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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 Issue:
Uniformed PA Police to Return to Duty (Palestine Media Center-Ramallah)
French Anti-Semitism Drives More Jews to Settle in Israel - Philip Delves Broughton (Telegraph-UK)
Israel to Join with India in Moon Mission (DeepikaGlobal-India)
Useful Reference:
The Beneficiaries of Saddam's Oil Vouchers: The List of 270 (MEMRI)
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
A suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least 10 and wounding 45, in an attack just 15 meters from Prime Minister Sharon's official residence. Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, said he heard the boom and ran to the scene. "There was glass everywhere, human remains everywhere, shoes, feet, pieces of guts. There were pieces of body everywhere,'' he said. Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said the attack illustrated why Israel is building a separation barrier in the West Bank. Israel says the structure is needed to keep suicide bombers out of Israel. "The rest of the world should sit back and let us do what we need to do to defend ourselves,'' Gissin said. (AP/New York Times) Senior British judge Lord Hutton on Wednesday cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government of any deliberate attempt to deceive the British public over the threat from Iraq. In the long-awaited 740-page report, Hutton called "unfounded" the assertion - reported by the BBC on May 29 - that government officials had used intelligence they "probably knew" was wrong. The judge castigated the BBC for sloppy, inaccurate reporting and "defective" editorial supervision. In reaction, the chairman of the BBC's board of governors, Gavyn Davies, resigned. (New York Times) See also What Went Wrong at the BBC - Trevor Asserson (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
A German air force plane carrying kidnapped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tennenbaum and the coffins of three IDF soldiers - Benny Avraham, Omar Suwad, and Adi Avitan - landed Thursday in Germany as part of the long-awaited Israel-Hizballah prisoner swap. A plane carrying 36 Arab prisoners from Israel also landed at the airport. A total of 435 Arab prisoners - among them 400 Palestinians - are to be released under the deal. In an interview with Hizballah's Al-Manar television aired Wednesday, Tennenbaum said he went to Beirut to find information about missing navigator Ron Arad. (Ha'aretz) UN sources said Wednesday that 20-30 countries including the U.S., Russia, and other European countries will deliver opinions to the International Court of Justice at The Hague saying that the issue of Israel's separation fence does not belong in the ICJ. (Ha'aretz) Israeli government officials and their Palestinian counterparts this week took part in creating a blueprint for economic cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis, dubbed the economic road map, calling for a free trade area (FTA) between a future Palestinian state and Israel. In tandem, the two states would establish border passages allowing labor flow and Palestinians would be given preference over other foreign workers. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
On Monday the call came: "How do you feel about your brother's killer being released?" My brother, Alex Singer, was born in White Plains, N.Y., in 1962. After graduating from Cornell, he moved to Israel in 1984, and eventually became an officer in the army's Givati Brigade. On Sept. 15, 1987, he was killed in southern Lebanon on his 25th birthday. Only now have we become aware that Anwar Yassin, the terrorist who killed him and two other members of his squad, had been in an Israeli jail for the past 17 years, sentenced to serve until 2017. There is perhaps no greater measure of the value Israelis attach to life than their willingness to risk their lives for another. Indeed, that is how my brother lived - and how he died. The writer is editorial page editor of the Jerusalem Post. (Wall Street Journal, 29 Jan 04) How do you change chaos into order? It is obvious to the whole world that both the Palestinian people and the Palestinian government have been unable to control security in the Palestinian territories. We all know that there are several gunmen who threaten and spread fear among the Palestinians. What Palestinian interior minister would be daring enough to punish them? Would the minister be killed if he imposed a penalty upon them? In Tulkarm, the Al-Aqsa Brigades direct and manage the city's civil and security life. They threaten, beat, and kill. Nablus is ruled by two armed illiterate thugs, feared by the population. The explosion that targeted the American convoy in Gaza on October 15 was a red light to the Palestinian people to reconstruct the security system. I recommend that the Palestinian government call upon Jordan, Egypt, and perhaps Turkey to assist by sending their security forces to restore order in the Palestinian territories. The writer is director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. (Ha'aretz) On Thursday night, Peter Mansbridge, the trusted anchor of CBC's The National, used the e-word - extremist - to describe those who seek to blow up buses packed with civilians in Jerusalem - individuals to whom most Canadians would apply another word: terrorist. CBC news writers, and presumably the executives to whom they report, believe that by calling a terrorist a terrorist, they would be choosing sides in the divisive conflict in the Middle East. Unfortunately for the CBC, the word terrorist is perfectly clear in its meaning. It refers to an individual who subjects civilian targets to unpredictable violence in order to achieve a political objective. To substitute "extremist," with its overtones of ideological fervor, for the much more specific "terrorist" is itself an expression of favoritism. (Montreal Gazette) What you see is not always what you get when it comes to the Middle East, a region that has not yet begun the process of democratic change. What Iranians have seen from Khatami and his faction over the past seven years has been nothing more than just the rhetoric of reform. Iran's theocracy is based on a theory of government called Velayat-e faqih, or absolute clerical rule. The interpretation of what is or is not an "Islamic principle" falls within the authority of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his hand-picked Guardian Council. In Iran, elections serve as a veneer to mask a rigid theocracy. Under the current political structure, a metamorphosis of the Islamic Republic from within by the likes of Khatami is an impossible task and a "reformed" Velayat-e faqih system is a contradiction in terms. We need to see the clerical regime for what it really is: a theocracy, intrinsically and structurally incapable of reform. Reza Bulorchi is the Executive Director of the U.S Alliance for Democratic Iran. Nir Boms is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. (In the National Interest) Observations: The Day the Road Map Died - Aluf Benn (Ha'aretz)
See also U.S. Folds Up Road Map, Blaming the Palestinians - Ron Kampeas
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