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Prepared for the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: [email protected] In-Depth Issues:
Egypt Won't Train PA Forces in Gaza - Arnon Regular (Ha'aretz)
Israeli Spy Satellite Launch Fails - Amnon Barzilai (Ha'aretz)
Iran Seeks to Replace Fatah in Lebanon - Jonathan Ariel (Maariv International)
Russian Special Forces Killed by Civilian Vigilantes - Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser (Washington Post) Search |
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
From early morning on Monday, hundreds of volunteers and soldiers dug rows of graves extending nearly 200 yards, and still more will need to be dug for Tuesday and the day after and the day after. Close to 200 people remained missing, out of the total number of hostages that officials now say was 1,180. (Washington Post) There was a time when it was impossible to escape the sight of Arafat's face beaming down from half the walls in Ramallah. Last week there was not a single portrait to be seen, as Arafat sits in his battered compound, afraid to leave in case the Israelis block his return. After a decade of misrule, Palestinians seem to have lost faith in their president. "Arafat should go immediately," said Imad Muna, an eastern Jerusalem bookseller. "This is not a political opinion. This is not an extremist opinion. It's the opinion of the majority of people." Palestinians are coming to realize that far from being ignorant of the dirty dealings of his underlings, Arafat stands atop the pyramid of corruption, says Abdel Sattar Kassem, professor of political science at al-Najah University in Nablus. (Telegraph-UK) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Fourteen Hamas terrorists were killed when IAF aircraft bombed an Izzadin al-Kassam training facility near Jebalya in Gaza. More than 30 Hamas members were injured in the attack. In response, Hamas fired five Kassam rockets towards southern Israel Tuesday. One landed near the electrical power station in Ashkelon and another one near Sderot, lightly injuring one man. (Maariv International) The IAF targeted a soccer field used as a Hamas training camp at night, where members gather to prepare bombs and carry out shooting exercises. According to Palestinian reports, all those killed and wounded were members of the Hamas military wing. (Jerusalem Post) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday during a visit to Israel, "We appreciate the very strong readiness of the Israeli people to help Russia at this hour, and this will certainly strengthen the counterterrorist coalition these days." (AP/Ha'aretz) See also "We Thank God We are Here in Israel" From her Bat Yam home, Natalia Cheldaev saw on TV the school her daughter Vilena, 10, had left just five months earlier when the family immigrated from Beslan, Russia. "All those people who were seeing us off, half of them are now dead," she said. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
It is the new reality of this current age that innocents are specifically targeted by Muslim terrorists in the name of some Islamic cause. The war on terror can be won only if the widespread ideological support for terrorism found in the Muslim world and some quarters of the West can be transformed into widespread condemnation. Nearly all nationalist movements - from the American revolutionaries to the Irish Republican Army - have had enough restraint to avoid the systematic murder of children. But there is something dysfunctional within the soul of modern Islam and its supporters that deems such depravity acceptable. (Wall Street Journal) Russians remember, as most of the world does not, that this is not the first time that Chechen terrorists have singled out the most vulnerable as targets. Nine years ago they seized a hospital in Stavropol, holding pregnant women and babies among their 2,000 hostages in a siege that ended in 100 deaths. In the days preceding their assault on the Beslan school, suicide bombers blew up two passenger aircraft and a Moscow subway station. President Putin's insistence on an urgent session of the UN Security Council opens up a potentially useful avenue for concerting policy with Islamic governments whose societies are being warped by extremist doctrines. (London Times) See also It is Only a Short Distance from Beslan to Belsen - Michael Gove To believe that current Chechen terrorism is simply a fight for national self-determination, which can be ended by granting proper autonomy, is to ignore blindly the nature of what happened in Beslan. When Russia did grant Chechnya greater autonomy in the 1990s, it was only to find that territory become a launchpad for fundamentalist groups intent on exporting slaughter well beyond their borders. In the circumstances, the Russians could no more accept the requirement to respect self-determination than you or I could accept the need to respect property rights when our neighbor’s house has become a crack den. (London Times) Every four years, around election time, Washington intrigues seem to chip away at Israel's integrity. On the eve of the 2000 elections, the press reported that ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk's security clearance had been lifted for supposedly making improper use of his personal computer. Turns out that during long flights, Indyk had written up summaries of secret conversations with world leaders in order to save precious time upon his return to the State Department. And who remembers the 1997 "mega affair" during the Clinton administration? The Mossad's deputy chief of station in Washington had a telephone conversation from her home and mentioned "mega." American intelligence operatives monitoring the call assumed they were discussing a "mole," until they learned that "mega" was simply the Mossad's nickname for the entire CIA Middle East desk. Israel's working assumption should be that the scandal stems from bureaucratic competition between neoconservatives and their opponents within the administration. When all is said and done, the Franklin affair will go the way of all the previous "scandals" that were motivated by politics and personality. The writer is director of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. (Jerusalem Post) Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the twin bus bombings in Beersheba, is headquartered in Syria. Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's supreme political leader, lives in Damascus under the protection of the Syrian regime. Last week, senior Israeli officials told Syria: Rein in Hamas, use your influence to stop Hamas from killing civilians, or face the consequences. Syria should expel Hamas and cut off its funding. Failing that, Damascus should not be at all surprised that Israel, and other civilized nations, hold it accountable for its friends' repulsive acts. (Globe and Mail-Canada) Observations: On Terror and Hypocrisy - Yoel Marcus (Ha'aretz)
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