents the largest body of
English-language primary source materials relating to the prosecution of Nazi criminals publicly available anywhere in the world.

"The documents we donate today perpetuate the memory of those men, women and children who perished, by ensuring that the truth of their fate - that their stories - survive in paper and ink for future generations," Mukasey told an audience at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

"The documents are a permanent record of what happened, and a safeguard against those who might forget or, even worse, deny," he said.

A second copy of the papers will be donated to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Since 1979, Justice investigators, attorneys and historians have studied immigration papers and pored through archives throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union to track down Nazi officials living in the United States.

The Office of Special Investigations does not have the authority to prosecute war crimes against non-Americans outside the U.S. But as of this year, it has won the right to deport 107 Nazi officials,
concentration camp guards and so-called trigger pullers.

Eli Rosenbaum, who heads the Justice unit, said his investigators work regularly with museum historians to interpret records and unearth pictures for trial that clearly show the horrors of the Nazi regime.

In Lileikis' case, Rosenbaum recounted, the Massachusetts man initially denied he was part of the Nazi-allied Lithuanian security police's mobile killing units that rounded up Jews and brought them to forest pits where their bodies were left after being shot.

"Show me something I signed," Lileikis told investigators in June 1983, disputing records that he was among those who carried out the killings.

Years later, after digging through Soviet archives, investigators did just that, using the December 1941 death warrant against Gitta Kaplan and her 6-year-old daughter Frumaas as proof that Lileikis should be deported.

"We found the bureaucratic documentation reporting that they had been, 'handled according to orders,' - a Nazi euphemism for murder, Mukasey said.

Investigators also gave the trial judge a picture of a death pit, showing a crowd of people gathered around a pile of bodies at the bottom of a crater in the forest.

"Lileikis was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and returned to Lithuania," Rosenbaum said. He was briefly put on trial there, but legal proceedings ultimately were suspended because of his failing health. Lileikis died in Lithuania in 2000.

The Justice Department decided to donate the records to the Holocaust museum as the number of surviving Holocaust victims - and the Nazis who sought to kill them - dwindles with age.

Rosenbaum said a few dozen cases against suspected Nazis remain open, although his unit since 2004 has begun to focus on others living in the United States who are suspected of genocide, torture or other war crimes in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, or elsewhere around the globe.

Two Holocaust survivors were among the crowd gathered Tuesday to watch Mukasey hand a 7 centimeter stack of papers - a sampling of the Justice document trove - to museum Memorial Council Director Fred S. Zeidman.

"Displaying such records has to be one of our top priorities because right now we are blessed with the authentic witness of the survivors," said Zeidman with a nod to the two in the audience. "But at some point, we know that these historic documents will be the only authentic witnesses."

Nazi hunters give U.S. Holocaust Museum trial documents

[HisDaughter]

US - Israel on Collision Course     

With the election of Barack Obama, the United States has moved dramatically to the left in its foreign policy at just the time that Israel, which seems likely to return Bibi Netanyahu to office in early February, is moving to the right. A collision is almost inevitable.

Caroline Glick, the highly astute conservative columnist for the Jerusalem Post, writes that the “international community” believes that Obama “will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a ‘peace process’ with the Palestinians and the Syrians.” She notes that “people who have been in close contact with Obama’s foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month’s U.S. elections, Obama’s people are ‘scope-locked’ on Israel.”

Meanwhile, in Israel, there is a growing consensus, reflected in public opinion surveys, that trading land for peace is a chimera. Netanyahu points out that “we do not have a viable partner with whom to negotiate peace.” The Palestinian Authority does not speak for the people of either Gaza or the West Bank, and Hamas, which probably does (it won the election), does not want to be a party to any peace agreement. Recent experience suggests that Hamas will quickly install rocket launchers on any territory Israel concedes, using it not as a basis for peace, but as a platform from which to kill more Jews.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the candidates of the left, Labor’s Ehud Barak and Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, are deeply committed to land for peace. Their rejection by the Israeli electorate — the anticipated outcome of the Feb. 10 election — will signal a bold departure in the political consensus of the Jewish state, a consensus that flies directly in the face of Obama’s likely policy.

The difference between the U.S. and Israel also extends to the realm of how strongly they oppose Iranian development of nuclear weapons. While Iran moves closer and closer to a bomb that could and will be used against Israel, Obama speaks of extending the American “nuclear umbrella” to cover Israel.

Reading between the lines, this means that he doesn’t think he can stop Iranian nuclear ambitions and will retreat to a policy of deterrence, accepting a nuclear Iran in the bargain.

If Netanyahu wins the election, he will bring with him a determination to stop Iranian nuclear weapons, no matter what, and a refusal to concede more territory in the name of the peace process. But Obama’s foreign policy team will be focusing on pushing Israel in just the opposite direction.

The result is likely to be the most significant divergence between Israeli and American policies since 1956, when President Eisenhower sided with the Arabs to halt the British-French-Israeli invasion of Suez.

The United States has tremendous leverage over Israel — military, financial and political. And Obama’s ability to carry the Jewish vote by a wide margin despite his likely Middle East policy makes him largely immune to the kind of political pressure that has disciplined American presidents in the past and forced them to incline toward accommodating Israeli views on the Middle East.

But Israel probably has the military capacity to bomb Iran and to win the Middle East war against Syria, Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah that is likely to result. Unlike Olmert, Netanyahu will use ground troops right off the bat and will fight such a war to win and to win big. But they may have to do it without their strongest ally: the United States.

[HisDaughter]

Top Israeli officer says Hizbullah will be destroyed in five days 'next time'      

Israel is developing plans to "destroy" Hizbullah in an armed onslaught of such severity that it would require no more than five days to complete, a senior Israeli military officer has said.

The commander of Israel's artillery division, which fired an average of 5,000 shells a day into Lebanon during the summer war in 2006, said that in any future conflict his men would "fire to destroy."

"No village will be immune," Brigadier General Michael Ben-Baruch told The Jerusalem Post newspaper. "We will give them about a 12-hour warning and then strike back."

His comments are the latest in a series of saber-rattling interviews in which senior Israeli military figures have outlined their plans for the next assault on Lebanon.

The tone of the rhetoric coming out of Israel became so severe during the summer that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora complained to the United Nations about the threats.

A recurrent theme in the rhetoric has been the idea that in any future conflict, a wider range of Lebanon's civilian and military infrastructure would be considered a fair target for a disproportionate Israeli response.

"In the last war, we made a distinction between Hizbullah targets and Lebanese national targets," an anonymous general in Israel was quoted as saying, contradicting overwhelming evidence to the contrary. "Now that Hizbullah is in the government - with veto power in the cabinet - there is no longer a reason to make this distinction, since a Hizbullah attack against Israel is essentially a Lebanese attack against Israel."

The remarks prompted a frigid response from a senior Lebanese Armed Forces officer contacted by The Daily Star. "We don't comment on the enemy's intentions," the officer said. "They have been saying this for a long time. They have always been aggressive as far as Lebanon is concerned. We are not surprised."

The war plans outlined by Israeli officials appear superficially similar to those they tried to employ in 2006, with intensive aerial bombardment followed by a major ground offensive pushing up to the Litani river. But they say the speed of any ground advance will be much quicker in the next war.

Last week, the Israeli military conducted a major training exercise in the Golan Heights in a practice run for a potential war against the combined forces of Syria and Hizbullah.

Israel's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, has reportedly recommended that the Israeli cabinet rubberstamp plans to launch an all-out assault on Lebanon's infrastructure in case of another conflict.

During the 2006 war, which has been described as a "missed opportunity" by Israel's top brass, hundreds of roads and bridges were targeted. The Israeli military claimed this was because they were used by Hizbullah. In any future war there will be no such justification required because the Jewish state now considers the Shiite party to be a part of the Lebanese government.

The newspaper also revealed that some senior military figures in Israel are pushing for an unprovoked "preemptive" assault on Hizbullah. But it says this is not "likely," given that others seem willing to bide their time until Hizbullah launches an attack of its own, something which many in Israel consider to be inevitable.

Since 2006, when Israel was unable to deal a fatal blow to Hizbullah, the group is thought to have strengthened its arsenal.