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Who are the real victims in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? There has been no shortage of casualties and tragic stories on either side of this terrible war. And no friend of Israel ought to be insensitive to the human cost that it has exacted on the Palestinians. But while Arab victims of the violence have every right to our sympathy, we have the right to ask what those who are seeking to highlight their suffering at Israel's expense are trying to do. Coming, as it does, on the heals of the International Court of Justice's preposterous ruling...

Feb. 12, 2004 21:35 From terrorist to Zionist By MICHAEL FREUND A former Palestinian terrorist who took part in attacks against Israelis in the mid-1970s has now become a vocal pro-Israel Christian activist in the United States as part of his "repentance" for his past actions. "My first goal is to give strength to the Jewish people, to give encouragement, to get rid of this stupid idea of establishing a Palestinian state," Walid Shoebat told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview from his West Coast home. "I had a change of heart, and I am now very Zionist. I...

ISM activist allowed to enter Israel after a month in lockup By Relly Sa'ar The Tel Aviv District Court yesterday authorized the entry into Israel of a pro-Palestinian activist after she was held at Ben-Gurion Airport's detention center for a month. The court imposed restrictions on her activities here. Anne Robinson-Petter, a 44-year-old New Yorker who is an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was held on the grounds that she posed "a security risk to the state." The court ruled that the Shin Bet security service's information on Robinson-Petter was convincing but was not sufficient to prevent her entry...

(RNS) The Presbyterian Church (USA), under fire from Jewish groups for its funding of messianic Jewish congregations and a move to divest from Israel, is appealing to both faiths to respect whatever "fragility of trust" still exists between them. In a three-page statement issued late Tuesday, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick defended recent church votes that one prominent Jewish group called "hostile and aggressive." "I encourage Presbyterians to maintain their relationships with people of other faiths, with sensitivity to the fragility of trust in the present climate of violence and terror," said Kirkpatrick, the church's highest elected official. Church headquarters in...

The bombing was to have taken place in Haifa within the next few hours. Soldiers deployed east of the Tapuah Junction near the settlement of Migdalim thwarted a suicide bombing Thursday morning meant for Haifa when they stopped a Palestinian taxi and forcing its occupants to flee. The bombing was to have taken place in Haifa within the next few hours, security officials told Israel Radio. The officials said the men were both Fatah terrorists from Nablus. Acting on intelligence tips, IDF forces deployed near Nablus on the West Bank set up suprise roadblocks in the area to stop and...

Violent protests against corruption and nepotism in Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and the threatened resignation of his prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, have forced Mr Arafat to back off from putting a relative in charge of Gaza’s security forces... Arafat is feeling the wrath of his own people, who have become increasingly frustrated at the corruption, nepotism and sheer uselessness of his crumbling regime.... Arafat has for months been resisting pressure from America, Egypt, the United Nations and other powers to merge and revamp the PA’s 12 overlapping, ineffectual and mutually hostile security forces, and to put them under the...

"What do you want from my life," groused L., a top journalist with France 2 Television, during a meeting with French-speaking Israelis who visited its main studio last year. The morning of the visit, the French newspaper Liberacion published a Jewish Agency prediction of large-scale immigration of French Jews to Israel. The journalist had trouble keeping his composure. His parents immigrated to France from Algeria in the early 1960s, soon after its independence. Algerian Jews who had French citizenship immigrated to France and settled without much problem. L. is a case in point. As a leading correspondent for France 2,...

Palestinian schoolbooks for the first time delineate the borders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip on maps but the entire territory encompassed by Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is referred to as Palestine, according to an Israeli government report. These are the two most significant changes in textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority's Education Ministry for the 2003-2004 school year. The PA textbooks continue to deny Israel's right to exist and claim that the only solution to the current conflict is violence, according to a report by the coordinator of government activities in the territories. The report,...

While the number of daily casualties in Iraq continues to grow, there is a relative quiet on Israeli streets. It has now been more than three months since the last serious suicide bombing in Israel. In three major attacks on Jerusalem buses and at the Ashdod port during the beginning of 2004, 28 Israelis were killed and some 120 people were wounded. Senior Israeli military officials said recently that there was a 75 percent drop in the number of attempted suicide bombings this year, compared to the similar period in 2003. Since the beginning of the year, 58 potential suicide...

A group of extremist settlers "hoping for the murder" of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could move into "an active phase" of operations against the prime minister, Shin Bet director Avi Dichter warned on Tuesday. The Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, has issued a cluster of such warnings in recent weeks, spurring both increased security around the prime minister and accusations of slander by the settlers. In a briefing to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Dichter estimated the number of radical settlers at between 150 and 200 and noted that the few dozen hardcore ringleaders are based mostly...

The International Court of Justice has stated that, in its considered opinion, Israel`s anti-terrorism fence is a violation of international law and must be torn down, and that Israel must compensate Arab residents for the damage done. I actually applauded the ludicrous ruling. I applauded loudly — not for the “justice” of the decision, but because had these august judges decided otherwise, my assumption about their predetermined, anti-Semitic stance would have been wrong. I applauded the news that my assumption turned out to be right. Bravo! Now that the niceties have been dispensed with, let me get down to the...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution Tuesday demanding that Israel comply with a world court decision and tear down the barrier it is building to seal off the West Bank. The vote was 150 in favor, 6 opposed - including the United States - and 10 abstentions. The assembly's vote, like the opinion of the International Court of Justice, is not legally binding, but both have symbolic value as international statements of condemnation for the barrier. The 191-member world body voted after lengthy negotiations between the Arab League and the European Union which resulted...

The True Story of The Patton Prayer by Msgr. James H. O'Neill (From the Review of the News 6 October 1971) Many conflicting and some untrue stories have been printed about General George S. Patton and the Third Army Prayer. Some have had the tinge of blasphemy and disrespect for the Deity. Even in "War As I Knew It" by General Patton, the footnote on the Prayer by Colonel Paul D. Harkins, Patton's Deputy Chief of Staff, while containing the elements of a funny story about the General and his Chaplain, is not the true account of the prayer Incident...

The Sucker of Israel:Bodansky’s Revelations: Part I Israeli-born Yossef Bodansky has been the director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for more than a decade. His latest book, The Secret War of the Iraq War (Harper-Collins 2004), is the basis of this article. Indeed, I will quote extensively from Chapter 3 of his book and inject comments en passant. Chapter 3 refers to an investigation that had begun in the fall of 2002 in Israel, and which involved the intelligence services of more than six countries. “The investigators’ findings,” writes Bodansky, “provided the ‘smoking gun’...

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has urged all French Jews to move to Israel immediately to escape anti-Semitism. He told a meeting of the American Jewish Association in Jerusalem that Jews around the world should relocate to Israel as early as possible. But for those living in France, he added, moving was a "must" because of rising violence against Jews there. However, French foreign ministry travel advice to its citizens says the risk of attacks is "very high" across Israel. Travellers are advised to avoid public transport and show heightened vigilance in public places. Anti-Semitic attacks France has suffered a...

ISRAEL could launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power station if Russia goes ahead with plans to supply it with fuel, a senior American official warned last week. Amid growing concern in the US government over Iran’s apparent determination to build a nuclear bomb, the official said he believed Israel would attack the plant, on the Gulf coast, if it appeared fuel rods were about to be shipped there. Sources in Tel Aviv confirmed that the Israeli military had completed rehearsals for such a strike. “Israel will on no account permit Iranian reactors — especially the one being...

Israel is a tiny nation, roughly half the size of Lake Michigan.  Its population is roughly half the size of the New York metropolitan area.  Despite being a Jewish state, more than twenty percent of its residents are Arab and most Jews in Israel describe themselves as secular rather than religious. Yet if one were to read world press accounts or daily condemnations from the United Nations or the recent decision of the ICJ criticizing the construction of the fence, you might conclude that Israel is a world power intent on destabilizing Middle East affairs. Why, it might well be...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Gunmen angry over Yasser Arafat's overhaul of his security forces burned down Palestinian Authority offices in Gaza on Sunday. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat met with his prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, to discuss the political crisis that erupted over continuing violence in Gaza and Qureia's attempt to resign as head of the Palestinian government. "I totally reject your resignation and consider it nonexistent," Arafat told Qureia at a meeting Sunday, according to Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat. Qureia told his Cabinet on Saturday he was firm in his decision to quit. Dozens of...

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