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The Israeli army on Sunday confirmed the recent arrest of two young Palestinian Arabs for the March 11 slaughter of the Fogel family in the northern Samaria Jewish community of Itamar. An army spokesman told Israel Radio that 18-year-old Hakem Awwad and 19-year-old Amjad Awwad confessed to the murders of Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their young children, and that they showed absolutely no remorse for their crime. Reenacting the murder, the young suspects told security officials that they infiltrated Itamar at around 9 PM armed with knives. They proceeded to enter a home that was empty and...

Distorted media coverage of the recent terrorist assault on the Israeli community of Itamar compounded the pain of an unspeakably brutal crime. On Friday night shortly after 10 PM, just hours after the commencement of the Jewish Sabbath, two knife-wielding intruders broke into the modest one story home of the Fogel family, murdering the mother and father in their bed along with their three month old baby girl. They then stormed one of the children’s rooms, slashing to death two boys, ages three and eleven. Two other sleeping children – aged two and eight – managed to survive when the...

JERUSALEM – At a time when peace talks with the Palestinians are stalled over Jewish settlements, the Israeli government plans to send schoolchildren on field trips to a disputed holy site in one of the West Bank's most volatile flash points. Education Minister Gideon Saar says the visits to Hebron, burial site of the biblical patriarch Abraham and home to some of Israel's most radical settlers, are part of a plan to acquaint Israeli youngsters with their heritage. "It is a place of emotional, religious and historical power," Saar, a leading member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party, told...

Missiles Aimed at Tel Aviv by Ari Bussel Israel is now and will undoubtedly be under further attacks. There are more missiles today in Lebanon and Gaza than possibly anywhere else in the world, all stockpiled and ready to be launched against Israel. Not exactly a statistic countries like to boast about: “We have the highest number of missiles per capita.” Modern Israel has seen a tremendous buildup in recent years, skyscrapers of the most beautiful kind add an aura to a new skyline against the deep blue of the Mediterranean. There is a road infrastructure that would be suitable...

After assuming the role of prosecutor and judge, Al- Jazeera, the Arab world’s most influential TV network, has ruled that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority have betrayed their people and must therefore step down from the stage. The “defendants” have been found guilty of ceding control over most of east Jerusalem to Israel, relinquishing the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees and conducting security coordination with Israeli security authorities. In other words, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his men have been convicted of high treason – which, in the Arab and Islamic world, is a crime punishable...

If the result of the current attempts to birth another Palestinian country in addition to Jordan was not a Middle East war, the whole situation might be considered comical. All one needs to recognize are the results of each stage of the path that has led to the current positions and then extrapolate on to the actual forming of this new state and you will quickly recognize the complete absurdity of the whole endeavor. What has been accomplished thus far? Before the great minds of the world cooked up this wondrous idea to bring back Yasser Arafat to lead the...

A professor at that Boston College is warning her students about the dangers of Israel’s presence in the West Bank. “Recently, Ph.D. student of the College of Arts and Sciences Rebecca Clark accused sociology professor Eve Spangler of perpetuating anti-Israel ideas and hosting anti-Israel events,” Morgan Chalfont reported in The Observer at Boston College on November 16, 2010. Specifically, “Clark explains that Spangler organizes her SC367 course and its supplementary ‘Birthright Unplugged’ trip to the West Bank so that it perpetuates her anti-Israel opinions,” Chalfont wrote. Clark claims that Spangler’s 2009 syllabus for the course offers a particularly stark example...

OP-ED The True Face Of Israeli Racism By Steven Plaut Posted Nov 24 2010 Allow us to introduce you to young Kochav Segal Halevi. The 26-year-old Israeli is receiving death threats. In fact, he had to go into hiding. His offense? He purchased an apartment in the Arab town of Ibillin, not far from Haifa. The Arabs there do not like the idea of their town being polluted by the presence of a Jew. I mean, one Jew and there goes the neighborhood. Arabs who sell property to Jews have similarly been threatened and attacked. And of course the moderates...

QALQILIYA, West Bank (AP) — A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down. The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

On Wednesday night, Senator John Kerry (D, MA) completed a six-day, six-nation trip that show-cased his growing role in helping the Obama administration negotiate potentially explosive situations. Kerry, who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, traveled to Khartoum and Addis Ababa to deliver a White House offer for better relations in exchange for concrete steps towards peace in Sudan, Africa's largest country. Then he spent time in Lebanon and Syria, where he tried to smooth mounting tensions over a UN tribunal. He ended his trip in Israel and the West Bank.

Somewhere between the Jordanian border and the Green Line, we'll call it Kiryat M'uyamim, night before last, IDF/Police officers rousted out two families at 3 a.m. Their belongings were cast out and tractors and bulldozers destroyed the small hovels that they had built with their own hands. There was no advance warning of this. Neighbors took the unfortunate families in, and the next day everyone went to work. I was in Kiryat M'uyamim last night. At dark, a cement mixer descended the hill towards Kiryat M'uyamim, along with a procession of several small cars. My wife, young son and I...

The Palestinian Authority has concluded that the peace process based on a two-state solution has failed, a senior Fatah official said on Tuesday. His statement came as PA officials repeated their rejection of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s proposal to extend the settlement construction moratorium if the Palestinian leadership recognized Israel as a Jewish state. But the US urgently sought to keep talks going, and called on the Palestinians to present their own counter-proposal to keep things on track. Mahmoud Aloul, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, said that Israel’s “racist policies” were meant to undermine the peace process. “The...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Arsonists torched a mosque in a West Bank village Monday, scrawling "revenge" on a wall in Hebrew and charring copies of the Muslim holy book in an attack that threatened to stoke tensions over deadlocked Mideast peacemaking. Palestinians say they suspect hard-line Jewish settlers of setting the fire in the village of Beit Fajjar, near the city of Hebron. The attack is likely to hamper U.S. efforts to sustain month-old between Israelis and Palestinians, now deadlocked over settlement construction.

There was meat grilling on barbecues, children with painted faces, stalls selling crafts and cakes, a stage for live music and even the odd priest wandering about. And everywhere people were clutching glasses of beer in the afternoon sun. Welcome to the annual beer festival in the rocky landscape of the West Bank, specifically the village of Taybeh, home to the only brewery in the Palestinian territories. Around 10,000 people were expected to attend the weekend's Oktoberfest, which would make it the biggest since the event began in the Christian-dominated village. It is a mark of the festival's success that...

The attack on Wednesday occurred at Rimonim Junction, east of the West Bank city of Ramallah, a day after a similar attack left four Israelis dead. Two Israelis were wounded Wednesday night in a shooting attack in the West Bank, one day after a similar attack left four Israeli civilians dead. Channel 10 news reported on Wednesday that one of the victims was seriously wounded and has lost consciousness. The other victim was reportedly lightly hurt.

"Talya and Yitzhak raised their children with joy and modesty," residents of Beit Hagai said on Tuesday. Four of the settlement's residents were killed in a shooting attack near Hebron, including a couple survived by six children. "They had quit a few difficulties in their life, but they overcame it all." The other victims of the shooting are Kochava Even-Haim and Avishai Schindler, who were in the car with the couple. The deadly attack took place not far from home, at the Bani Noam junction. Talia and Yitzhak Imes were survived by a one-and-a-half-year-old infant and five other children, the...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-press-secretary-israel-s-announcement-gaza Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 20, 2010 Statement by the Press Secretary on Israel’s announcement on Gaza The President has described the situation in Gaza as unsustainable and has made clear that it demands fundamental change. On June 9, he announced that the United States was moving forward with $400 million in initiatives and commitments for the West Bank and Gaza. The President described these projects as a down payment on the U.S. commitment to the people...

IPT News June 9, 2010 SNIPPET: "The Turkish-based charity that helped drive last week's deadly confrontation with Israeli commandos has deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups. The Hamas ties are not in question. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and IHH officials simply do not acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group." SNIPPET: "U.S. officials have expressed concern over the fact that "IHH representatives have met with senior Hamas officials in Turkey, Syria, and Gaza over the past three years," but IHH is not a designated terrorist organization in the United States. It's fair to ask, why not?"...

This may not seem like the best time to open a discussion of the "two state solution," but it may well be the best time to call the Palestinians', and the world's, bluff and put the necessary discussion of Gaza and the future of the blockade on a more serious and realistic footing. Point 1: Fatah on the West Bank has no desire to be responsible for Gaza, no ability to wrest control of Gaza from Hamas, and no ability to administer the West Bank if Hamas is freed from its Gaza prison. Despite the posturing, Gaza blockaded by Israel...

SNIPPET: “Condemnations of Israel’s commando raid on the flotilla trying to break a blockade on Gaza are pouring in after 10 people were reported killed in the violence at sea early Monday. Egypt announced Tuesday that it would open its border with Gaza, which Reuters describes as “a major boost for Hamas and a blow to efforts by Israel and its Western allies to cripple the Islamists.” Turkey is threatening to send more ships, escorted by its own navy, while there are fears Hizballah will use the incident to justify a new wave of rocket attacks toward Israel. Was it,...