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ALSO SEE: Arafat's Wife on a Luxury Trip NY DAILY NEWS (11/06/03)---------------------------------------------Last week we were told that "Malnutrition in the Gaza Strip and West Bank is as bad as in sub-Saharan Africa because the Palestinian economy has all but collapsed under Israeli restrictions." (Irish Times February 6, 2004) A report by the cross-party International Development Select Committee also called on Britain to press the European Union to impose trade sanctions on Israel until it lifts its restrictions on Palestinian trade. The World Bank said last year that the Palestinian economy was in steep decline after the Israeli army blockaded and...

CommentsTHE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT TRY to play a "neutral arbiter" in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. We should, in fact, be doing our best to make the Palestinians suffer until they change their ways, because, to put it bluntly, they are our enemies. Read this to see how they feel about America. And read this piece by Amir Taheri on the Iraqi "resistance," which notes Palestinian terror connections by the Iraqi insurgents, and features a Palestinian "journalist" egging them on. These folks are our enemies, and deserve to be treated as such. They don't deserve a state of their own. It's...

The author is a professor of law and director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. With the simple press of a button, the pilot of an Israeli helicopter gunship unleashed three missiles, instantly killing Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, as he was being driven home from prayers at his local mosque in the Gaza Strip. Yassin had not been sentenced to death by any court, nor was he on a battlefield in any conventional sense. Seven others died in the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made no apologies,...

When the 5-year-old boy ran home bleeding and weeping, his family first thought he had injured himself in a fall. At the doctor, they discovered Zainul Abideen had been stabbed, with wounds to the chest and abdomen requiring 20 stitches. Now they believe the boy was attacked by a serial killer targeting young children in this small town, where three children have been knifed to death in the past three weeks. Police say the slayings could be part of a black magic rite and have arrested about 20 suspects. One confessed to the first three assaults, including stabbing Zainul. Then,...

WASHINGTON - More than three-quarters of a million years ago, early humans gathered around a campfire near an ancient lake in what is now Israel, making tools and perhaps cooking food, in the earliest evidence yet found of the use of fire in Europe or Asia. Researchers have found evidence that these early people hunted and processed meat and used fire at a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in the northern Dead Sea valley. Developing the ability to use fire "surely led to dramatic changes in their behavior connected with diet, defense and social interaction," said lead researcher Naama Goren-Inbar...

JERUSALEM — Israel's response to Palestinian violence after a pullout from the Gaza Strip would be even harsher than it is now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday. Interviewed on Israel's Channel 10 television for Israel's independence day, Sharon defended his "unilateral disengagement" plan, including a pullout from the Gaza Strip. Members of his Likud Party vote on the plan in a referendum Sunday. After a pullout, Palestinians could no longer explain violence by saying that Israel was occupying their land, Sharon said, "and Israel's responses (to violence) would be much harsher." He refused to give specifics beyond noting...

The top figures in the militant group Hamas after the assassination Sunday of its leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. _Mahmoud Zahar: A Hamas spokesman, the 53-year-old Zahar is considered a hard-liner. Zahar was the personal physician of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was killed by the Israelis on March 22. Zahar served as Hamas' liaison with the PLO in the mid-1990s but now opposes compromise with the Palestinian Authority. Zahar has been imprisoned by Israel and has been jailed repeatedly by the Palestinian Authority. _Ismail Hanieh: A top aide to Yassin and like Zahar he is a member of Hamas'...

WASHINGTON -- The blurring of lines between active-duty U.S. soldiers and contracted security personnel is causing unease in Congress, as violence continues to rise in Iraq. Some lawmakers worry that private security forces operate too far outside U.S. military control -- and laws. And experts wonder what would happen if a contractor did something tragically wrong, like shoot an Iraqi child. Thirteen Democrats wrote Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this month to argue that providing security in a hostile area is a classic mission for the military. "It would be a dangerous precedent if the United States allowed the presence...

The current president of Iraq's U.S.-picked Governing Council, Massoud Barzani, said Monday that American mistakes helped lead to the military deadlock outside of Najaf and Fallujah because Washington allowed "an army of liberation" to become "an army of occupation." In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Barzani warned the United States that civilians must not be harmed during any assault on the cities, but also cautioned that the United States cannot act softly and give insurgents "the impression that they have the upper hand." Barzani, who holds the monthly rotating presidency of the council, spoke in one of the...

LONDON -- Britain will begin a pilot identification-card program tomorrow as part of the government's plan to introduce compulsory ID cards for the first time since the 1950s. Home Secretary David Blunkett has said that ID cards would help Britain combat terrorism and illegal immigration, pointing out that identity fraud costs the country more than $2.37 billion annually. But civil liberties groups have already expressed concern over privacy infringement. Some 10,000 volunteers will be involved in the program to be run from the Passport Office in London and three other sites around Britain, the Home Office said. The new...

WASHINGTON - The U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees said Friday it is nothing more than a humanitarian organization, with no responsibility for camps security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Some members of Congress and the World Jewish Congress allege that the camps have become launching pads for terrorist activity against Israeli civilians. President Bush has hinted that the United States, the major donor to the U.N. Relief Works Agency, might cut the agency off. Peter Hansen, UNRWA´S commissioner general, said that under the Oslo peace accords Israel and the Palestinian Authority have clearly defined security responsibilities...

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to release $17.7 million in aid to the Palestinians that had been held up over accusations some of the money was going to fund terrorism. The vote included a demand for disclosure about how the money is spent. It came after EU external affairs commissioner Chris Patten defended efforts to track the more than $1.3 billion spent in the past decade on projects in the occupied territories.   "We have found no evidence of EU funds being used for any purposes other than that for which they were intended," Patten told the...

Any deal between Saddam Hussein and the United Nations carried a grave element of risk. On the one hand, you had an amoral dictator concerned only with saving his skin; on the other, an international body notorious for its lack of public accountability. The decision to ease economic sanctions against Iraq, allowing the sale of oil in order to generate funds for humanitarian relief, was taken soon after the Gulf war. For years, Saddam simply ignored it. It was only at the end of 1996 that the oil-for-food programme was finally implemented. As might be expected, the dictator exploited the...

TEL AVIV - Even though he had been targeted for death since last fall, Israeli defense officials say the assassination of Abdel Aziz Rantisi became an urgent priority only in the last month, after he became the head of Hamas and began upgrading Iranian involvement in the organization. Rantisi, 54, was killed April 17 by an Israeli helicopter gunship near his Gaza home, just 26 days after he took over Hamas following the assassination of his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. During the few weeks that he headed the organization, defense officials say Rantisi invited the Iranians and their Lebanese...

SEOUL, South Korea - A self-proclaimed "anti-American" group is threatening new terrorist attacks against eight U.S. allies in Iraq by the end of the month, including South Korea, Japan, Australia and the Philippines, a South Korean official said Thursday. (Image-South Korean officials were wearing gas masks as they came out of their office at the government building in Seoul during a civil defence drill against terrorist attacks.-) The group, called the "Yello-Red Overseas Organization," warned in a one-page letter sent to the South Korean embassy in Thailand that it will launch the attacks through April 30, embassy spokesman Ryoo Jung-young...

--In addition to all of our other problems - terror, international delegitimization, disagreement over disengagement, Iranian nuclear weapons, socio-economic gaps, religious-secular tensions, etc. - Israel is also in the midst of a leadership crisis. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may be indicted for allegedly using his influence, while serving as foreign minister in 1999, to advance shady business deals, including a crony’s attempt to buy a Greek island for development. The evidence is not entirely clear, and even if he stands trial, he might not be found guilty, but if the attorney general issues an indictment, Sharon may be forced to...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Wednesday, April 21 Three car bombs exploded in front of Iraqi police stations in the southern city of Basra on Wednesday morning, killing more than three dozen people and wounding more than 70, according to initial reports from the police and witnesses. A fourth explosion hit a police station in the nearby town of Zubeir, according to a witness in one of Basras main hospitals, who was speaking to medics as they brought in people wounded in the blast. One of the blasts in Basra hit a school bus during the morning rush hour, when school buses are...

CAIRO - An Israeli attempt to assassinate Yasser Arafat is "only a matter of time", the Palestinian leader's national security adviser Jibril Rajoub said in an interview published here yesterday. "An attack on Arafat's life is only a matter of time because Arafat symbolises the freedom" of the Palestinian people, General Rajoub told the Egyptian weekly magazine Nahdat Mir. On March 22, the leader of the Palestinian radical Islamic movement Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was killed in an Israeli helicopter raid in Gaza City. And Israel assassinated his successor, Abdelaziz Rantissi, less than a month later. Israeli Prime Minister...

It was never much of a secret that Saddam Hussein was a crooked dictator. But there are allegations that the former leader of Iraq wasn't the only one who was corrupt. The United Nations has agreed to an independent probe of the program it set up to let Saddam sell oil-- to feed his hungry people. The investigation could uncover the dirty truth about a humanitarian program-- polluted by greed. For years there have been allegations of corruption in the U.N.'s Iraqi oil-for-food program. Now it's bubbling over into a full-fledged scandal. The corruption charges first surfaced last January--...

In 1996, after brutal sanctions had wreaked enormous hardship on the Iraqi people, the international community found a better way. Under the watchful eye of the United Nations, it launched the oil-for-food program, which would allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil, as long as the proceeds were used to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people. The oil money would flow through the UN, which would monitor the spending. It was to be the largest humanitarian-aid effort ever undertaken. So much for theory.  In reality, the oil-for-food program was one of the larger rip-offs of all...

<p>In a remarkable shift for formal American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict and morass, an American president has actually recognized reality. Out loud.</p> <p>George W. Bush has acknowledged the Israelis can't be expected to retreat to the vulnerable armistice lines of 1949, the old borders that invited one war after another in the years since. All the invaders had to do was cut a wasp-waisted Israel in two, then roll up each half. Not for nothing did the late Abba Eban refer to the old borders as "the Auschwitz lines."</p>

When Mordechai Vanunu ends his 18 years of mostly solitary confinement Wednesday morning, he will likely be greeted with complete silence from all four of his parents. Mr. Vanunu, 50, became an international cause célèbre in 1986, when he was kidnapped by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and imprisoned for treason after telling the world about Israel's secret nuclear-weapons program. Israeli officials believe Mr. Vanunu is one of the most dangerous men in the country, and have ordered him not to leave his town in Israel, to speak to foreigners, to use a cellphone or the Internet, or to come within...

<p>How is it, sir, that you still have your job?</p> <p>As if presiding over the deadliest domestic intelligence failure in the history of the nation wasn't enough to relieve the top spook of his duties, Tenet's appearance before the commission on Thursday provided more reason.</p>

<p>April 19, 2004 -- JERUSALEM -  Defiant Hamas leaders yesterday said they've already picked a new chief to replace assassinated Gaza Strip head Abdel Aziz Rantisi - but refused to publicly identify him.</p> <p>The move came as hundreds of thousands of frenzied Palestinians rampaged through Gaza, vowing to start a bloody "earthquake" against Israel for killing Rantisi less than a month after assassinating his predecessor, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.</p>

The Decline of Islamic Science, the Rise of Extremism The United Nations Development Program, in a report published last year, described in often painful detail some of the factors that have contributed to the decline of science and the rise of extremism in Arab societies. Among them are: Increases in average income have been lower in the Arab world than anywhere else for 20 years, except for the poorest African countries. "If such trends continue...it will take the average Arab citizen 140 years to double his or her income, whole other regions are set to achieve that level in a...

JERUSALEM; Israel's proposed evacuation of Jewish settlements and soldiers from the Gaza Strip would allow the military to continue to enter Gaza and permit Israel to maintain control over its airspace, seaports and border crossings, according to the first official text of the plan made public. All 7,500 Jewish settlers and the Israeli troops that protect them would be evacuated by the end of 2005, according to the document. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan, evacuated settlements would not be destroyed — as they were when Israel evacuated the Sinai Peninsula in the 1980s — but Palestinian leaders and militants...

<p>THE United States is a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which this month will address the growing problem of how governments should respond to anti-Semitism.</p> <p>I have been designated by Secretary of State Colin Powell to serve as chairman of the U.S. delegation - which includes members of Congress as well as private citizens who had been leaders in the battle against anti-Semitism - to the OSCE's Berlin conference, beginning on April 25.</p>

UNITED NATIONS - With strong U.S. backing, Israel launched a campaign at the United Nations to win international support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to withdraw from Gaza and part of the West Bank.Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman said he briefed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday about the plan and Sharon's trip to Washington this week."You could describe this meeting as the beginning of a diplomatic onslaught by Israel to try to elicit international support for the disengagement plan," Gillerman told The Associated Press.He said Israel also wanted to point out the "absurdity" of Palestinian objections to...

Yasser Arafat on Thursday angrily rejected the US decision to back an Israeli plan to retain some of the territory it captured in the 1967 war. In an impassioned speech that was televised live from Ramallah, the Palestinian leader said Israeli security could never be achieved in the shadow of occupation and the assassination of Palestinian leaders. Israel's policy of "collective punishments, house demolitions and the construction of an apartheid wall would only serve to strengthen the resolve of the Palestinian people to force the occupiers and settlers to leave their land", he said. "The fanatical Israeli rulers are wrong...

AP- CAIRO, Egypt Arab anger over Israel's plan to leave Gaza and parts of the West Bank is focused on the United States, which Arabs accuse of abandoning the role of impartial mediator. They fear a partial withdrawal will turn into a permanent reality, with Israel controlling most of the land they want for a Palestinian state. That Arabs wouldn't simply applaud an Israeli pledge to withdraw from territory claimed by Palestinians is testament to the complexity of politics in the Middle East, a region where promises aren't always what they seem and compromise is a frustratingly rare commodity. President...

The Palestinian Authority's overtures to Hamas reveal the “plight of the Palestinians” to be just part of the global jihad All the hard work, all the bribes to diplomats and members of the media, all the subventions to public relations firms, all the enrolling in the Jihad against Israel even of “Christian” Muslims among the “Palestinian” Arabs such as Hanan Ashrawi, Naim Ateek, and Archbishop Sabbah, may now come to naught. With the Palestinian Authority (PA) inviting Hamas into its government, and with the Christian population among the “Palestinian” Arabs now so small (it was once over 20%, and now...

The following article is the text of President Bush's comments at a press conference following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. I'm pleased to welcome Prime Minister Sharon back to the White House. For more than 50 years, Israel has been a vital ally and a true friend of America. I've been proud to call the Prime Minister my friend. I really appreciate our discussions today. The policy of the United States is to help bring peace to the Middle East and to hope -- bring hope to the people of that region. On June 24, 2002, I...

WASHINGTON - In what experts said was a historic change of position, the United States said Wednesday that Israel should not have to withdraw completely from the West Bank or allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes inside Israel. President Bush said in an official letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it was time to recognize "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers." He wrote that it would not be "realistic" for Israel to withdraw from those centers or to admit the several million Palestinian refugees. While top administration officials insisted these...

San Francisco - Google Inc the leading Internet search engine, said Monday that it had no plans to alter its search results despite complaints that the first listing on a search for the word "Jew" directs people to an anti-Semitic Web site. The dispute points to one of the most difficult challenges that has plagued Web search engines: what to do when the results of a search are offensive to some, but legal? In this case, the first listed site on a search for "Jew" is "Jewwatch.com," which promotes itself as "Keeping a close watch on Jewish communities and...

http://www.gamla.org.il/english We all seemed surprised when France linked with Germany in an attempt to thwart America and the Bush plan to displace Saddam Hussein.    Why do we always focus on the wrong reasons in an attempt to re- define the obvious? France, since the days of Charles De Gaulle, has tried to re-instate France as a legitimate, leading power in Europe instead of being regarded as the commercial prostitute of Europe. France begged for rescue during WWI and WW2 and, after America rescued that decayed nation, France quietly hated those "cowboy" Americans.  Always they tried to separate Europe...

ALSO SEE: UN's Terrible Shame: Durban 2001 Jews Fear Durban Conference to Demonize Israel (JT Agency) By Micheal J. Jordan (01/08/03) URBAN, South Africa, Sept. 3 — The United States and Israel walked out of the United Nations meeting on racism here tonight, denouncing a condemnation of Israel in a proposed conference declaration and lamenting that a meeting intended to celebrate tolerance and diversity had degenerated into a gathering riven by hate. South Africa rushed tonight to convene emergency meetings to redraft the declaration and program of action in the hope of averting other walkouts, and a spokesman for the...

<p>For many American Jews, the past two weeks have been eye-opening in the same way Sept. 11 was eye-opening.</p> <p>Just as America was awakened to the threat of terrorism on that awful day, Jews who have never experienced a moment's anti-Semitism have had a chance to see it on the loose - and to consider that they too might fall victim to it.</p>

In a previous press release, Anti-CAIR (ACAIR), documented the relationship between the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington DCUnited States and Canada. based organization that claims to protect the civil rights of Muslims in the As part of a continuing investigation into the sources of CAIR’s funding, we have come across Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, the first, and present, president of the IDB.  Why is Dr. Ali noteworthy?  Dr. Ali served as Secretary General of the Muslim World League, (MWL), from 1993 to 1995.  He was charged with “restructuring the MWL.”     ...

A LEADER IN A NEW IRAQI ORGANIZATION NAMED 'THE IRAQI TRIBAL ALLIANCE' ACCUSED ARAB TELEVISION SERVICES OF 'SYSTEMATIC IRRESPONSIBLE REPRESENTATION OF THE NEWS,' AND SAID 'THEY GRAVELY ENDANGER IRAQ… [BECAUSE] THEY ARE HELPING THE FIFTH COLUMN OF THE DEPOSED REGIME.' (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON, 4/16/03) A SAUDI NEWSPAPER REPORTED THAT THE 'TRUE REASON' FOR THE FALL OF BAGHDAD WAS THE BETRAYAL OF GENERAL MAHER SEIFAN AL-TIKRITI, SADDAM'S PATERNAL COUSIN WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF DEFENDING THE HEART OF THE IRAQI CAPITAL WITH SPECIAL NATIONAL GUARD UNITS. THE PAPER ADDED THAT AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE SUCCEEDED IN REACHING AN AGREEMENT WITH HIM. (AL-WATAN, SAUDI...