|
Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
| ||||||
|
To contact the Presidents Conference: click here In-Depth Issues:
Shiite Fighters in Iraq "Trained by Hizbullah in Lebanon" - Nizar Latif and Phil Sands (Independent-UK)
Israeli Mission to Aid Peru - Roi Mandel (Ynet News)
U.S.-Backed Campaign Against Hamas Expands to Charities - Adam Entous (Reuters)
Indian Delegation Visiting Israel Witnesses Rocket Attacks (Times of India)
Search Key Links Media Contacts Back Issues Fair Use
|
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The EU said on Monday it would not resume paying for fuel shipments to Gaza's main power plant until it received assurances Hamas would not tax electricity to fund its government. Gaza's power plant shut down operations on Sunday, causing blackouts across large parts of the territory after the EU stopped paying for fuel provided by a private Israeli company. EU officials said they feared Hamas would try to use the power plant - and the revenues generated from EU taxpayer-funded fuel - to bypass a crippling Western boycott and finance its government. The EU has been paying for fuel shipments to the Gaza power plant since 2006. (Reuters) America's allies must do more to cut commercial and energy ties with Iran if the international campaign to halt Tehran's nuclear-weapons programs is to succeed, R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Monday. He said the U.S.-led drive to sanction Iran's economy through the UN is being undercut when allies in Europe, Turkey, India, Japan and South Korea continue to make lucrative trade deals and even offer credits to businesses trading with the Islamic Republic of Iran. "If countries around the world want diplomacy to be the way to resolve problems with Iran, then there has to be a harder-edged diplomacy. There has to be some teeth," he said. (Washington Times) It is the Hamas movement's youth focus that sets it apart from Fatah. The basic unit of the Hamas organization isn't cells or political committees - it's families. Hamas has shown that by introducing children early enough to its hard-line Islamic thinking, it can recruit lifelong supporters. Hamas is sending tens of thousands of poor Gazan children to camp this summer where they can enjoy sun, surf, and paramilitary training. In one Gaza City camp, boys practiced field drills with wooden pistols and crawled under barbed wire while being harangued by an adult drill instructor. Teenage boys undergo a tougher regimen that includes hand-to-hand combat and exhausting exercise. Boys that break discipline are sometimes beaten with sticks. (Christian Science Monitor) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Six Hamas operatives were killed in an IDF airstrike Monday on a vehicle at a security post near al-Bureij in central Gaza. According to an IDF spokeswoman, the operatives were members of a cell that had launched an attack towards Gaza-vicinity communities earlier Monday. "There was a strike on a car carrying militants who today fired rockets into Israel and we identified hitting it," she said. An Israeli army spokesman said over 40 Palestinian rockets had been fired into Israel from Gaza since Friday. (AP/Ynet News) The PA must establish a strong welfare system in the West Bank to gain more support than Hamas, according to a plan formulated by Rani Loewenstein, a former senior Israeli official who served as Israel's main liaison with the Palestinians on economic matters over the last five years. He predicts a Hamas takeover in the West Bank within two years if the Fatah-dominated PA does not provide sufficient welfare to the population there. (Ha'aretz) The first Muslim member of the U.S. Congress, Minnesota's Keith Ellison, left Israel on Saturday after a six-day visit as part of a Democratic congressional delegation. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Ellison said he doesn't understand those "crazies" who read the same Koran he did and came away with a license to murder. "I don't know how they read what they read and come out with what they do. They wouldn't consider me a Muslim because I'm American, because I believe in the unity of people and that we are all on the planet to work together." "The people who did 9/11 are hostile to everyone, and in fact if you are not the type of Muslim they want you to be, they would be happy to kill you too," Ellison said. "I am not a Muslim in their eyes because I am for tolerance and inclusion, and they don't want an Islam that is inclusive." (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
Rumors of a secret government death squad tasked with silencing detractors of the ruling Mubarak family have spiked in recent weeks. On Aug. 8, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights reported that it had confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths - three of which took place this year - that the group "strongly suspects were the result of torture and mistreatment." The organization previously found that while Egypt's population nearly doubled during the first 25 years of Hosni Mubarak's regime, the number of prisons grew more than fourfold and that the number of detainees held for more than one year without charge or indictment grew to more than 20,000. Egypt's jails contain some 80,000 political prisoners. The independent daily Eldestour recently reported that the security police forces comprise 1.4 million officers, nearly four times the size of the Egyptian army. The writer is a professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo. (Washington Post) The BBC was forced to remove a highly offensive message about Jesus from its website. Why had this message been allowed to remain there for a week, despite complaints, while anti-Muslim comments vanish instantly? The BBC's coverage of Islamic affairs has been unsatisfactory for many years. In its international and domestic news reporting, the corporation has consistently come across as naive and partial, rather than sensitive and unbiased. Its reporting tends to underplay the hate-filled Islamist ideology that inspires Hamas and other factions, while never giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. We live in a world in which, although the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, the vast majority of terrorists are Muslim. Younger BBC program-makers are aware of this awkward fact; the problem lies with an older generation of executives stuck in a PC timewarp. (Telegraph-UK) For 55 years the Middle East has lived under Arab nationalist dominance. The last real regime change from within an Arab state happened 37 years ago, when Hafez Assad seized power in Syria. Since then, surprisingly little has changed in Arab ideology, political structure, economic organization or society. It has also been 28 years since Iran's Islamist revolution took power in 1979. Since then, Islamism has been on the upsurge. Radical Islamism has now reached a critical mass, posing serious challenges to Arab nationalism as the leading opposition in every Arabic-speaking country. For years to come, the Middle East will be shaken by a titanic battle for control between Arab nationalism and Islamism. This struggle, and certainly not the Arab-Israel conflict, is the central theme and underlying factor in every regional issue. It is folly to think that the Hamas-Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance can be split. The parties have common aims and ideologies, their cooperation is mutually beneficial, and they think they are winning. (Jerusalem Post) Observations: Wishful Thinking - David Horovitz (Jerusalem Post)
Unsubscribe from Daily Alert |
|||||