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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: click here In-Depth Issues:
Palestinian Group to Target Non-Muslims - Maggie Michael (AP/Washington Post)
Egypt: Al-Qaeda Members in Sinai (Jerusalem Post) Israel Campus Beat - September 3, 2006 Point Counter-Point: How to Investigate the Conduct of the War
Hizballah's Guided Missiles - Dan Ephron (Newsweek) Israeli War "Trophies" on Display in Lebanon (AFP/Yahoo)
Search Key Links Media Contacts Back Issues Fair Use
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on Sunday for Lebanon's prime minister to shake hands, sign a peace treaty, and end the hatred between the two countries. "I hope that day comes soon," he said. But Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev says there will never be peace until Hizballah is disarmed. "We have to have a situation where we do not see those trucks coming from Syria, full of Iranian missiles, full of Iranian rockets." Last week, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said Lebanon will be the last Arab country that signs a peace treaty with Israel. (VOA News) In a 48-minute video posted on an Islamic militant website Saturday, al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri appears with Adam Yehiye Gadahn, a 28-year-old American who the FBI believes attended al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan and served as an al-Qaeda translator. Gadahn called on Americans to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars. "Isn't it the time for the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists to cast off the cloak of the spiritual darkness which enshrouds them and emerge into the light of Islam?" Gadahn asked, wearing a white robe and a white turban. (AP/Washington Post) Iran brushed aside Kofi Annan's efforts to mediate in the crisis over its nuclear ambitions Sunday even as Western powers struggled to maintain momentum for sanctions against the Islamic state. The UN secretary-general left Teheran empty-handed after Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rejected his call to heed Security Council demands for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. (Telegraph-UK) See also EU Gives Iran Two More Weeks in Nuclear Standoff - Ingrid Melander (Reuters) British Jews are facing a wave of anti-Semitic attacks prompted by Israel's conflict with Hizballah in Lebanon. Synagogues have been daubed with graffiti, Jewish leaders have had hate-mail, and ordinary people have been subjected to insults and vandalism. Mark Gardner, of the Community Security Trust, said: "In July, when the conflict in Lebanon began, we received reports of 92 incidents." On Thursday an all-party parliamentary inquiry will state that anti-Semitic violence has become endemic in Britain, both on the streets and university campuses. The report will call for urgent action from the government, the police, and educational establishments. (Times-UK) See also Masked Man with Firebomb Attacks Montreal Jewish School Surveillance video recovered by Montreal police shows a masked man throwing a firebomb at the door of an Orthodox Jewish school in an attack early Saturday. (CBC News) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Security forces on Saturday arrested two Palestinians, Tahar Amar and Hassan Ufi of Tulkarm, who are suspected of trying to launch rockets from the West Bank into central Israel with the backing of Hizballah. Their attempt failed, and the rockets crashed only a few meters from their launch site. The suspects had also been wanted for a number of previous shootings and were in possession of a pipe bomb. (Ha'aretz) Israel has agreed to Indonesia's participation in the UNIFIL force in Lebanon. Indonesia said Saturday it will send up to 1,000 troops to southern Lebanon by the month's end. However, diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said Saturday night that Israel still was opposed to the participation of Malaysia and Bangladesh in the force. Both those Muslim countries openly supported Hizballah in the recent conflict, while the Indonesian government took a much more "moderate" approach. Furthermore, Israel has for years had some quiet diplomatic activity with Indonesia, (Jerusalem Post) Masked militants trying to keep students away from school shot and moderately wounded a 12-year-old boy trying to go to class Sunday in the West Bank city of Nablus. The strike was led by Fatah, which lost the election to Hamas earlier this year and is trying to pressure Hamas to form a national unity government. (AP/Jerusalem Post) See also Hamas Denounces School Strike - Khaled Abu Toameh The money stolen by senior PA officials over the past decade is enough to pay the salaries of all PA civil servants for at least six months, the Hamas-controlled government said on Saturday in response to the general strike which paralyzed most government institutions and schools. Hamas leaders claimed that Fatah gunmen and PA security forces in the West Bank prevented a large number of schoolchildren from entering their classrooms and confiscated the keys to schools in Nablus, Tulkarm, and Jenin. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri claimed that 85% of the schools in Gaza did not heed the call to strike. "It's obvious that this is a politically-motivated strike that is aimed at undermining and blackmailing the government," he charged. (Jerusalem Post) The EU said Friday it has begun direct cash payments of $347 to 625,000 Palestinians left unpaid because of the financial crisis besetting the Hamas-led Palestinian government, through a program overseen by the World Bank. EU money will also finance Palestinian health services and utilities. (AP/Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
While there is much to be said for U.S. assistance to rebuild war-torn Lebanon, U.S. efforts are bumping up against an unpleasant reality: It is extremely difficult to ensure that U.S. and international assistance is not used to strengthen Hizballah. Randall Tobias, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that AID would work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to distribute U.S. aid. The problem is that Hizballah has long controlled money sent to NGOs and Lebanese government agencies in southern Lebanon. Before any more U.S. aid goes to rebuild Lebanon, Congress and the administration need to agree to conditions that will ensure U.S. assistance to Lebanon does not inadvertently get diverted by Hizballah. (Washington Times) One of the great benefits to those of the West to come out of Hizballah's recent offensive against Israel is the certain knowledge that Hizballah is the terrorist extension of Iran's expressed foreign policy. Hizballah and everyone else in the world knew perfectly well that when Israel left every centimeter of Lebanese soil in 2000, it did so with the intent never to return. It not only had no designs on southern Lebanon, it dreaded doing so. Much has been made in the Western press of Hizballah's benign social services function in Lebanon, of the hospitals and schools it has built. Almost no notice, however, has been paid to the large numbers of these hospitals and schools which were built over its military bunkers and rocket launching sites. Hizballah's true genius lay in its knowledge of the press. The calculus was simple: launch a rocket from within a civilian population; if you kill Jews that's a victory. If the Jews hit back and in so doing kill Lebanese civilians, that's a victory. If they don't hit back because they're afraid to hit civilians, that's a victory. The writer served as a captain in the IDF reserves during the recent war. (Chronwatch) Observations:
This War Has Taught Us that Israel Must Revise Its Military Approach
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