Israel Resource Review 8th April, 2007


Contents:

Terrorist stabbing next to Ma'arat HaMachpela
The Jewish Community of Hebron


POB 105 , Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100 hebron@hebron.org.il www.hebron.com Ma'arat HaMachpela: www.machpela.com

April 08, 2007

At 12:15 this afternoon an Arab terrorist burst through the western exit from the Kasbah, adjacent to Ma'arat HaMachpela in Hebron and stabbed to border policeman. One was listed as critically wounded and the other only slightly injured. However, following initial examination at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, it first policeman's injury was reduced to moderate, with no serious internal damage.

The terrorist was shot by security forces in the stomach and too is listed in moderate condition.

This is not the first time that Arab terrorists have attacked policeman and soldiers at this site. Two other attacks have occurred over the past two years, one a shooting attack, when a soldier was hit in the spine and paralyzed, and a second knife attack.

A Hebron spokesman issued the following statement:

The terror attack today next to Ma'arat HaMachpela in Hebron is the result of several reasons:

Tremendous, non-stop incitement against Hebron's Jewish community by extreme left wing organizations. Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), Machsom Watch, ISM, CPT and other anarchist groups have put Hebron in their sights, and incite violent and radical terrorists in Hebron against Hebron's Jewish civilian and military population. Over the past few months, there have been several attempts by Arabs to abduct Jews, including an attempt to kidnap and rape two young women only a week and a half ago.

Continued statements by Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Deputy Defense Minster Ephraim Sneh, attacking the validity of a newly purchased building in Hebron, despite the proven legality of the sale also act as incitement against the Hebron Jewish community. Extreme declarations stating that Jew will be forcibly expelled from the building only act as a springboard for Arab terrorists, who view these statements, as well as the provocation of left-wing organizations, grant seeming legitimacy to murderous attacks, such as today's attack, which miraculously didn't cause loss of life.

A number of Knesset members and ministers, including Ontiel Shneller, Rafi Eitan, and Gideon Saar have voiced opinions opposing expulsion from the building. According to an Arutz 7/INN news report, Prime Minister Olmert himself promised MK Effie Eitam that he would not allow Peretz to evacuate the building, should it be proven that the sale was legal.

Hebron's Jewish community calls on all MKs and Ministers to publicly oppose Amir Peretz's planned expulsion of Jews from Beit HaShalom (The Peace House) in Hebron. Do not award the Arabs a prize for terror!

Mattot Arim posted the following notice:

Have Shas and Liberman's party forgotten Hebron?

As you may have read - Amir Peretz is threatening to evict hundreds of Jews from Hebron who are living in a house that they purchased from Arabs for a mere $700,000 (700 thousand dollars).

So far, MK Otni Schneller is combating this through his party (Kadima), MK Gidon Saar is combating this through his party (Likud), all of the Ichud Leumi-Mafdal is of course up in arms - but hey, what about Shas and Yisrael Beitenu, Liberman's party? Their silence is very damaging because they are the ONLY two rightwing parties in the government!

Please, contact the heads of Shas and Yisrael Beitenu and politely ask what is going on with the house in Hebron - say that you have not seen any statement on behalf of that house. You can fax Eli Yishai's office at 02-6662909. Yisrael Beitenu's Avigdor Liberman is at 02-6408388 (tel - leave a message!) or 02-6408921 (fax).

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IGNORING ANTI-SEMITIC INCITEMENT: When PR Firms Replace Israel's Democratic Process
David Bedein


Since the genesis of the Oslo process in 1993, successive governments of Israel, under a binding legal and moral obligation to demand a cessation of virulent anti-semitic incitement as the condition for negotiation and barter of land with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, have consistently shirked that responsibility and, instead, hired slick PR firms to cover themselves in the public domain.

Under the guise of "supporting the democratically elected Israeli government in power" , the Israeli government has engaged the services of PR firms to market this policy to the media and to foreign governments, ignoring the democratic process in Israel.

Instead, the Israeli government downplayed the fact that the PLO leaders - Arafat and Abbas – who personally signed the Declaration of Principles against incitement on the White House lawn - made sure that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority never ratified these agreements.

Therefore, PLO incitement never ceased and the government of Israel has never made this a matter of policy, as it was legally obligated to do by the lawmakers of Israel's Knesset Parliament.

Instead of confronting the Israeli electorate with that reality , the Israeli government hired PR firms to make it look as if Arafat and Abbas were reliable peace partners, and that only the "Hamas and the settlers" were interfering with the process.

Indeed, with the encouragement of the government of Israel. the umbrella organization of US Jewry was set to provide the Isaiah Award for Peace to Yassir Arafat in October 1999, until Israel Resource News Agency got wind of that plan and the award was "postponed".

With the outbreak of the second Intifada in the Fall of 2000, most Israel support groups smelled a rat, when mainstream organizations of the PLO and the PA joined forces with the Hamas to incite total rebellion against the state and people of Israel.

It became harder the Israeli government to once again ask that the mainstream Jewish groups promote the fraud of a peace process.

That is why the Israeli government fostered a new PR operation**, whose purpose was to influence the media and policy makers abroad "pull everyone in line", to market policies of the government of Israel, whether these policies had integrity or not, whether they were approved by the Knesset or not, and whether or not they violated Israeli law . – beginning with the task of "selling the Disengagement Policy".

For example, the first clause of the Disengagement Plan declared that the withdrawals and expulsions were carried out because there was "No Peace Partner".

However, that policy definition did not fit the bill of how this new PR firm planned to sell Israel's disengagement policy - as a "step towards peace" so the PR firm worked with the Israel Foreign Ministry to distribute a brochure that simply DELETED the first clause, so that the PR firm could say that this policy of expulsions and unilateral handover of privately owned Jewish property to terrorists represented a "step towards peace".

And how would the PR firm work with the Israeli government sell the expulsion of a law abiding community of Israeli citizens?

In late August 2005, two Israeli government officials - Israeli Prime Minister's top advisor, Dov Weisglass, along with Minister of Housing Yitzhak Herzog, provided official briefings for the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in the USA, in which they assured Israel support groups that every family left with $400,000 in their pockets and a permanent home waiting for them. Nothing was further from the truth,

PR firms working with the PM office marketed that false data – making it nearly impossible for disengagement evictees to raise funds, since every Jewish federation had the word from these PR firms that every family was fully compensated and relocated to a new homes.

And when delegations of concerned Israel support groups met with the Israeli Prime Minister to offer private humanitarian assistance to the evictees, the Israeli PM told them that this was not necessary.

Jewish groups philanthropic groups from abroad have direct access to Israel's Prime Minister. Defense Minister and Foreign Minister.

Not so with the Israeli public, where no one can enter with the Knesset without an appointment, at a time when most Israeli public officials avoid public appearances.

It was the job of the new PR firms retained by the Israeli government to indeed convince these foreign organizations that the Israeli government had fulfilled all of its humanitarian obligations to thriving communities that it had just decimated.

After all, the Deputy Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres had announced on July 7th, 2005 that the American government had allocated $2 billion to cover the costs of disengagement.

That assurance was quoted by the mainstream Israeli media for months to come. However, on July 12th, 2005, the spokesman of the US treasury department told Israel's leading business newspaper, GLOBES, that the US was not giving one penny for the Disengagement policy. That denial of US funds was hardly reported elsewhere.

Perhaps it had never occurred to Israel support groups abroad that they would be asked to support a policy of an Israeli regime that would fly in the face of the Israeli law.

A case in point: Clause seven of the disengagement law forbid Israel from handing over assets to terror organizations, at a time when terror groups were assured that they were taking over the settlements and that they would use them as terror bases.

Yet the democratically elected government of Israel violated that aspect of its own disengagement law.

Almost two years after the disengagement process, at a time when the Israeli government, has reached at an all time low in public opinion polls, PR spin masters once again sell the notion that incitement is not important, that Abbas advocates for peace, and that decimating Jewish communities remains the price to pay for peace.

In cooperation with the government of Israel, these PR firms play down the suffering of the residents of the Western Negev now under daily mortar fire from Gaza, downplay the incitement of the PLO and the PA, downplay the coordination of the PLO and the Hamas, and down play the suffering of the disengagement evictees .

The idea is to promote Abbas as a new harbinger of peace - the same man who continues to promote his PHD that equates Nazisim and Zionism, the same. man who oversees the official media and school system of the Palestinian Authority that are rife with incitement against the state and people of Israel.

Indeed, the Israeli government now seeks new ways to engage PR firms to sell the policy of creating a nation state based on Jew hatred, at a time when the Palestinian Authority works state in tandem with Hamas and with the most anti-semitic regime in the world – Saudi Arabia, where no Jew may reside and where Judaism cannot be practiced.

The question remains as to whether those who support Israel should continue to follow spin masters who support this new form of "Israeli Athenian democracy", which sustains opinions closest to the government and crushes dissonant voices in the public domain.

Otherwise, PR firms, some of whom are not even based in Israel, will replaced the cardinal principles of Israeli democracy.

**Israel Resource News Agency asked if funds allocated by the government of Israel to hire PR firms was authorized by any branch of the government of Israel. The answer received was negative. Sources in the Prime Minister's office confirmed that Prime Minister Sharon was arranging for payment from "other sources".

The watchdog agencies that monitor Israeli government dysfunctional behavior that this procedure represented a felonious violation of the Israeli law, yet has not done anything to stop to it or to object to it. These same watchdog agencies support the Israel's land surrender policies. The end justifies the means.

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Iran Advances Uranium Enrichment
Middle East News Line


Sources in the U.S. intelligence community that Iran was rapidly advancing in its uranium enrichment program.

U.S. officials said most of the intelligence community, particularly the Defense Intelligence Agency, has concluded that Iran was succeeding in assembling and installing gas centrifuges at the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. They said the pace of the work has been slower than promised by Tehran, but much faster than expected by the intelligence community.

"They are moving steadily and gaining experience and knowledge all the time," an official said. "This will allow them to increasingly accelerate the uranium enrichment project."

American officials said Iran has installed more than 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz. They said the centrifuges were being tested in an underground facility to determine their suitability for uranium enrichment.

The Tehran regime has vowed to install 3,000 centrifuges this month. Officials said about half of the centrifuges have been installed, both in the underground and formal project at Natanz. Iran has provided limited access to the formal uranium enrichment project, where it operates at least 320 such centrifuges.

"This kind of expansion of Iran's centrifuge capability is why we went to the U.N. Security Council and pushed for a stronger resolution and stronger sanctions," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

On Tuesday, ABC News quoted U.S. sources as saying that Iran could produce enriched uranium sufficient for a nuclear weapon by 2009. The U.S. television network said that, since January, Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium.

American officials said that Iran would fulfill its pledge to install 3,000 centrifuges by June. They said they could not estimate how many of the machines would work.

"I think we have all been caught off guard," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said they would have these 3,000 installed by the end of May, and it appears they may actually do it."

Iran, Russia Try To Resolve Bushehr Delay

Iran and Russia plan another round of talks to revive the nuclear reactor project at Bushehr.

Iranian officials said a Russian delegation was scheduled to arrive imminently to remove obstacles for the completion of the 1,500 megawatt Bushehr nuclear energy reactor. They said the delegation of the Russian state-owned prime contractor, Atomstroiexport, would discuss a timetable for the start of reactor operations.

"In the next two or three days, the Russians will come to Teheran to sign an agreement to solve the financial problems of Atomstroiexport," Iranian Atomic Energy Organization Director Gholam Aghazadeh said on Tuesday.

In March, Iran relayed about $23 million to Atomstroiexport, the first complete monthly payment to the contractor since September 2006. Iran said it has already paid more than 90 percent of the $1 billion project, but Atomstroiexport has sought additional funding.

"The Russians have told us that since their company does not have money 'you need to help us financially,'" Aghazadeh said. "A framework has been found to solve their financial problems."

In September 2006, Russia pledged to begin initial operations at Bushehr in September 2007 and full operations two months later. Officials said this would have required the first shipment of nuclear fuel in March.

The state of the Bushehr project has not been clear. In March, Russia announced a suspension of the project and the return of many of the 2,000 Russian employees at Bushehr. But Aghazadeh said 3,000 Russians remain working at Bushehr.

"The aim of the scheduled talks is to ensure stable and sufficient financing of the Bushehr power plant construction," Atomstroiexport spokeswoman Yesipova Yesipova said.

Iran's failure to meet its repayment schedule led to delays, because of that, the project would probably not be completed in 2007.

"It is a good thing that our Iranian colleagues have overcome their difficulties in payments for the Bushehr plant," Sergei Kirienko, director of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, Rosatom, said. "And we hope that in the future Tehran's payments will come in accordance with the agreed schedule."

In the first quarter of 2007, Kirienko said, Russia received $15 million from Iran, two-thirds of which arrived at the end of March. He said Tehran was committed to paying around $25 million per month to Moscow. Atomstroiexport has expressed interest in bidding for an Iranian project to construct another 10 nuclear reactors. Iran has pledged to launch a tender by August 2007 to generate 2,000 megawatts out of a proposed 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power.

"Our interpretation is that the delay of the fuel delivery is a political one," Aghazadeh said. "But all in all they know we intend to build more nuclear power stations, and Iran is a sure market for them."

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Fatah Thretens Jews Outside of Israel


Published on 4/4/2007 in the Philadelphia Bulletin http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18167240&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=585832&rfi=6

Byline: David Bedein

Jerusalem, Israel - A senior source in Israeli intelligence reports that the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah organization chaired by Mahmoud Abbas, has threatened to target Jewish institutions outside of Israel.

The threat was made with the condition of Jews continuing to "invade" the Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during this week's Passover holiday.

Tthese groups are allowed to visit the Temple Mount grounds in small groups, although Jews are not allowed by the Israeli police to pray there, in accordance with the rules issued by the Islamic religious authority known as the WAKF.

The statement stated that "The Zionist conqueror bears full responsibility for this invasion and all Zionist targets are legitimate."

Although the Al Aksa remains on the active list of organizations defined by the United States government as a terrorist organization, the Clinton administration and now the Bush administration have issued a waiver every half year for the past 13 years to allow the Fatah to maintain a Washington office, which is represented by Edward Abington, former U.S. consul in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, numerous Jewish organizations host representatives of the Fatah, such as the Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and the Jewish Voices for Peace. All of these organizations were unavailable for comment, due to the Passover holiday.

This threat was also confirmed on Israel's leading investigative news site at: http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127468-00.html?tag=19-28-10

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