Haarertz News Saturday, May 16, 2009

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Last update - 10:28 15/05/2009

Attention English speakers: Israel wants you to teach their over-crowded classes

By Suzanne Hyman

Every few years Israel tries unsuccessfully to lure Diaspora Jews into making aliyah and becoming English teachers in its schools. Now, they are trying again with a new angle - the economic woes in the United States.

"There is always a shortage of English teachers and you have to ask, where are you going to find new ones?" Dr. Judy Steiner, Chief Inspector for English Language Education in Israel told Haaretz.

Given the current financial problems in the United States, the Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency hope to find more Anglos willing to consider an exciting future in teaching English to Israeli youth.

And it seems that the program "English Teachers for Israel" has succeeded before it has really begun. Several dozen people from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have already been accepted after answering advertisements in their local aliyah centers.

The candidates are ready and willing to leave their homes, commit to aliyah and join the teacher-training program, "The economic situation in the United States definitely has its influence here," says Steiner, who personally interviewed over 100 people for those 60 spots.

The Education Ministry has previously faced criticism for placing teachers in classrooms without proper training, especially when there is a shortage of teachers - a common phenomenon given the low salaries, crowded classrooms, and constant strikes by teachers and students alike.

"Very often when there is a shortage, we put in people who are not completely qualified. But we don't take in anybody." Steiner said.

Last summer, for example, there was a shortage of teachers and the ministry allowed people to take an expedited teacher's training course for a few weeks. While the new teachers were placed in classes, they continued their teacher training at least once a week over one to two years, until they received their teaching certificates.

Steiner defended against past criticism on the expedited course, saying that, "At least these people received some basic training." Now, however, the Education Ministry is searching for a better long-term solution to its teacher shortage.

This is where the English teachers project enters the equation. The project is a joint venture by the ministry, the Jewish Agency, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, and aliyah group Nefesh B'Nefesh. Program boss Ahuva Volk says that the course is made up of a three-semester or 14-month learning track, including the study of Hebrew, teacher training, and a paid internship,

The immigrant teachers have the option of living in an absorption center in Jerusalem or Ra'anana, and the opportunity to study in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, at a ministry-approved college. They get an absorption "basket" of NIS 1,500 per month as well as a stipend and loan for tuition that becomes a grant once they receive their certificates and start teaching.

But will the training provide the new immigrants with enough tools so that they are able to survive in the Israeli school system? Volk says that the training begins with an internship in a setting of about 15 students - much smaller than the usual class size, which can climb to more than 40 students.

Many candidates for the program are young, recent college graduates who fell in love with Israel after enjoying a free 10-day Birthright trip, and are enthusiastic about contributing to the country through their English skills.

But being a native English speaker has its drawbacks. While there is the advantage of easier communication in English with students, there is also the problem of a lack of Hebrew, which may prove to be a stumbling block for new immigrants trying to integrate into Israeli society.

The English teachers project tries to remedy this by offering Hebrew lessons (ulpan) for two months at the start of the program and two months at the end. "They have a whole year of practicing their Hebrew, so it's not a problem," Volk told Haaretz. "Or we hope it won't be a problem."

Steiner is optimistic that this will be the answer to a chronic shortage in the Israeli education system.

"Our hope is that with all these programs, the ministry has done everything so that we can choose from people who have been properly trained," she says.

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Last update - 11:08 15/05/2009

What is it about this wonderful Jewish people?

By Haaretz Service

Award-winning actor Jon Voight, an ardent supporter of Israel and outspoken critics of peace talks, took part last month in a United Nations conference on racism boycotted by many who saw it as a forum for criticizing Israel.

On the sidelines of the conference, Leadel.NET caught up with Voight for a one-on-one conversation on Israel, the Jewish people, and his views on the Durban summit.

"Although I'm not Jewish, I feel very strongly for Judaism and for Jews," Voight told Leadel, explaining that while he is not Jewish he was raised within the culture of American Judaism.

"I found [sic] always the people I admired were Jewish, most of the time," he said. "Because I felt they had a focus and an understanding of ethics, you know? And morality that was above the rest of the communities that I was working with. So it's kind of natural for me... to understand Judaism and appreciate it."

Part of what draws him to the Jewish people, he says is "their abilities to sustain continuous attacks over 4,000 years. It gives them character."

"[There are] 13 million Jews in the world today... If they are in any country for more than a generation they become part of the life's blood of that country. It's quite remarkable who Jews are. And there is the question at the end of each one of these statements of these great men, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy: 'What is it about this wonderful people?'"

When asked whether he saw the Durban conference as a positive event given the months of controversy that surrounded it, Voight said: Sometimes its good for people to get together, meet eye-to-eye."

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Last update - 11:08 15/05/2009

What is it about this wonderful Jewish people?

By Haaretz Service

Award-winning actor Jon Voight, an ardent supporter of Israel and outspoken critics of peace talks, took part last month in a United Nations conference on racism boycotted by many who saw it as a forum for criticizing Israel.

On the sidelines of the conference, Leadel.NET caught up with Voight for a one-on-one conversation on Israel, the Jewish people, and his views on the Durban summit.

"Although I'm not Jewish, I feel very strongly for Judaism and for Jews," Voight told Leadel, explaining that while he is not Jewish he was raised within the culture of American Judaism.

"I found [sic] always the people I admired were Jewish, most of the time," he said. "Because I felt they had a focus and an understanding of ethics, you know? And morality that was above the rest of the communities that I was working with. So it's kind of natural for me... to understand Judaism and appreciate it."

Part of what draws him to the Jewish people, he says is "their abilities to sustain continuous attacks over 4,000 years. It gives them character."

"[There are] 13 million Jews in the world today... If they are in any country for more than a generation they become part of the life's blood of that country. It's quite remarkable who Jews are. And there is the question at the end of each one of these statements of these great men, Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy: 'What is it about this wonderful people?'"

When asked whether he saw the Durban conference as a positive event given the months of controversy that surrounded it, Voight said: Sometimes its good for people to get together, meet eye-to-eye."

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Last update - 00:00 13/05/2008

Actor Jon Voight: God gave this land to the Jewish people

Haaretz.com/Channel 10 daily feature for May 13, 2008.

By Haaretz Staff and Channel 10

Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight is currently in Israel to express his fervent support for the Jewish people and his opposition to exchanging land for peace with the Palestinians.

On Tuesday, Voight visited Sderot, the western Negev town that suffers regular Qassam rockets strikes from the Gaza Strip. On Monday, he met with terror victims, and welcomed a group of children brought to Israel through Chabad's Children of Chernobyl program.

Voight is best known for his breakthrough role in Midnight Cowboy in 1969, and his parts in 1970s films including Deliverance and The Champ. These days however, he may be even better known for being the father of Angelina Jolie.

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Last update - 12:08 14/05/2009

Australian charged over anti-Semitic YouTube video

By The Associated Press

Police charged a man who allegedly posted a video on YouTube with inciting racism under a so-far untested Australian state law,

officials said Thursday. A newspaper report said the video targeted Jews.

The 38-year-old man from the west coast city of Perth could become the first person convicted under Western Australia state's racial vilification laws enacted four years ago.

The laws were introduced in response to a series of violent attacks by white supremacists around Perth. The only person previously charged under the law was a 16-year-old Aboriginal girl, but a magistrate said the case involved petty name-calling and dismissed it.

State police spokeswoman Susan Usher said the suspect will appear in court next Tuesday charged with conduct likely to incite animosity or racist harassment. He cannot be identified under Australian law until his first court appearance.

If convicted, he faces a possible maximum penalty of 14 years in prison plus a fine of $18,000.

Detectives acting on a tip arrested the man at his home Wednesday. He was

released on bail, Usher said.

The video shot at locations around Perth contained content that was targeting a specific religion including threats to harm specific persons, Usher said.

Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said police had contacted YouTube about having the video removed.

"We have been working with them to pull the video down and they have been

fairly cooperative in the past," O'Callaghan told reporters.

Police have not specified the religion. But the Perth-based newspaper The West Australian said Jews were targeted.

The newspaper said the 10-minute video showed the man saying to the camera your days are numbered and I will put you in the camps with the rest of them.

He is also shown taunting a Jewish man outside a shopping center and calling him a racist, homicidal maniac, the newspaper said.

Also Wednesday, an Australian who has denied the Holocaust occurred was

sentenced to three months in prison in a different state for defying an order to stop publishing anti-Semitic material on his Web site.

The man, Fredrick Toben, remains free pending an appeal in the Federal Court in South Australia.

Toben last year avoided prosecution in Germany on a Holocaust denying charge when a British court ruled against extraditing him. In 1999, Toben was convicted in Germany on a similar charge and served seven months in prison.

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Last update - 17:41 16/05/2009

All we are saying is give religion a chance

By Roi Ben-Yehuda

Pope Benedict XVI thinks the Middle East could use a little more religion. Not the religion that divides - the kind he practiced when he suggested that Islam was a religion of the sword, or when he re-sanctioned an ancient Good Friday prayer which calls on God to illuminate the hearts of the Jews that they might recognize their savior Jesus Christ - but the kind that binds members of the human family to one another.

(Click here for an interactive guide to the pope's visit)

During his recent meeting with Muslim leaders in Jordan, the Pope commented that in an age when religion is misused and maligned as a force of discord, it is imperative that religious practitioners live in accord with the highest virtues of their faith.

The Pope also stated that one of the main purposes of his pilgrimage is to help advance the cause of peace: "We [the Catholic Church] are not a political power, but a spiritual force, and this spiritual force is a reality that can contribute to advances in the peace process." The Holy See explained that he plans on promoting peace by encouraging mass prayers, awakening the world's conscience, and promoting a reasonable (i.e. two-state) solution to the conflict.

Perhaps the idea that a "spiritual force" can contribute to peace sounds a little puzzling. A typical secular Israeli reply could be, "Thanks but no thanks. We appreciate the good intention (and boost in tourism), but we have had enough spiritual forces to last a lifetime."

Indeed, a repeated charge in the discourse over the Arab-Israeli conflict is that religion plays a central role in exacerbating and perpetuating the conflict. The conclusion being that removing religion from the scene will go a long way in solving the century-old conflict.

A somewhat comical example of this position comes Marwan Kanafani, special adviser to the late Yasser Arafat, who in 1994 replied to a question about the place of religion in the Oslo peace process by stating:

"The way to take care of religion in the dispute is to put the sheikhs in mosques, the rabbis in synagogues and priests in churches, and then lock the doors behind them and throw the keys away in the sea - they can only interfere with the process."

This is a seductive but ultimately wrong-headed position. Religion can (and must) play a positive role in the peace process. All the more so in the Holy Land, where religion actually matters. A lot.

For a significant number of people in the region, religion is a thick system of beliefs and practices that are intertwined with identity and values. It is common knowledge that for peace to succeed you need governments to make compromises and sign agreements, but you also need the will of the people. A purely secular argument in favor of peace will be less compelling than one that is also couched in religious terms and backed by religious authorities.

The popular Rabbi Eliezer Shach addressed this point when he quipped that his objection to the Oslo accords was not based on any religious prohibitions on returning land, rather he objected to Oslo because it was conceived and carried out by "rabbit eaters."

But what about all the horrible crimes that have been committed in the name of religion? Doesn't religion by its very nature foster exclusivity and violence? Can the beliefs and practices of religion actually be conducive to peace?

Without whitewashing the atrocities done in her name, it is important to remember that the religious imagination has also brought forth some of humankind's most arresting moral, aesthetic and intellectual achievements. The 20th century alone, hardly a religious century, boasts the likes of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Malcolm X, Desmond Tutu, Mother Theresa, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. The moral greatness of these individuals was not despite of their religiosity but precisely because of it.

At its best, and that is what we should focus on, religion engenders its followers with a sense of wonder and respect for God's creation. The religious perspective recognizes the inviolability of a life made in the image of God. It therefore makes moral claims which aim to transcend individual and group ego-centrism and challenges us to act with compassion towards others.

Crucial for peacemaking, the religions of the region each acknowledge the human capacity to inflict and receive pain - physically and emotionally - and through models of reconciliation (such as forgiveness rituals) each provides us with time-tested and indigenous methods of peacemaking.

Whatever differences there are to be found among the world's great religious traditions (and these need not be ignored), most share a basic and positive worldview about the nature of the universe and our purpose in it.

The Pope echoed this idea in Jerusalem when he told a conference of prominent Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders that, "Together we can proclaim that God exists and can be known, that the earth is his creation, that we are his creatures, and that he calls every man and woman to a way of life that respects his design for the world."

Of course, ecumenical unity alone will not bring peace, but given proper space to express itself, it can be employed as a handmaiden for reconciliation and coexistence. The true meaning of the word religion, derived from the Latin ligare, is to bind and connect us together. In this sense of the word, and this sense only, we may join the Pope in saying that the Middle East could indeed use a little more religion.

Roi Ben-Yehuda is an Israeli writer based in New York. He is a regular contributor to Haaretz and France 24.

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Last update - 10:37 14/05/2009

U.S. Jews of all denominations unite to support pope on Israel trip

By Haaretz Service

Jewish leaders and rabbis in the United States have joined together to back Pope Benedict XVI on his current trip to Israel, signing an open letter of welcome and support.

The move, which was initially to write a letter signed by only a small number of rabbis, snowballed very quickly, soon becoming a project involving some two hundred rabbis from America and leading figures in Jewish communities of all denominations from all over the world.

The signatories of the letter include Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland; Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg, the president of the U.S. Rabbinical Assembly; Rabbi David Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute; Cory Schneider, president of the Women's League for Conservative Judaism; Chancellor Arnold Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York; and Rabbi David Ellenson, the president of the Hebrew Union College.

The project was the brainchild of Rabbi Jack Bemporad, who heads the Center for Interreligious Understanding, and Angelica Berrie, the president of the Russell Berrie Foundation, who wished to show support for the pope as he reached out to the people of Israel, and his efforts for peace. The letter was published in the name of the Center for Interreligious Understanding.

In writing the letter, which was published in the Haaretz English print edition on Sunday, Bemporad and Berrie aimed to boost interreligious dialogue and foster understanding between the two faiths.

"This experience shows that there is recognition among Jewish leaders that dialogue is essential," said Bemporad. "A strong commitment to open dialogue can forge a relationship between Catholics and Jews that can become a model for people of all faiths."

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Last update - 10:36 13/05/2009

Court rules gun maker not liable for 1999 L.A. Jewish center attack

By The Associated Press

A U.S. federal appeals court on Monday rejected a lawsuit against gun maker Glock Inc. and a Seattle gun dealer, whose products were used during a white supremacist's 1999 shooting rampage at a Los Angeles-area Jewish center.

A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' panel ruled that a 2005 federal law shielding gun makers from lawsuits over criminal use of their products was constitutional.

On August 10, 1999, white supremacist Buford Furrow of Olympia, Washington state, wounded three little children, a teenager and an adult at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills. He later killed letter carrier Joseph S. Ileto. Authorities said he was carrying at least seven firearms, which he possessed illegally.

Furrow pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and is serving five life terms in prison.

Relatives of the victims sued Georgia-based Glock Inc., dealer RSR Wholesale Guns Seattle and the Chinese manufacturer China North Industries Corp., claiming they were liable for negligence. Their lawsuit alleges that the companies intentionally produce and sell more firearms than the legitimate market demands, believing that some distributors will sell to illegal buyers.

The lawsuit originated in state court and was moved to federal court before Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

A federal judge ruled that Glock and RSR were immune from prosecution but that the case against China North could proceed because it wasn't a federally licensed gun maker.

The plaintiffs and China North appealed, and Monday's 2-1 decision upheld the judge's ruling.

Victims' attorney Sayre Weaver said her clients have not decided whether to pursue the case.

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Last update - 13:18 13/05/2009

Obama declares May 'Jewish American Heritage Month'

U.S. president says Jewish American history 'demonstrates how America's diversity enriches us all.'

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared May Jewish American Heritage Month, saying that the "United States would not be the country we know without the achievements of Jewish Americans."

Obama called on all Americans to "commemorate the proud heritage of Jewish Americans with appropriate ceremonies and activities."

"Unyielding in the face of hardship and tenacious in following their dreams, Jewish Americans have surmounted the challenges that every immigrant group faces, and have made unparalleled contributions," Obama said.

He added, "Jewish American leaders have been essential to all branches and levels of government. Still more Jewish Americans have made selfless sacrifices in our Armed Forces."

Obama said that Jewish American community has set an example for all Americans. "They have demonstrated that Americans can choose to maintain cultural traditions while honoring the principles and beliefs that bind them together as American," said Obama. "Jewish American history demonstrates how America's diversity enriches and strengthens us all."

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Last update - 10:17 13/05/2009

Do Jews have a Jesus problem?

By Jay Michaelson, The Forward

The joke, if that's what it is, goes like this: "You'll have to forgive us Jews for being a little nervous. Two thousand years of Christian love have worn down our nerves."

That says it all, doesn't it? The scars of antisemitism and missionary activity, the pathos-drenched sense of humor, the contempt for Christianity - this is certainly how I regarded our local majority religion as I was growing up. When I was a child, Christianity was like the big, stupid bully: at once idiotic, and overwhelmingly powerful. Couldn't they see how ridiculous their religion was? A virgin birth? Santa Claus? An Easter Bunny? A messiah who got killed, but actually died for our sins? And yet, these were the people running our country, telling us which days we get off from school and which we don't, and playing their insidious music every winter.

If the books the Forward receives for review are any indication, I am not alone in my neurosis about Yeshu ben Yoseph. Though nothing, it seems, will match the never-ending torrent of books about the Holocaust, these past few years have seen a small mountain of Jesus books arrive on my desk, most of them not worthy of review. Screeds about how Jesus got Judaism wrong, or how Christians got Jesus wrong, or how much better we are than they are - these are books my younger self would have written.

Surely, some of the Jesus fad is due to the success of David Klinghoffer's 2005 book, "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus." (Answer: We're the chosen people - a nation, not universalists.) But I think a lot of it is also due to our increased confidence as an assimilated minority in the United States. Where once we could have been tortured or burned for not accepting Christ, now we can publish books criticizing him.

It was not always thus. Indeed, the texts discussed in the best book of the recent crop, Peter Schafer's "Jesus in the Talmud," were once considered so outrageous that they were self-censored from European editions of the Talmud. Not that the attempt succeeded: Christian authorities burned the Talmud anyway, and antisemitism continued unabated. But the censorship did succeed somewhat; these texts are practically unknown even today.

And they are still somewhat scandalous. What Schafer shows is that the rabbis of the Talmud knew the New Testament well enough to parody it and were concerned enough about the growth of the Jewish-Christian sect to condemn the testament. And they did so in unsparing terms.

The image of Jesus that one gets from the Talmud is that of an illicit, sex-crazed black magician who uses trickery to lead Israel astray. In BT Sanhedrin 103a, Jesus is depicted as a poor disciple who "spoiled his food," which Schafer speculates may be a euphemism for sexual misconduct: "to eat the dish" being a recognized Talmudic euphemism known for the sex act itself. A later emendation adds that he "practiced magic and led Israel astray." And the virgin birth is ridiculed as a cover-up of Jesus? true parentage: His mother was an "illicit woman" (another Talmudic locution), perhaps even a prostitute.

Strong stuff - no wonder they don't teach it in Sunday school. But fascinating, as well, as long as, of course, we don?t take it too seriously (which, doubtless, some Jews do). The texts Schafer adduces - all of them relatively late, dating to the third- or fourth-century C.E., suggesting a conscious effort to fight the upstart sect - show that the Talmudic rabbis did not reject Jesus for the noble reasons that Klinghoffer and his ilk suggest. At least according to these texts, they rejected him because they thought he was evil, or saw him as a threat.

The most notorious of all the "Jesus texts," however, is BT Sanhedrin 43a, which describes the halachic procedure of Jesus? trial and execution. This is notorious, of course, because for nearly 2,000 years, Christian authorities have been blaming the Jews for killing Jesus, even though the New Testament itself makes clear that it's the Romans who actually did the deed.

Shockingly, however, the Talmud does not shirk responsibility for Jesus? death. On the contrary, it says that he deserved it and that the Jews did it themselves. Jesus was, the text relates, a sorcerer, an idolater and a heretic who led Israel to idolatry. His conviction was entirely just, and his execution - stoning and then hanging - was carried out in strict accordance with rabbinic law.

Why would the Talmud make such a claim? Schafer speculates it is to undermine the Gospels' account and empower the rabbis. In the Gospels' account, the rabbis are tools, almost, of Rome. In the Talmud?s account, they are powerful - so powerful that they condemned the hero of the Christian sect to his brutal death. (Believe it or not, there are actually even more graphic texts, which Schafer includes in his book. Suffice to say, their gruesome account of hell puts even Dante to shame. But I'll leave that out of this family newspaper.)

What's fascinating about reading these texts together with Schafer's careful and thorough commentary is that the ambivalence about Jesus, which I experienced as a young man, seems to be already in place back in the fourth century. On the one hand, Jesus is beneath contempt. On the other, he is dangerously powerful. These texts were written before the church became the most powerful force on Earth, but they wouldn?t be out of place among the books I chose not to include here.

Indeed, I'm sure that there are some readers who may have preferred these comments not be published at all. The texts in Schafer's book are still dangerous. They still might incite violence against Jews. And they threaten decades of progress in Jewish-Christian relations.

One wonders when, if ever, we Jews will be able to heal from the trauma of Christian oppression and actually learn from, while still differentiating ourselves from, Christian teaching and tradition. Along my own spiritual path, I've been amazed at how much I learn from the teachings of other traditions - Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Sufism - yet how jittery I get when it comes to Christianity. Yes, like many Jews, I have an appreciation for the teachings of Jesus, and I even wrote my master's thesis on Paul and the Talmud. But this isn't enough. I want to understand Christ the way Christians do - not to become one of them, but in order to enrich my own religious life. I want to learn from them how to have a personal relationship with a personal, humanized, embodied God who cares, and who saves. I want to experience Jesus as a human being enlightened enough to see everyone as holy, even the impure, the leprous and the marginalized. And I want to follow his example, seeing all my fellow human beings and myself as sons and daughters of God.

Four years ago, I developed some of these thoughts in an essay in Zeek magazine. I playfully titled the piece "How I Finally Came To Accept Christ in My Heart," explaining the irony in the first paragraph. At a conference where the magazines were for sale, someone saw that title, took the entire stack of magazines and threw it on the floor, proceeding to scream at the bookseller for selling missionary trash.

Well, I guess you'll have to forgive us Jews for still being a little nervous...

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Last update - 03:47 13/05/2009

Leading U.S. rabbi defends Benedict's Yad Vashem speech

By Raphael Ahren, Haaretz Correspondent

A leading American rabbi and confidante of Pope Benedict XVI defended the pontiff for his speech Monday at Yad Vashem, saying that expectations were too high.

The pope's support and respect for the State of Israel overweighs any perceived flaws in his remarks, said Rabbi Arthur Schneier on Tuesday.

Schneier, of New York, is founder and president of the interfaith Appeal of Conscience Foundation.

Many Jewish officials in Israel and abroad had criticized Benedict's speech as "lukewarm" and "half-hearted."

"It would be a tragic mistake to get stuck on one speech," said Schneier. "We need allies, and time and time again - in his speech to the chief rabbis, in his remarks to the president of Israel - the pope keeps emphasizing the closeness [between Jews and Christians]. We need to focus on that, and on building on that visit. Would I have given a better speech? Yes, I would have. But that's not the end-all."

Schneier, who last year became the first American rabbi to host a pope at his synagogue, told Haaretz he can understand the disappointment.

"But my philosophy is not be paralyzed by setbacks," he said in Jerusalem a few hours after accompanying the pontiff to the Western Wall. "I look at the overall visit and not just at one stop. As important a stop [Yad Vashem] is - particularly for me as a Holocaust survivor - when you look at the whole visit you can conclude that some of the major missteps that have been anticipated so far have not occurred."

The pontiff had been criticized for failing to refer to his own past in Nazi Germany and to apologize for the Holocaust. Schneier, 79, however, pointed out that Benedict started his pilgrimage to the Holy Land by referring to the "inseparable bond between the Church and the Jewish people" during a speech at Mount Nebo.

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Last update - 12:01 12/05/2009

Timeline of the Demjanjuk case

By The Associated Press

A timeline of the charges, trials and attempted deportation of John Demjanjuk, the former auto worker accused of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

1920: Born in Ukraine

1942: Captured by German forces while serving in the Soviet Red Army.

1942-1945: Demjanjuk claims he was a POW held by German forces.

1948: Registers as a displaced person while still in Europe.

1952: Enters United States and claims to have spent much of World War II in a German prisoner of war camp.

1977: Identified by some survivors of Treblinka concentration camp as guard "Ivan The Terrible."

1981: loses U.S. Citizenship after federal court claims he lied about his World War II past.

1986: Extradited to Israel for trial over his alleged role at Treblinka.

1988: Convicted in Israel of being "Ivan the Terrible" and sentenced to death.

1993: Israel's Supreme Court overturns conviction after evidence from KGB files identifies another man as "Ivan the Terrible."

1998: Regains U.S. citizenship.

1999: U.S. Justice Dept. files civil complaint against Demjanjuk claiming he served as a guard at the Sobibor and Majdanek camps in occupied Poland and of being a member of an SS unit.

2002: Demjanjuk is stripped of his U.S. citizenship for second time.

2005: U.S. immigration judge says Demjanjuk can be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

March 2009: German court in Munich issues arrest warrant for Demjanjuk.

April 2009: Demjanjuk loses bid to have deportation halted, but appeals all the way to U.S. Supreme Court.

May 2009: Supreme Court judge decides not to hear appeal, clearing way for deportation to Germany.

May 12, 2009: Demjanjuk arrives in Germany to face charges

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Last update - 21:45 12/05/2009

Alleged Nazi guard Demjanjuk's lawyers appeal his arrest warrant

By News Agencies

Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk's lawyer filed a challenge Tuesday to the German arrest warrant that led to the 89-year-old's deportation, arguing that the evidence against him was not solid and Germany's jurisdiction was questionable.

Demjanjuk faces accusations of being accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews and others in 1943. He was transferred to a German prison Tuesday.

The retired Ohio autoworker arrived at Munich's airport from Cleveland at

about 9:15 A.M. local time aboard a private jet. The plane taxied directly into a hangar, accompanied by police vehicles and an ambulance.

From there he was transported by ambulance, under police escort, to a special medical unit of the Stadelheim prison, where he will be examined by a doctor and formally arrested.

Demjanjuk's transfer to Germany raises the prospect of the last major Nazi trial in Germany although the 89-year-old, one of the world's most wanted war crimes suspects, may yet be deemed unfit to stand trial.

The retired U.S. auto worker had fought his deportation for months but in the end, U.S. courts rejected his appeals. Demjanjuk, born in Ukraine, has denied any role in the Holocaust.

Demjanjuk was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed Monday evening for Germany, which wants to try him as an accessory to the murders of Jews and others at a Nazi death camp in World War II.

Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demjanjuk was on the plane and that its destination is Germany.

The deportation came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Demjanjuk's request to block deportation and about 3 1/2 years after he was last ordered deported.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yuk) is wanted on a Munich arrest warrant that accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The legal case spans three decades.

A German Justice Ministry spokesman, Ulrich Staudigl, said the retired autoworker was expected to be in Germany by Tuesday.

Demjanjuk denies Germany's accusations, saying he was held by the Germans as a Soviet prisoner of war and was never a camp guard. Demjanjuk's family fought deportation, arguing he is in poor health and might not survive the trans-Atlantic journey.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, a founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Demjanjuk deserves to be punished and that this will probably be the last trial of someone accused of Nazi war crimes.

"His work at the Sobibor death camp was to push men, women and children into the gas chamber," Hier said in a statement. "He had no mercy, no pity and no remorse for the families whose lives he was destroying."

The center was established to locate and help bring to justice Nazi war criminals.

The deportation capped a day in which Demjanjuk said goodbye to his family and was visited by two priests at his home in a Cleveland suburb.

He then slipped quietly into an ambulance parked in his driveway, his family members standing at the edge of the garage and holding up a floral-patterned bedsheet to block the view of reporters and photographers across the street.

Earlier Monday, his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said an appeal in a U.S. court would go ahead even if his father isn't in the country.

"Given the history of this case and not a shred of evidence that he ever hurt one person let alone murdered anyone anywhere, this is inhuman even if the courts have said it is lawful," Demjanjuk Jr. said.

Also Monday, a Berlin court rejected an appeal aimed at preventing deportation.

Once in Germany, Demjanjuk will be brought before a judge and formally charged. He will also be given the opportunity to make a statement to the court, in keeping with standard procedure, Staudigl said.

Demjanjuk is expected to be held in the medical unit of a Munich prison. The government has said preparations have been made at the facility to ensure he will receive appropriate care.

The case dates to 1977 when the Justice Department moved to revoke Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship, alleging he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard.

Demjanjuk had been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 based on U.S. Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

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Last update - 16:55 16/05/2009

Dershowitz: Prosecute Ahmadinejad over 'incitement to genocide'

By Haaretz Service

Leading American Jewish attorney and civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz on Friday called for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be prosecuted for "incitement to genocide."

Dershowitz presented his case in a post published Friday on the Weblog of Canadian newspaper the National Post.

Dershowitz, who is well-known as a defender of free speech, argued - using the example of Ahmadinejad - that incitement to genocide should be criminalized because it is an instruction rather than an idea to be debated.

"It is closely analogous to the incitements to genocide that have been punished in Rwanda," Dershowitz wrote of the Iranian president's continuous references to Israel's destruction.

Ahmadinejad has called for Israel's elimination in the past, although his exact remarks have been disputed. Some translators say he has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Others say a better translation would be vanish from the pages of time - implying Israel would disappear on its own rather than be destroyed.

"It is the equivalent of a military order given by a commander to his troops or by a mafia don to his soldiers," Dershowitz wrote in the blog post.

"It is to be followed without question or dissent. In this respect it is the antithesis of freedom of speech, the opposite of the marketplace of ideas. It closes off discussion, debate and dissent."

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Last update - 00:00 29/09/2008

Charge Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, say former U.S., Israeli envoys to UN

By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements professing a desire to "wipe Israel off the map" are sufficient to serve as the basis for charges of incitement to genocide, two prominent former diplomats from the United States and Israel said on Tuesday.

Dore Gold, Jerusalem's former envoy to the United Nations, and former U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke are among a group of scholars, lawmakers, and survivors of genocide from Rwanda and Sudan who gathered in Washington on Tuesday for a conference examining the plausibility of being the Iranian president before an international tribunal.

Gold submitted that Ahmadinejad's threats can't be dismissed as mere expressions of "dissatisfaction with the Israeli government and its policies."

"We're in the middle of a great struggle - over who he is and what his role is," Gold said. "He's planning to break bread with Quaker organizations, to meet with the press in his hotel, to become a legitimate leader. But if his words since his elections amount to crime under the anti-genocide convention, should he be viewed as a legitimate leader?" he asked.

The ambassador said the Iranian leader's statements violate the 1948 UN convention of the prevention and punishment of the crimes of genocide.

"When he talks about the decay of Israel, he has in mind the collapse of the Soviet Union, i.e. he just describes historical process," people say. "But [proclaiming that Israel must be wiped out of the face of the world] suggests we're not talking about the political theory. If the West will fail to respond to Iran's incitement to genocide, Iran will feel it can act. Deterring Iran now is vital, not only for the security of Israel, but of all of us."

"Words matter," Holbrooke said. "When people say: 'Don't pay too much attention, they don't mean it' - it reminds me of my grandfather in Hamburg, who read Mein Kampf, and he took it for real, but many other people didn't. Because everyone takes for granted Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel, people take for granted that it's kind of unique danger for Israel, because of the specific threats to another country."

"Divestment can only have a limited success," Gold said. "It's very much worth doing, but unless you put Iranians in a position that the South African government was in the eighties, it won't work. His talk amounts to a violation of genocide convention. The more we have voices around the world who agree with us, the more support we?ll have to this idea."

The group said Ahmadinejad's pronouncements are alarmingly similar to the coded statements of incitement that preceded the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis in 1994, which the international community failed to prevent.

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Last update - 01:59 14/12/2006

Netanyahu wants Iran president tried for genocide

By Mazal Mualem

Likud chair MK Benjamin Netanyahu has summoned about 70 foreign diplomats stationed in Israel to a meeting next Tuesday, at which he will urge them to end their complacency and join Israel in an effort to halt Iran's nuclear program, which he says is aimed at genocide of the Jews.

The meeting is to be the first event in an international public relations campaign. It will include a proposal to file a complaint in the International Court of Justice against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for war crimes, and his plans to commit genocide will be presented.

The initiative will be presented by MK Danny Naveh (Likud) and Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, both of whom flew to the U.S. this week for a series of meetings to promote the idea.

Netanyahu's independent campaign is expected to embarrass the Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry, since it expresses a public lack of faith in the state's public relations policy on the Iran issue.

In private conversations, Netanyahu has claimed that Israel's public relations policy has failed because it has not led to organized international action, such as significant economic sanctions, against Iran.

In the past several months, particularly during last summer's war in Lebanon, Netanyahu avoided blunt attacks against the government, preferring to adopt a responsible, statesmanlike image. Now, too, he is careful to avoid remarks that could rebrand him as a bible thumper, but he also knows that he will have to position himself as an alternative leader by making bold moves and exploiting his high public opinion marks. Next Tuesday's meeting is an expression of this strategy.

"We must cry Gevalt before the entire world," Netanyahu said recently. "In 1938, Hitler didn't say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide."

In his conversations, Netanyahu often complains about the lack of diplomatic and public relations initiatives to strengthen Israel's deterrence. "The biggest problem is that the Iranian program is progressing unheeded, with no supreme Israeli effort to stop it. All the options must be readied; this must be our greatest effort and we must not be surprised, but nothing is being done."

Netanyahu says Israel must get the Americans to take action, not just with words but through an act of Congress.

He also calls for lobbying European and Russian public opinion in order to push through economic sanctions, such as halting Iranian petroleum exports.

With regard to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu says, "There is a general sense of slack, as if there were no government. All previous prime ministers felt a supreme responsibility; they had an agenda. They were committed to the future of the State of Israel, with the exception of the current prime minister, who said the prime minister doesn't need an agenda. So why is he there? In my opinion, this is the first time that Israeli citizens have encountered a prime minister who is there simply because he is there."

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Last update - 17:27 15/05/2009

Pope: Jews were 'brutally exterminated' in Holocaust

By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

Pope Benedict XVI voiced sorrow at the 'extermination' of Jews in the Holocaust during a farewell ceremony Friday at Ben Gurion Airport marking the end of five-day visit to Israel.

The pope spoke of a visit years ago to a Nazi death camp, "where so many Jews - mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends - were brutally exterminated under a godless regime that propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred."

Benedict also referred to the subject during an address at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. In the speech, he eloquently spoke of the suffering of Holocaust victims but did not express remorse for the church's historic persecution of Jews, nor for what some believe to have been the church's passivity during the genocide or his own time as a member of the Hitler Youth.

He later drew fire over the perceived omissions, which led officials at the Yad Vashem memorial to take the exceptional step of openly criticizing the speech.

At the airport on Friday, the pope added: "That appalling chapter of history must never be forgotten or denied, those dark memories should strengthen our determination to draw closer to one another as branches of the same olive tree, nourished from the same roots and united in brotherly love."

President Shimon Peres was at the site to see Benedict off. He thanked the pope for his visit to the Holy Land, and applauded his remarks at Yad Vashem, which he said represented a welcome attack on Holocaust denial around the world.

On the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the pope said that during his visit to the holy land he had "witnessed the great efforts that both governments are making to securing their people's well being."

In the ceremony, also attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the pope reiterated his support for the Palestinian cause, saying that the "Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign state."

The pontiff expressed hopes that "the two-state solution will become a reality not a dream," and called for the end of the regional conflict.

"No more bloodshed, no more fighting, no more terrorism, no more war," he emotionally cried just before boarding the Rome-bound plane.

Earlier Friday, Pope Benedict XVI capped his Middle East visit by making a pilgrimage to a church revered as the site of Jesus' crucifixion and assuring his followers in the Holy Land that peace was still possible.

A traditional escort of men in black robes and red fezzes accompanied the

pontiff as he solemnly walked into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in

Jerusalem, rhythmically banging staffs on the ground to announce his approach.

Benedict knelt down and kissed the rectangular stone on which Jesus' body is believed to have been placed after the crucifixion. Then he entered the structure inside the church marking the site of Jesus' tomb and knelt inside alone for several minutes, hands clasped, as priests chanted nearby.

In a speech afterward, he told those gathered in the church not to lose hope - a central theme during a visit in which he addressed the Holocaust, Israeli-Palestinian politics and the shrinking number of Christians in the region.

"The Gospel reassures us that God can make all things new, that history need not be repeated, that memories can be healed, that the bitter fruits of recrimination and hostility can be overcome, and that a future of justice, peace, prosperity and cooperation can arise for every man and woman, for the whole human family, and in a special way for the people who dwell in this land so dear to the heart of the Savior," he said.

"With those words of encouragement," he said, "I conclude my pilgrimage to the holy places of our redemption and rebirth in Christ."

Thousands of soldiers and policemen were deployed Friday around Jerusalem's Old City for the pope's visit to the ancient church, which tradition holds marks the site of Jesus' crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

"On the last day of his visit the pope is coming to the most important place for us," said Father Bernt, a Catholic priest at the church. "This is the center of Christianity, so it's very special."

The pope is leaving the Holy Land having fulfilled his mission of reaching out to Jews and Muslims, but some are giving his five-day trip only mixed reviews.

During his visit, he led 50,000 worshippers in a jubilant Mass outside of

Nazareth, in an effort to rally his dwindling flock. He removed his shoes to enter Islam's third-holiest shrine, and he followed Jewish custom by placing a note bearing a prayer for peace in the cracks of the Western Wall.

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Last update - 08:22 14/05/2009

Pope: West Bank fence is a symbol of 'stalemate'

By News Agencies

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday branded the West Bank separation fence as a symbol of "stalemate" between Israel and the Palestinians, urging both sides to break a "spiral of violence."

"Towering over us, as we gather here this afternoon, is a stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Israelis and Palestinians seem to have reached - the wall," he said, standing by the fence at a refugee camp in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.

The Pontiff later told Palestinians that he hoped the barrier would be taken down.

"Although walls can be easily built, we all know that they do not last forever, they can be taken down," he said.

Stressing the need first to remove "the walls that we build around our hearts" and bring conflict to an end, he said: "My earnest wish for you, the people of Palestine, is that this will happen soon, and that you will at last be able to enjoy the peace, freedom and stability that have eluded you for so long."

Earlier in the day, the Pope called for a sovereign Palestinian homeland after arriving in Bethlehem at the start of a one-day visit to the West Bank.

"The Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders," said the Pope. He made the comments at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' presidential palace in Bethlehem.

Palestinians hope the pope's visit to the West Bank, and to the birthplace of Jesus in particular, will draw attention to their plight.

The German-born pope was welcomed to Bethlehem by Abbas on the third day of a visit to the Holy Land.

Security forces closed off many city streets and hundreds of people gathered outside the Church of the Nativity, the site revered as the birthplace of Jesus, in Manger Square where the pope was holding a morning mass.

Pope Benedict told Palestinians that he was praying for an end to the Israel-led blockade of the Gaza Strip.

"Please be assured of my solidarity with you in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead, and my prayers that the embargo will soon be lifted," the pontiff said.

Patriarch Fouad Twal, during a mass the pope attended in Jerusalem on Tuesday, reiterated the Palestinian people's aspirations for a "free and independent state."

The pope, on his arrival in Israel on Monday, also reaffirmed Vatican support for a Palestinian state, a concept new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reluctant to accept as a necessary outcome of negotiations.

Palestinians have set up a small, open-air theater beside a high concrete wall that forms part of the West Bank fence.

The pope will hold a mass at Nazareth in northern Israel, where Jesus grew up, on Thursday. The surrounding Galilee region is where most of the country's 154,000 Christians live and where he will meet Netanyahu.

He flies back to Rome on Friday.

During a special mass at the Gethsemane Church in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Benedict assured the thousands of believers present that he understood the "frustration, pain and suffering" the Israeli-Arab conflict has caused them. He also urged the relevant authorities to value and suppo

rt the Christian presence in the city.

At the sunlit afternoon mass for hundreds of worshippers at the Garden of Gethsemane, beneath the Mount of Olives and the city walls, he evoked the "universal vocation" of Jerusalem as the spiritual home of Jews, Muslims and Catholics.

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Last update - 13:02 14/05/2009

Chief Rabbi to Pope: Tell the world Jews belong in Israel

By Yair Ettinger, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

Israel's leading rabbis on Tuesday told Pope Benedict XVI that it was his duty to spread the message that the Jewish people belong in the Land of Israel.

"You represent a large nation of believers that knows what the Bible is, and it is your duty to pass on the message that the Jewish people deserve a renaissance, and a little respect - to live in this land," Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar told the pope.

The pope met with Amar and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger in Jerusalem on Tuesday, on the second day of his pilgrimage to Israel.

Benedict told the chief rabbis during the meeting that he is committed to reconciliation between Christian and Jews.

He said he has delivered a prayer to God to help enact the command that one love their neighbor as they do themselves.

Metzger told the pope that he regretted that such meetings had not been held earlier in history.

"I thought to myself, if only a historic meeting like this in which the head of the biggest religion in the world meets in Jerusalem with the heads of Judaism, if this had happened many years earlier, so much innocent blood could have been saved," Metzger said.

"So much senseless hatred could have been prevented in the world," he said.

The pope continued his historic pilgrimage through the Holy Land earlier Tuesday, visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

He recited a prayer in Latin, before placing a note in the cracks of the wall, as is the custom. The Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovich, also recited a prayer.

Earlier, Benedict visited the Temple Mount, where he shook hands with the mufti of Jerusalem and senior Islamic Waqf officials.

The German-born pope stood in prayer for several minutes at the Western Wall, a remnant of the Roman-era Temple complex that is Judaism's holiest place, after meeting the Grand Mufti, Palestinians' senior Muslim cleric, at the Dome of the Rock which dominates the Old City.

With the mufti, he recalled the common roots of all three monotheistic religions in the story of Abraham and Jerusalem. He placed a written prayer in the Western Wall, a traditional gesture, and then met Israel's two chief rabbis.

"Send your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family," the prayer said, according to text provided by the Vatican.

Palestinians later released balloons over Jerusalem's Old City in the colors of the Palestinian flag while the pope was at the Western Wall.

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Last update - 01:32 12/05/2009

Benedict and us / Speaking to his own flock

By Lily Galili

Those who were disappointed that the German-born pope, Benedict XVI, did not offer an explicit apology at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial yesterday for the Catholic Church's conduct during the Holocaust have only themselves to blame. Popes don't admit mistakes because they are infallible. But those who were expecting the head of the Vatican, who was once a member of the Hitler youth movement, to enter the Hall of Remembrance himself instead of sending a deputy were rightly disappointed, certainly after his peculiar decision to accept the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson back into the fold of the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict's declaration that the "Church feels deep compassion for the victims" of the Holocaust, as well as his denunciation of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, might have been considered brave steps a decade ago. But now, in the wake of the way his predecessor dealt with the subject, it seems too little, too late.

"I remember my Jewish friends and neighbors, some of whom perished, while others survived," Pope John Paul II said during his visit to Yad Vashem nine years ago. "I have come to Yad Vashem to pay homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially of their human dignity, ere murdered in the Holocaust."

He spoke of his personal experience from that period. On that occasion the tormented pope seemed to offer his personal sentiments to the victims. Pope Benedict, however, seems to prefer to keep his distance. Still, the visit yesterday by a pope, who 64 years ago briefly served in the Wehrmacht, to Yad Vashem where he laid a wreath, is significant.

It isn't his fault we were disappointed. We don't understand the Catholic Church and its dogma. At Yad Vashem yesterday he was not addressing the Jews. Like any leader he used words that would be understood by his support base, the Church's one billion adherents around the world. In that sense, John Paul II was different. He was a media superstar. Two weeks before his visit to Israel he made a sweeping apology in Rome for sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church throughout history. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, opposed the prayer at the time. An eyewitness told Haaretz that during the ceremony he seemed pale and tense. Once he became pope he began to see things differently, becoming more flexible. Considering his reputation as a conservative, his visit to Israel in itself is a big compromise.

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Last update - 16:36 16/05/2009

Election rival blasts Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial

By The Associated Press

A reformist challenger to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has criticized the hard-liner's denial of the Holocaust, saying it has served Israel's interests and pushed the country deeper into international isolation, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Moderate cleric Mahdi Karroubi is one of two reformist candidates hoping to unseat Ahmadinejad in the June 12 presidential election. The former parliament speaker has said he would pursue a foreign policy of detente with the West and wouldn't mind meeting President Barack Obama if it would help Iran's national interests.

"Ahmadinejad offered the greatest service to Israel by raising the Holocaust issue because the whole world stood to support Israel, Karroubi was quoted as saying by Etemad-e-Melli newspaper," which he controls.

The Iranian president has repeatedly claimed the Holocaust is a myth and even sponsored an international conference in 2006 to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place.

Ahmadinejad has also called for Israel's elimination, although his exact remarks have been disputed. Some translators say he has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Others say a better translation would be vanish from the pages of time - implying Israel would disappear on its own rather than be destroyed.

The leading reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has similarly slammed Ahmadinejad for waging a fierce rhetorical battle with the international community, leaving Iran with few friends to help protect its interests.

"Today, excluding a few friends we've had for a long time, we have no appropriate interaction with the international community and are subject to threats," Mousavi was quoted as saying by Aftab-e-Yazd newspaper.

Apart from Israel, Ahmadinejad's most intense fight with the international community has been over Iran's nuclear program. Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, says its nuclear efforts are peaceful and focused on producing electricity. But the U.S., Israel and many of their allies suspect the Iranians are determined to develop the capability to build atomic weapons.

Ahmadinejad's hard-line stance has prompted the United Nations Security Council to impose three rounds of economic sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or an atomic bomb.

Many reformists and conservatives have criticized the president for spending too much time slamming the U.S. and Israel and not enough trying to fix the economy, which suffers from high inflation and unemployment despite huge oil revenues.

Mousavi said Ahmadinejad ignored economists who warned that the president's plan to make direct cash contributions to the masses would worsen inflation and burn through oil revenues that the government relies on for 70 percent of its budget.

"When economic experts warned that liquidity resulting from oil revenues would cause problems, nobody heeded the warnings," Mousavi was quoted by the paper as saying.

Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 on a populist agenda promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty and tackle unemployment. The president has defended his cash distributions, saying they would create jobs. But Iran's unofficial unemployment rate tops 30 percent.

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Last update - 21:41 04/05/2009

Ahmadinejad cancels Latin America trip without explanation

By The Associated Press

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has canceled a trip to Latin America scheduled for this week, Iran's official state news agency reported on Monday.

Ahmadinejad was to leave Wednesday for visits in Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador, according to IRNA, which gave no reason for the cancellation.

The Iranian leader will travel on Tuesday to Syria, a country with which Tehran is closely linked.

News of Ahmadinejad's canceled trip comes after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the U.S. is working to improve relations with Latin America to counter Iran's growing influence there.

An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Monday dismissed those claims, saying all nations have the right to improve relations.

In recent years, Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chavez, both known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric, have boosted ties.

Israel had vocally opposed Ahmadinejad's planned visit to Brazil, and summoned that country's ambassador to Israel, Pedro Motta Pinto Coelho, to register a protest.

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said last week that Ahmadinejad would be welcomed despite Israel's protest.

"If we stop taking visitors because certain countries disagree with them, we would not be able to accept hardly anyone," O Globo quoted Amorim as saying.

But he also said that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will express his discontent with Ahmadinejad's description of Israel as a "cruel and racist" entity.

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Last update - 15:16 16/05/2009

Norway trade union: Boycott Israel if peace process fails

By Haaretz Service

Norway's largest labor union urged the Scandinavian country on Saturday to lead an international boycott of Israel if it did not reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, whose members constitute more than a third of the country's employees, said in a statement that both Israel and the Palestinians deserve to live in peace and security, and as long as this was not achieved, the Israeli government was to be held accountable.

The organization urged Israel to put an end to the "illegal occupation," respect the 1967 borders, halt the expansion of the settlements and remove the security barrier.

The UN should play a proactive role to this end, and if these efforts fail, the Norwegian government should lead an international campaign against the occupation of the Palestinian territories, the statement further said.

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Last update - 17:37 16/05/2009

Rival Palestinian factions resume unity talks in Cairo

By The Associated Press

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah began a fifth round of talks Saturday aimed at forming a deal to share power, the latest session in months of fruitless negotiations.

The key stumbling block in the Egyptian-mediated talks remains the political program of a unity government that would be in power until elections are held in January 2010.

The international community says it will only deal with a Palestinian government that recognizes Israel, a concession the Islamic militant Hamas is unwilling to make.

Hamas seized Gaza by force in June 2007, four months after its previous power-sharing deal with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement collapsed.

Each side set up its own government, Hamas in Gaza and Abbas in the West Bank.

The division has complicated Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and hindered the reconstruction of Gaza after Israel's devastating three-week offensive against the coastal strip's Hamas rulers in December and January.

Egyptian intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman, the top mediator in the talks, expects to receive a final response to an Egyptian compromise proposal, according to an Egyptian official close to the talks.

Under that proposal, Hamas would stay out of the transitional government, allowing the moderate Abbas to run it. In return, Hamas and other Palestinian factions would become part of an advisory committee that would be given a say in the government's decisions.

The Egyptian official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Hamas' Gaza strongman, Mahmoud Zahar, at the start of Saturday's session said the group was still studying the Egyptian proposal. He repeated the group's position that it will not be part of any government program that involves the recognition of Israel.

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Last update - 13:46 16/05/2009

Egypt partly opens Gaza borders for humanitarian cases

By DPA

Egypt on Saturday opened its borders with the Gaza Strip to allow the departure of a number of Palestinians traveling to Egypt for medical treatment, among other travelers, Hamas authorities said.

A statement by Hamas's interior ministry said that the crossing will remain open for two days, adding that only patients, students and holders of foreign passports and residence permits are allowed to leave.

Since 2007, when Hamas routed security forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and seized the coastal Strip, the border between Gaza and Egypt has only been intermittently open. The crossing is the Gaza Strip's only crossing that does not exit to Israel.

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Last update - 15:31 16/05/2009

Deputy FM: Assad just wants peace process, not peace

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon said Saturday that Syrian President Bashar Assad was only interested in conducting a peace process with Israel, instead of actually reaching a peace accord.

"The Syrian President fully realizes that the price of peace would be opening up to the West, which is a threat to the stability of his regime," said Ayalon during a lecture in Be'er Sheva.

"However, by engaging in a peace process, he believes he would be able to extricate Syria from the international isolation it's currently subject to."

Ayalon's comments came after Assad said Friday he could not set a date for resuming indirect peace talks with Israel because there was no one on the other side with whom to negotiate.

"We cannot talk about a date [for resuming the talks] because we don't have a partner," Assad said during a joint press conference with Turkish President Abdullah Gul in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

But he added that "Syria is keen about peace as much as it is keen about the return of its occupied territories." Assad was referring to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Syrian leader also said Israel's three-week-long offensive against Hamas in Gaza had prevented the Turkish-mediated talks from moving to a direct phase. The negotiations were formally suspended during the campaign, which halted in January.

Assad's Turkish counterpart, meanwhile, urged Israel on Friday to work toward resuming the peace talks, and said Ankara was ready to continue its role as a mediator between the two parties.

"Israel has to show clearly it is a partner," said Gul.

"We have heard Syria say it is ready to resume the peace talks from the point where they stopped with the previous [Israeli] government. We in Turkey are also ready," Gul added, speaking through a translator.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Russian journalists last week that Israel will not withdraw from the Golan because of its strategic military value.

Syrian officials have refrained from responding to Netanyahu's remarks. They also ignored statements last month by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that Israel would talk peace with Syria only if it did not set preconditions or ultimatums.

Netanyahu was involved in U.S.-supervised talks between Syria and Israel during his previous term as prime minister in the 1990s.

The talks, which lasted almost 10 years, collapsed in 2000 when Assad's father, the late President Hafez Assad, refused an Israeli offer to withdraw from the Golan but keep several hundred meters on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

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Last update - 01:47 16/05/2009

UN: Israel should reveal secret torture centers, if they exist

By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

The United Nations urged Israel to reveal secret torture facilities, if the country operated such centers, in a report published Friday by the world body's Committee Against Torture.

In reference to information provided by Israel that a detention center run by the Shin Bet security services known as "Facility 1391" was no longer operational, the committee wrote: "The State party should investigate and disclose the existence of any other such facility and the authority under which it has been established."

The committee also said it was concerned that the Supreme Court has found that Israeli authorities acted reasonably in not conducting investigations into allegations of torture and poor detention conditions in the facility, which Israel said was closed in 2006.

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Last update - 21:53 15/05/2009

Nasrallah: Hezbollah capable of running Lebanon if it wins election

By DPA

The Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah will be capable of "managing" Lebanon if it wins the country's upcoming elections, the movement's leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday.

"I tell those who are betting on the [Hezbollah-led] opposition's failure during elections: The resistance that defeated Israel can govern a country that is 100 times larger than Lebanon," said Nasrallah, speaking at a university graduation ceremony in Beirut.

The Hezbollah leader was apparently referring to the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which his militant organization sparked by kidnapping two Israel Defense Forces soldiers. Over 150 Israelis and one thousand Lebanese died during the 34-day conflict.

He added that if the opposition won a majority in June 7 parliamentary elections, it would not beg the current ruling majority "to be our partners in the governing process."

A tight race is expected between the opposition and the Western-backed majority, which Nasrallah accused of being behind the country's sectarian problems.

"We, Hezbollah, have always rejected the division of Lebanon and we shall always maintain this," he said.

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Last update - 21:26 15/05/2009

Egypt wants Obama to speak from historic Sunni mosque

By The Associated Press

When President Barack Obama addresses the Muslim world from Cairo next month, Egyptian officials hope he will choose 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar mosque, the heart of a revered institution for Islamic study, as his backdrop to convey U.S. respect for Islam.

The American Embassy in Cairo said no decision has been made yet on a venue for Obama's June 4 speech on U.S. relations with the Muslim world. But two Egyptian security officials said Thursday that an American advance team scouted five potential sites this week and narrowed it down to a short list of three - the Al-Azhar mosque and two other locations connected to it.

Al-Azhar is one of the oldest, most prestigious and most influential institutions of higher learning for Sunni Islam.

Delivering his message from the 10th-century mosque would convey the American president's regard for Islamic religion, culture and history, Al-Azhar officials said.

"Al-Azhar is a beacon of knowledge and moderation for the whole Islamic world," said Sheikh Fawzi Zefzaf, a prominent Al-Azhar scholar.

Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi welcomed Obama to use his podium. He said a speech from the mosque could open the door for a dialogue of reason between the world's cultures and civilizations to spread values of justice and good against hatred and violence.

The historic mosque was built in 972 by the Fatimids, Shiite Muslim rulers who had just conquered Egypt and built Cairo as their capital. Later Egypt came under Sunni rule, and the mosque became a prestigious center for the teaching of Islamic thought and philosophy.

Over the centuries, numerous rulers added to the sprawling building, which boasts five minarets and numerous domes, along with columned prayer halls and madrasas - or religious schools - around a central open courtyard. It lies in the heart of Islamic Cairo with its maze of small alleyways and bazaars.

The mosque holds a special place in Egypt's more recent political history as well, a symbol of resistance against Western imperialism. Nationalists launched marches and protests from the mosque during a 1919 revolt against British rule. In 1956, then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser gave a famed speech from Al-Azhar's pulpit rallying Egyptians against an invasion by Britain, France and Israel.

Today, Al-Azhar University has expanded into several modern campuses. It hosts thousands of students of Islamic theology every year, exports clergy throughout the Muslim world and the U.S. and its clerics issue edicts that carry a moral weight that influences well beyond the borders of Egypt. Within the country, Al-Azhar is empowered to censor books, movies and other media related to religion.

Since he took office in January, Obama has reached out repeatedly to the Islamic world. He is well liked in the Middle East, where people often mention enthusiastically that his father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Choosing Al-Azhar, a Sunni institution, could also help ease Sunni fears over U.S. efforts to open a dialogue with Shi'ite Iran. Predominantly Sunni U.S. allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of destabilizing the Middle East.

The Egyptian officials said in addition to the mosque, the advance team looked at a conference center and a meeting hall that are part of Al-Azhar but in other parts of Cairo. They said the team ruled out Cairo University because it would have disrupted year-end exams, and Cairo Convention Hall which was deemed too shabby.

American Embassy spokeswoman Margaret White said there has been no decision yet on the venue.

Among the myriad security considerations if Obama speaks from the mosque are the problems posed by the thousands of shoes that would have to be checked at the door in accordance with Muslim tradition, the Egyptian security officials said.

"First, there is the problem of where to put them all. But the bigger concern is they could provide cover for bombs," said the two officials from the president's office and the Ministry of Interior who are responsible for the security for visiting foreign dignitaries. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

Worshippers and other visitors traditionally remove their shoes before going into mosques and place them on a rack outside.

Al-Azhar mosque holds about 1,000 people. But normally, worshippers can wrap them in plastic bags and take them inside or leave them on trucks outside. However during an Obama speech, the audience would be barred from carrying bags inside for security reasons.

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Last update - 06:03 10/05/2009

Muslim Brotherhood: Obama's Egypt trip 'useless'

By The Associated Press

Egypt's most powerful opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, on Saturday called President Barack Obama's upcoming trip to Egypt useless unless the U.S. shows dramatic change in its policies toward Arab and Islamic countries.

The White House on Friday announced that Obama would deliver a speech in Egypt on U.S. relations with the Muslim world on June 4 as he seeks to repair damaged ties between America and Islamic countries.

But the Brotherhood's deputy leader, Mohammed Habib, said he was skeptical about Obama's intentions, according to comments posted on the group's Web site.

"The trip will be useless unless it is preceded by real change in the policies of the U.S. administration toward the Arab and Islamic world," Habib said.

"The U.S. administration is attempting to recruit all the Arab states... to implement its permanent agenda that favors the Zionist entity," he added, "referring to the United States' close ties to Israel."

In recent years, Egypt has cracked down on the hard-line Islamic group, jailing hundreds of its members and prohibiting it from officially taking part in political activities.

Though the Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, its members continue to operate hospitals, schools and other charities and has considerable sway among many of the country's 76 million people. Its lawmakers, who run as independents, hold 88 seats in Egypt's 454-seat parliament.

It also has close ties to the militant Hamas, which began as an offshoot of the Brotherhood in the 1970s and now controls the Gaza Strip.

In late December, Israel launched a three-week offensive on Gaza that killed about 1,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. Israel, which says the death toll was lower, launched the attack in response to militant rocket fire, but the destruction in the coastal strip caused outrage among many Arabs.

The Obama administration has refused any dealings with Hamas but has reached out to U.S. adversaries Syria and Iran, which were isolated by former President George W. Bush.

Obama, whose father was a Muslim from Kenya, said in Turkey last month that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.

In his inaugural address in January, he told the Muslim world we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist, and he gave his first televised interview as president to the Arabic satellite TV station Al-Arabiya.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday that Obama chose Egypt because it in many ways represents the heart of the Arab world.

While the Brotherhood was critical of Obama's decision, Egypt's state-run media praised it.

Pictures of Obama and President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country since 1981, were splashed on the front page of the daily newspaper Al-Gomhoria. In the front-page story, the paper's editor-in-chief said Obama's choice to speak in Egypt affirms that Washington is opening a new page with Arabs and Muslims.

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Last update - 06:03 10/05/2009

Muslim Brotherhood: Obama's Egypt trip 'useless'

By The Associated Press

Egypt's most powerful opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, on Saturday called President Barack Obama's upcoming trip to Egypt useless unless the U.S. shows dramatic change in its policies toward Arab and Islamic countries.

The White House on Friday announced that Obama would deliver a speech in Egypt on U.S. relations with the Muslim world on June 4 as he seeks to repair damaged ties between America and Islamic countries.

But the Brotherhood's deputy leader, Mohammed Habib, said he was skeptical about Obama's intentions, according to comments posted on the group's Web site.

"The trip will be useless unless it is preceded by real change in the policies of the U.S. administration toward the Arab and Islamic world," Habib said.

"The U.S. administration is attempting to recruit all the Arab states... to implement its permanent agenda that favors the Zionist entity," he added, "referring to the United States' close ties to Israel."

In recent years, Egypt has cracked down on the hard-line Islamic group, jailing hundreds of its members and prohibiting it from officially taking part in political activities.

Though the Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, its members continue to operate hospitals, schools and other charities and has considerable sway among many of the country's 76 million people. Its lawmakers, who run as independents, hold 88 seats in Egypt's 454-seat parliament.

It also has close ties to the militant Hamas, which began as an offshoot of the Brotherhood in the 1970s and now controls the Gaza Strip.

In late December, Israel launched a three-week offensive on Gaza that killed about 1,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. Israel, which says the death toll was lower, launched the attack in response to militant rocket fire, but the destruction in the coastal strip caused outrage among many Arabs.

The Obama administration has refused any dealings with Hamas but has reached out to U.S. adversaries Syria and Iran, which were isolated by former President George W. Bush.

Obama, whose father was a Muslim from Kenya, said in Turkey last month that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.

In his inaugural address in January, he told the Muslim world we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist, and he gave his first televised interview as president to the Arabic satellite TV station Al-Arabiya.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday that Obama chose Egypt because it in many ways represents the heart of the Arab world.

While the Brotherhood was critical of Obama's decision, Egypt's state-run media praised it.

Pictures of Obama and President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country since 1981, were splashed on the front page of the daily newspaper Al-Gomhoria. In the front-page story, the paper's editor-in-chief said Obama's choice to speak in Egypt affirms that Washington is opening a new page with Arabs and Muslims.

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Last update - 07:51 09/05/2009

Obama to deliver speech to Muslim world in June

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has pledged to rebuild U.S. relations with the Muslim world, will give a key speech on the issue in Egypt on June 4, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday.

Many Arab and Muslim nations were angered by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Bush's initial reluctance to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Obama's Egypt trip fulfills a promise he made during his presidential campaign to give a major address to Muslims from a Muslim capital during the first few months in office.

The Muslim world will be watching to see his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most Muslims believed Bush's policies toward the region were biased in favor of Israel.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday the speech would be delivered in Egypt on June 4 but did not say whether it would be in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

The country has been a key partner for Washington in decades of efforts to secure Middle East peace and is one of the biggest recipients of U.S. military and economic aid.

But the choice of Egypt, which has a poor human rights record, could potentially overshadow the substance of Obama's speech, and Gibbs found himself on the defensive over the issue at a White House news conference.

"It is a country that in many ways represents the heart of the Arab world," Gibbs said.

"The scope of the speech, the desire for the president to speak [to the Muslim world], is bigger than where the speech was going to be given or who's the leadership of the country where the speech is going to be given," he said.

Egypt's ambassador to the United States, Sameh Shoukry, said his country offered Obama a good venue because of its large population, intellectual traditions and "values of moderate Islam."

"The true nature of Islam lies in its moderate heart, not at its radical fringes. Egypt is very hopeful that President Obama's speech will mark a watershed in America's relations with the Muslim world," Shoukry said in a statement.

"It is important that America's relations with the Muslim world be based on mutual respect and understanding," he added. "Egypt stands ready to work with President Obama and his administration toward that objective, in accordance with our long-standing friendship."

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a major policy speech in Egypt in 2005 at a time when U.S. popularity was seriously dented by the Iraq war.

Rice's speech was part of the Bush administration's "democracy agenda." She urged reforms across the region, specifically targeting her host, which drew anger from Cairo.

However, the new U.S. administration has dropped the previous government's focus on building democracy and Obama's speech will likely be more conciliatory

Obama reached out to Arabs and Muslims in a speech in the Turkish capital Ankara in April, his first visit as president to a predominantly Islamic nation.

In that speech, he said the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam, and also spoke of the Arab-Israeli peace process, saying he will actively pursue the goal of creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Obama will make the speech a day before visiting the German city of Dresden and the Buchenwald concentration camp, Gibbs said.

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Last update - 14:31 13/04/2009

Peres: Clash between Iran, Sunni Arabs is inevitable

By Haaretz Service

President Shimon Peres said on Monday that a clash between Iran and the Sunni nations of the Arab world was "inevitable."

"The collision between the Middle East, which is Sunni Arab, and the Iranian minority that seeks to take it over, is inevitable," said Peres.

The president's comments came amid a diplomatic spat between Egypt and Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. Iran was reportedly behind the plotting of attacks against Egyptian targets by a group of alleged Hezbollah agents Egypt arrested last week.

Peres added: "Sooner or later, the world will discover that Iran has the aspiration to take over the Middle East and that it posses colonial ambitions."

He made the comments after meeting with Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yona Metzger.

Earlier Monday, Peres told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday that Israel hoped every nation in the Middle East would attain freedom.

"The people of Israel want peace," Peres told the Palestinian leader by phone. "On the eve of the festival of Pesach, we are all praying for peace and freedom for every people in the region, and one must not lose hope on the way to peace."

Pesach, or Passover, is a Jewish holiday commemorating the Israelites' escape from enslavement in Egypt; as such, it is also known as the "Festival of Freedom."

Abbas, who called Peres, said: "I want to wish you and the people of Israel a happy Pesach holiday."

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Abbas that he planned to cooperate with him in order to advance mutual peace efforts.

Abbas has recently said the new Israeli government would have to accept the creation of a Palestinian state, stop construction in settlements and remove West Bank roadblocks before the Palestinian Authority could resume peace negotiations.

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Last update - 00:40 16/05/2009

U.S. Senator Kerry: Chances for two-state solution dwindling

By News Agencies

U.S. Senator John Kerry told an economic forum on Friday he believed the window of opportunity for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was closing.

"It's closing for a number of reasons - crushed aspirations, demographics, realities on the ground," the Massachusetts Democrat, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

Kerry's comments came amid mounting international pressure on Israel to accept the two-state solution, a step Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reluctant to take.

Earlier Friday, Jordan's King Abdullah II used his speech at the forum to push the idea of expanding an Arab initiative for peace with Israel to include the entire Muslim world.

"The Arab peace initiative has offered Israel a place in the neighborhood and more - acceptance by 57 nations, the one-third of the UN members that do not recognize Israel," King Abdullah told a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.

"This is true security - security that barriers and armed forces cannot bring," he said.

The king spoke a day after he pressed Netanyahu to immediately commit to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

U.S. President Barack Obama is due to address the region in a speech in Cairo next month and foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference are due to meet in Syria on May 23.

An Arab peace initiative, backed by leading U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, offers Israel normal relations with the 22 countries of the Arab League in return for returning lands to Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians.

Israel has reacted coldly to the plan, citing concerns over the return of Palestinian refugees.

Among Arab states, only Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania have diplomatic relations with Israel. Most Muslim countries avoid political, economic ties and even diplomatic ties.

The Jordanian monarch, who met Obama in Washington last month, said Obama was committed to seeing a Palestinian state.

"I was encouraged by the president's commitment to the two-state solution," he said. "I was encouraged that in all my conversations in Washington, it was clear that people know - inaction is not an option."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat later said he hopes Netanyahu will heed calls to endorse a two-state solution.

"I hope the king's words will not fall on deaf ears," Erekat said.

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Last update - 13:42 15/05/2009

'Israel's PR appeal isn't lost, it just needs a new label'

By Aluf Benn and Barak Ravid

The recent changing of the guard in Jerusalem, and the introduction of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led government, has also brought about retirement for Israel's longest-running ministerial director.

Although Aharon Abramovich kept a low profile in the seven and a half years he ran the justice and foreign bureaus, he had a significant role in deciding on and executing some of the country's most important diplomatic and security events: the Disengagement from Gaza, Olmert's defunct Convergence Plan, the Second Lebanon War, the U.S.-sponsored Annapolis peace conference, and the IDF incursion into Gaza, also known as Operation Cast Lead.

Abramovich sat down with Haaretz after his retirement, and dished out some thoughts on how Israel might improve its face abroad.

According to Abramovich, the first step for the newly instated government mis to adhere to the two-state solution.

"We're not improving our state of affairs by avoiding a solution," Abramovich said. "The world is invested in the Palestinian story day and night. There has not been a single official visiting from abroad who has not raised the Palestinian issue, be they from Europe, Asia or the U.S."

"The world expects us to reach a compromise and an agreement with the Palestinians. It has been decades since negotiations began, and the issue was never taken off our agenda. And if it is taken off, it would not be in our interest, but the other around," Abramovich added.

"Say we're allowed to rule the Palestinians for another few decades. That is not in our interest, even if the world complies. They'll say 'We get it, Israel isn't going out of there so let's discuss the alternatives including granting voting rights [to Palestinians], and a country other than a Jewish one.' That's the danger."

The reality of a Jewish democratic state

Abramovich, 58, went through a difficult personal transformation before he recognized the importance of land partition and the foundation of a Palestinian State.

He was raised by Etzel fighters: his grandfather was one of the organization's founders; his uncle took part in the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, and was killed in the operation; and his father participated in the organization's first operational action, was exiled by British authorities to Kenya and Eritrea and escaped captivity. His mother was part of the King David operation's auxiliary unit.

"Two banks hath the Jordan River' wasn't only sung in my house then, it's still sung today," he said.

"At first, as a young man, I believed in those ideals, and even today I consider then impossible dreams. In the reality of a Jewish and democratic Israel those dreams had to be discarded."

The ideological change began during the Yom Kippur War, in which he served as an artillery officer and took part in the shelling of Damascus.

"The war represented a departure since it made it clear that it would be difficult to achieve the Greater Israel ideal if we want to remain a democracy," he said.

"It continued with coming to terms with the peace agreement which Menachem Begin signed with Egypt."

He was recruited to governmental service by former minister Meir Sheetrit, who knew him from their joint work in the Jewish Agency. Abramovich was then appointed director of the Justice Ministry in Ariel Sharon's first government in 2001.

He went on to work under ministers Tommy Lapid and Tzipi Livni, with whom he also moved to the Foreign Ministry. The two had never met, but the common "fighting families" background brought them together.

"Anyone who grew up in an Etzel fighters' family has a common identity. It's a unique and worthy bunch, very committed to the state," he said.

Both sides will concede

And so the children of Etzel fighters, Livni and Abramovich, found themselves leading negotiations with the Palestinians geared at a permanent peace treaty and land division.

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert also ran parallel talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Although no agreement was reached during those negotiations, Abramovich was left with an optimistic conclusion: "There was a sense that both sides were interested in making concessions. It wasn't only Israel that was yielding."

Where did you achieve progress?

"Some progress was made with regard to borders, security issues and refugees. There was no progress in regard to Jerusalem. I can assert clearly that there were no talks concerning Jerusalem," he said.

Do the Palestinians you were dealing with really accept the notion of a division based on the 1967 borders, or is it all just smoke and mirrors, as the right-wing claim?

"We negotiated with serious people who would like to see an independent Palestinian state and understand that it will be established in borders that even narrower than those of 1967, and they accept that concept. They also had interests to protect, and their desire to reach a compromise was just as powerful as ours."

So, where's the problem?

"Conceding borders and settlements is very difficult for Jews and Zionists. Regarding security, any compromise that represents less than what we have today is difficult. Issues such as water and aerial control can also immediately affect the quality of life and security of Israeli citizens."

"But Jerusalem is the most contested issue. We didn't discuss it with the Palestinians, and I'm comfortable for not discussing it, since I don?t know if I could have handled it emotionally. My family came here in the 19th century. My father's underground name was 'Yerushalmi' [Jerusalemite]. My grandfather had the fact that he never left Jerusalem inscribed on his grave. I think that's the most difficult issue, one which I do not have an answer for."

And for the Palestinians?

I think for them the refugees represent a more significant national emblem."

Worried about Lieberman

Abramovich said that negotiations were held based on the assumption that an agreement would end conflicts and annul any future disputes. He affirmed that Israel did in fact ask the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state prior to the Annapolis peace conference, a request denied and which was subsequently never raised again. Incoming Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's statement saying Annapolis understandings are no longer relevant to the new government.

"Lieberman said that he supported the Road Map. The Road Map includes discussing Jerusalem and any of the other issues required to reach a Palestinian state. Lieberman said that he was for two-states, but that the current vehicles to achieve a solution had not worked and new ones new to be considered. I think the old vehicles are still relevant. He may return to them after trying, or he may not," he said.

Abramovich was first exposed to the diplomatic issues during the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza, during which he was in charge of talks with evacuees and organizing the 'Pinui Pitzui' [Evacuation-Compensation] Act.

He says that already in the their first meeting, the Gush Katif residents had a document, prepared years ago with the aid of attorneys and accountants, which was to serve as a base for compensation calculations.

He is at peace with the evacuation of the Gaza settlements but said that, in hindsight, things should have been dealt with differently, and that Israel should not have ceded control on Philadelphi Route and should not have evacuated the settlements on the strip's northern border, both as a result of security concerns as well as so not to set a precedent of going back to the 1967 borderlines.

Working on the Disengagement brought Abramovich closer to then prime minister Ariel Sharon. Shortly before falling ill, Sharon put Abramovich in charge or examining the possibility of another unilateral withdrawal in the West Bank, what Olmert later dubbed the Convergence Plan. Sharon never had the chance to listen to the team's conclusions, which were given to Olmert just before the Second Lebanon War.

According to Abramovich, the Convergence report served as the base for United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War. The Convergence team looked into the possibility of positioning a multinational task force in the West Bank, and so Livni and Abramovich were first exposed to the idea which was later brought up as a possible exit strategy to the fighting in northern Israel.

The Foreign Ministry's proposals, which were being prepared as early as in war's second day, were ultimately realized in the Security Council's resolution. Both the war and the subsequent Winograd Commission report solidified the Foreign Ministry's position.

"I was at every place I thought I needed to be during Operation Cast Lead, in the most sensitive discussions and briefings," he said. It is his opinion that the Foreign Ministry should hold on to those achievements.

Abramovich's lesson from the war in Gaza earlier this year is that "The use of power is something which needs to be improved, the tools that are used in military campaigns."

"I don't know of any systems today that do not affect the civilian population, and in these kinds of systems the question should be raised as to what implements are used. There's a need to examine how these implements influence media concerns, how they influence the willingness of the international community to advance resolutions during fighting, and how they influence the various post-war investigations."

Is there a solution for Israel's media woes?

"I don't accept the axiom that we are not doing well. With Gaza, the world understood that Israel cannot stand for its citizens coming under fire. It happened as a result of years of diplomatic and media efforts. All in all, if you look at the broad spectrum of the diplomatic community, our stance among Western countries isn't too bad."

"There's the issue of addressing the general public. Over the years here in Israel, we've tried to reason with and convince everyone that when you see a newspaper picture with a child and a tank, that the tank is justified, because we are besieged and they are using children. But it's almost impossible to convince anyone that the tank is justified."

"That's where the idea of changing the label of Israel abroad. It's a notion that has yet to be executed, and one which I hope will be advanced by the next government. Israel needs to be identified as a living being, effervescent and breathing, and which, when aggravated, acts. We polled around the world about how we appear to people with no knowledge of the conflict."

"They asked random focus groups about their [conception of] various countries, and what they associate with them. When asked about Italy, people answered 'good wine, beautiful women, antiques.' When asked to draw an Italian house, they drew a garden or a backyard. When they're asked about Israel there's always silence, and no one says anything. The house holds only men, there's a security fence and cameras, and no vegetation. That's how the non-anti-Israel American sees an Israeli house, and that has to change."

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Last update - 15:40 16/05/2009

Why are British MPs courting cowardly Hamas?

By Max Julius, Haaretz Correspondent

There is something so distinctly British about the overtures that some of the United Kingdom's lawmakers have been making to Hamas of late. The visit to the Islamist group in Damascus, the letters of sympathy in the British press, Khaled Meshal's invitation to give a video address to parliamentarians; all these moves smack of a kind of an old-school colonial refusal to be scared by the natives coupled with a bloodyminded desire to patronize them.

Many Israelis are gripped by fear in the face of Hamas' Jew-hating rants and maximalist demands; they are roused to defiance by the group's cross-border provocations and terrorist outrages.

But for a small yet vocal number of British MPs, these things only add to the Palestinian militant organization's allure. The anti-Semitism is taken as a sign of Hamas' authenticity as a real Third World group; after all, who else but "noble savages" could be uneducated enough to not know that the Nazis have made the ancient hatred passé? Hamas' murderous attacks on Israeli civilians and brutal oppression of its own population are likewise winked at as the inevitable behavior of unruly Oriental masses.

These modern-day British imperialists, the vast majority of whom are on the left, by the way, see Palestinian terror as a sort of ineffectual temper-tantrum; much as their forebears in African and the subcontinent saw their subjects' occasional acts of hostility toward them as childlike bouts of rage. The fact that Hamas' plots are so regularly thwarted by Israel, which often responds with far greater force, only goes to further the sense these Britons have of the group as something that only seems malignant to those without a true understanding of the Arab: Their poor American cousins and, of course, the hysterical, persecution-obsessed Eastern European Jews who now call themselves Israelis.

A good example of this is the recent hostilities in Gaza. Hamas sparked the three-week war, in which over a thousand Gazans and thirteen Israelis were killed, with a spate of rocket barrages on Israel's South. When Israel Defense Forces ground troops entered the Strip they encountered surprising light opposition, despite the group's violent bluster and bombast. Hamas' leadership and top militants instead apparently chose to sit the war out, concealing themselves in bunkers and hospitals while untrained gunmen were left to fend off the attack. Who else but children would trigger such a calamity - in which over a thousand Palestinians were killed as opposed to 13 Israelis - and then shy away from it, doing the adult equivalent of hiding under the bed. George Galloway reaching out to Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, and Clare Short doing the same to Khaled Meshal in Damascus are the political equivalent of giving those naughty kids a big hug.

For these neo-colonialists, Hamas' very cowardice is proof of its justice. A British notion of fairness spurs the denunciations of the "disproportionality" of Israel's response (taking the threats and taunts of these non-European peoples literally shows very bad form) hence the endless clamoring for war crimes tribunals into the Gaza conflict. Yes, Israel must investigate any alleged wrongdoings by the IDF; but it cannot ignore attacks on its citizens and attempts to undermine its sovereignty.

All Israel can really do is just shrug off the criticism of these shrill voices from within its erstwhile imperial ruler. Let the champagne-sipping lawmakers in London tut to their hearts' content when they hear that Israeli commandos killed Gaza militants planning to kidnap another soldier, or that an Israel Air Force drone blew up a rocket squad; at least the coffee drinkers in Tel Aviv and Sderot will be able to sleep a little easier.

Max Julius is a writer and editor at Haaretz.com

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Last update - 05:56 12/03/2009

British MP Galloway secretly meets with Haniyeh in Gaza

By The Associated Press

British lawmaker George Galloway held a meeting Wednesday with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh at an undisclosed location.

Haniyeh has kept out of sight since Israel launched a three-week offensive against Hamas last December in Gaza.

Haniyeh's office said the meeting took place on Tuesday. It released a picture of the two men embracing and said Galloway was awarded an honorary Palestinian passport.

Galloway left Gaza on Wednesday through the Egyptian border. Galloway led a delegation that he said delivered some $1.1 million of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Among those traveling with Galloway was Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of international Mideast envoy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A Hamas official on Monday hailed Galloway as a "hero" upon the lawmaker's arrival in Gaza.

Galloway entered Gaza from Egypt along with about 50 British volunteers and 100 vehicles carrying aid.

Receiving the activists, Ahmed Kurd, Hamas' minister of social affairs, thanked Galloway for the "noble goodwill gesture" and called the lawmaker a "hero."

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Last update - 09:13 15/05/2009

U.S. orders PA to pay $116 million to family of terror victims

By The Associated Press

The Palestine Liberation Organization and its governmental entity cannot overturn a court judgment forcing them to pay more than $116 million for a Hamas terror attack that killed a U.S. citizen and his wife, a federal judge has ruled.

The case is among a handful in the country filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991, which seeks to hold terrorist organizations responsible for the killings of American citizens.

In a ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lagueux rejected a request from the Palestinian defendants asking they not be held responsible for the 1996 shooting deaths of Yaron Ungar and his Israeli wife, Efrat, near the West Bank.

The judge, who first ordered the Palestinian defendants to pay in 2004, blamed their loss on a legal strategy set by their late leader Yasser Arafat, who refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the U.S. court.

These choices were the intentional, deliberate and binding decisions made by the PA's dictatorial leader, the judge wrote. Defendants must now accept the consequences of these decisions.

Legal proceedings are under way in the United States, Israel and other

countries to take money from the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, said David Strachman, an attorney for the estate of the Ungars, who had two children. Only a modest sum has been collected so far, he said, declining to be more specific.

Judge Lagueux confirmed once again their culpability and their obligation to pay to the Ungar orphans and their family, he said.

It was unclear Thursday if the PLO and Palestinian Authority would appeal, said Deming Sherman, an attorney representing them. He declined to comment further on the case.

The lawsuit seeks compensation for a fatal attack on June 9, 1996, near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh.

Ungar and his wife were driving home when another vehicle driven by three

Hamas gunmen pulled alongside them and opened fire. The couple were killed, but their 9-month-old son survived; another son was not in the car.

The defendants accused Hamas, a Palestinian militant group considered by the European Union and the United States to be a terrorist organization, of staging the attack to disrupt peace negotiations the Palestinian Authority was carrying out with the Israeli and U.S. governments.

The judge previously ordered that Hamas must pay more than $116 million for its role in the attack. Hamas has never hired a lawyer or contested the case.

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Last update - 03:33 15/05/2009

Blair to Congress: No alternative to two-state solution

By The Associated Press

A self-described optimist, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Congress on Thursday there is no workable alternative to a two-state solution to the long and bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and both sides are in favor of it.

"But in practice, they doubt it can happen," Blair told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"The opportunity is there, said Blair," who is the international negotiator for the Mideast on behalf of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia. "But it won't remain if not seized. As President Obama has recognized, this is the right time to seize it."

"The best way to go," he said, "is to try to make it clear to the Palestinians that negotiations will result in genuine statehood and to the Israelis that there can be an agreed program for reform of the Palestinian security sector."

On the Israeli side, he said, "Israel will not agree to a Palestinian state unless it knows its neighbor will be secure, stable and well governed."

Next week, President Barack Obama will immerse himself in trying to point Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Netanyahu is reluctant, on the grounds Israel cannot be sure of an end to violence. Abbas is reluctant to negotiate for an agreement with the Israeli leader until he agrees to freeze construction of Jewish homes on territory occupied by Palestinians.

But, differences aside, Blair said the time for peacemaking is opportune, with the Arab countries agreeing to recognize Israel, provided it agrees to a Palestinian state that includes all the land captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

Blair urged Obama to push quickly for negotiations, provided it clearly points to genuine Palestinian statehood.

Members of the Senate panel appeared to agree there was no alternative to negotiations.

"We all understand," said the committee chairman, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, "that peace will not come to the Middle East quickly or easily."

"But," Kerry said, "I share Mr. Blair's optimism that this moment presents an opportunity we cannot afford to miss."

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Last update - 09:32 15/05/2009

Israel: U.S. will know before any Iran strike

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

Israel has acceded to American demands by pledging to coordinate its moves on Iran with Washington and not surprise the United States with military action.

During a trip to Jerusalem earlier this week, CIA chief Leon Panetta informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that U.S. President Barack Obama demanded that Israel not launch a surprise attack on Iran. The message expressed concern that Israel would cause an escalation in the region and undermine Obama's efforts to improve relations with Tehran.

However, the content was nothing new: The Bush administration also sent tough messages to Jerusalem a year ago, including a demand that it not strike Iran. Israeli officials believe that U.S. foreign policy professionals are vehemently opposed to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, so this position was transmitted from the previous administration to the present one.

The U.S. expects Israel to coordinate its military actions with Washington, a condition to which Jerusalem has agreed due to its dependence on U.S. aid. Senior officials in the Bush administration testified to Congress that Israel had consulted them before deciding on its 2007 air strike on an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor. They said Israel had explained that it considered the Syrian project an existential threat and therefore had to act.

In his first trip to Israel as CIA chief, about three weeks ago, Panetta met with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Mossad chief Meir Dagan. Panetta was White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton in 1994-97. In this capacity, he and his president weathered a stormy phase of the peace process, the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres' brief term of office and the advent of the first Netanyahu government. During those years, Clinton visited Israel three times, so Panetta got to know the Israeli leadership.

In the Senate confirmation hearing for his appointment as CIA chief, Panetta said he has no doubt Iran is working toward nuclear weapons capability. Since taking office, Panetta has also visited India and Pakistan, due to the serious domestic crisis in Islamabad and the growing threat to its regime.

The Iranian threat will play a central role in Netanyahu's talks with Obama, Congress and senior U.S. officials during his visit to Washington next week. After the premier returns, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will head to Washington for his first visit. Lieberman will head the strategic dialogue between the U.S. and Israel, which will focus on Iran.

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Last update - 23:51 14/05/2009

Obama warns Netanyahu: Don't surprise me with Iran strike

By Aluf Benn and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondents

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu's envoy visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.

The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute.

Obama did not wait for his White House meeting with Netanyahu, scheduled for next Monday, to deliver his message, but rather sent it ahead of time with his envoy.

It may be assumed that Obama is disturbed by the positions Netanyahu expressed before his election vis-a-vis Tehran - for example, Netanyahu's statement that "If elected I pledge that Iran will not attain nuclear arms, and that includes whatever is necessary for this statement to be carried out." After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers to carry out another holocaust."

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak do not oppose American dialogue with Tehran, but they believe it should be conducted within a limited window of time, making it clear to Iran that if it does not stop its nuclear program, severe sanctions will be imposed and other alternatives will be considered.

The American concern that Israel will attack Iran came up as early as last year, while president George W. Bush was still in office. As first reported in Haaretz, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Barak made a number of requests from Bush during the latter's visit to Jerusalem, which were interpreted as preparations for an aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

?State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly did not directly address the question of the U.S.'s official stance on an Israeli attack, but said Thursday that "we believe that the multilateral track with Iran is the right way to go."

"Our goal is to make them abandon their nuclear program in a verifiable way, and we will continue with this track. We decided that we want to let Iran get back to the table, to engage them, because the previous approach of isolating Iran didn?t work. But we don?t have a clear timetable," he said.

Following the Bush visit to Jerusalem, about a year ago the previous administration sent two senior envoys, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and the former U.S. national intelligence chief Mike McConnell to demand that Israel not attack Iran.

The previous administration also gave the message greater weight through Mullen's public statement that an Israeli attack on Iran would endanger the entire region. Since that statement, Mullen has met a number of times with his Israeli counterpart, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

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Last update - 22:35 05/05/2009

Lieberman: Take action against Iran if no talks in three months

By The Associated Press

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that the West should give Iran three months to respond to diplomatic overtures regarding its contentious nuclear program.

If within three months Iran has still not responded, Lieberman said, "action must be taken."

The foreign minister also asked Berlusconi to implore Russia on his visit there next month to cut off ties with the militant Hamas and Hezbollah organizations, which have close ties to Iran.

During their private talks in Rome, Lieberman promised Berlusconi that the Israeli government was committed to peace with the Palestinians.

Lieberman also extended an invitation to Berlusconi on behalf of Prime Minister Netanyahu to come visit Israel along with his ministers.

As in his meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini the day before, Lieberman still refrained from endorsing the idea of a Palestinian state - a cornerstone of Western efforts to solve the Middle Rast conflict.

Lieberman, on his first official trip abroad, arrived in France late Tuesday afternoon,. Government officials in France are expected to question Lieberman about the Middle East peace process, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted Lieberman's motorcade as he was entering the French Foreign Ministry on Tuesday for talks with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner.

An Associated Press Television News cameraman on the scene said two

demonstrators dressed as tourists blocked the street just as Lieberman's

motorcade was pulling onto ministry grounds. Riot police on the scene were seen detaining two people and chasing others away from the ministry.

About 100 other protesters, some brandishing an enormous Palestinian flag, gathered on the verdant lawns of the Esplanade des Invalides, across the street from the ministry.

The hard-line foreign minister has raised concerns in the West with fiery rhetoric seen as aiming to topple the policy of predecessor Tzipi Livni.

In his first speech as foreign minister, Lieberman said concessions to Palestinians would only invite war and declared that Israel was not bound by commitments it made at a 2007 U.S.-sponsored summit in Annapolis.

Lieberman has that his trip to Europe is aimed at exchanging opinions on Israel's new policies and pushing for a planned upgrade in EU relations, which some officials in the bloc have threatened to put on hold.

Upgraded ties with the EU would give Israel better access to European markets, closer cooperation in areas such as energy, environment and battling crime and terrorism and more educational exchanges.

Last week, the EU's commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to endorse a Palestinian state and said the upgrade would depend on Israel's commitment to the two-state solution.

Israel warned the EU that such criticism endangered the bloc's role as broker in the peace process, and Lieberman said Monday that the upgrade must "not be connected to the other problems of the Middle East."

Following talks with Lieberman on Tuesday, Italian FM Frattini backed his Israeli counterpart on that point, saying that "it is in our common interest for Europe to have stronger ties with Israel so that Europe will be able to play a greater role" in the Middle East."

Under Berlusconi's conservative governments, Rome has become one of Israel's closest friends in Europe while maintaining good relations with the Arab world. Italy was among EU countries that recently joined the United States and Israel in boycotting a UN conference on racism in Geneva marred by anti-Semitic rhetoric.

As he kicked off his European tour, Lieberman skirted around the issue of a Palestinian state, putting him on a possible collision course with American and EU efforts for a solution to the conflict.

On his first day in Rome, Lieberman expressed commitment to the peace process but did not endorse the idea of a Palestinian state as sought by the United States and the European Union."

"This government's goal is not [to] produce slogans or make pompous declarations, but to reach concrete results," he said on Monday, when asked if he would ever endorse a Palestinian state.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Frattini, Lieberman said he was confident that Netanyahu's cabinet would "reach a secure and definitive peace with the Palestinians and the Arab nations around us."

Lieberman stressed the government was still drawing up its new foreign policy, which Netanyahu is expected to unveil before talks with President Barack Obama in mid-May.

Netanyahu has so far refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state - a cornerstone of the West's policy.

At the news conference, Frattini said: "I reminded Minister Lieberman that Europe and the United States agree on the importance of making peace our common goal."

Frattini did not comment directly on Lieberman's positions, but in an interview published on Sunday in Yedioth Aharonoth he said the peace process "must continue on the basis of the principle of two states for two peoples."

According to a translation of the interview provided by Italy's Foreign Ministry, Frattini also said he would ask Lieberman to "tone down his statements and act to create a climate of collaboration."

Lieberman on Monday also welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's forthcoming Mideast visit, saying he hoped it would help boost relations with moderate Arab countries and improve interfaith dialogue.

Benedict travels to the region May 8-15 in a pilgrimage that will take him to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

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Last update - 21:14 14/05/2009

Barak: Time has come for comprehensive regional peace deal

By Haaretz Service

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Thursday that the conditions were right for a comprehensive regional peace agreement.

Barak said at the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Washington visit that progress can and must be made in negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as with Syria and Lebanon.

The defense minister added that U.S. involvement was crucial, saying that the Obama administration had been showing more diplomatic initiative than meets the eye.

"The Americans are our natural partners and Obama's administration is the most important factor in the world," Barak said.

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Last update - 21:20 14/05/2009

U.S. Senate candidate refers to Senator Schumer as 'that Jew'

By The Associated Press

A Republican candidate for Senate from Arkansas reportedly referred to Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer as "that Jew" during a recent appearance before a Republican group.

State Senator Kim Hendren said Thursday that he was wrong to refer to Schumer's religious affiliation during a Republican committee meeting last week. Hendren said he doesn't remember the exact wording of his comment, but he was quoted by conservative blogger Jason Tolbert as calling Schumer "that Jew."

"I ought not to have referred to it at all," Hendren said. "When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn't because I don't like Jewish people."

Hendren said he made the reference as he talked about comments the senior senator made criticizing some elements of the Republican Party.

"I shouldn't have gotten into this Jewish business because it distracts from the issue," Hendren said.

Representatives of Schumer declined to comment on the matter.

Hendren, who once ran for governor as a Democrat against Bill Clinton in 1982, is the only person to have declared their candidacy to challenge Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln in 2010. Hendren is also the minority leader in the state Senate.

Lincoln is seeking a third term in the Senate.

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Last update - 14:18 14/05/2009

Anti-Semitism is rearing its head in Tel Aviv

By Gideon Levy

Anti-Semitism is raising its head. Not in Warsaw, Munich or Paris, and there's no need for the Anti-Defamation League to wave the evidence around. It's right here, in our own home, in verdant Ramat Aviv, the most enlightened suburb of Tel Aviv, our most enlightened city. The entry of a handful of ultra-Orthodox Jews to this lovely, modest and tranquil neighborhood has provoked an unlovely wave of racism, tearing the thin veil of openness and liberality from this seemingly left-wing community. If anyone were to behave this way toward Israeli Arabs, the residents might raise a hue and cry, but when it comes to Haredim the gloves are off because attacking the "blacks" is the fashion.

They stand on street corners - God help us - offering men the opportunity to don tefillin: the scandal. They've rented a few apartments to sleep in, and perhaps even to teach Torah: a disaster. A handful among the neighborhood's secular inhabitants: a takeover, the very image of Beit Shemesh. The jargon of the neighborhood's "action committee" recalls days best forgotten. Its Web site speaks of finding "apartments rented to Haredim in order to apply pressure on landlords."

What kind of pressure, exactly? Why, for God's sake? Why the fear? Don't Haredim, like any minority, have the right to live in the neighborhood? No, not when it comes to Haredim, the punching bag of the left. What nationalist Israelis do to the Arabs, the left does to the ultra-Orthodox. There's no difference. Demonization, dehumanization, scare tactics and the sowing of hatred.

Hatred of the Other is the same, whether the Other's name is Mohammed or Leibele, whether he wears a kaffiyeh or a shtreimel. It makes no difference whether the racist is an Arab-hating Kahanist or a Haredim-hating leftist: He is still a racist. Imagine such a committee operating in a European city opposing a so-called "Jewish takeover" of a neighborhood. We would sound a battle cry. But there are already "patrols" in Ramat Aviv by "enlightened" celebrity parents, and heartrending testimony. "Seducing Minors" shouts a headline on the Web site, as though denouncing pedophiles. What's the deal? That Haredim tried to persuade a 13-year-old boy to put on tefillin?

This is not a local issue. The attitude to Haredim is nationwide. It is an insular community, conservative and strict, not exactly my cup of tea. Most of them do not serve in the army (in accordance with a law passed by the nonreligious), some of them choose not to work and most live in dire poverty. They "suck the country dry." We can excoriate them to our heart's content without being suspected of racism. And so, they are victims of racism. Most were pushed out of formerly mixed neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, remaining only in the Sheinkin Street area, and how lovely the sight: a parent bringing three children to school on one bicycle, heavily bearded teachers, Yiddish as the language of daily life, mutual aid and other traditional customs alongside secularism at its best. Multiculturalism.

One is not compelled to love them, identify with their odd leaders or admire the political power of their wheeler-dealers. One is compelled to oppose their violence when it occurs, but also to accept them as they are, as long as they obey the law. They are incalculably preferable to the settlers, who are much more violent and who have sown a much worse disaster in our midst, a plague on future generations, yet against whom no such bitter hatred is aimed. You know why? Because the struggle against the settlements and the occupation is not in the consensus and therefore demands courage and a high personal cost.

Hatred of Haredim is in the consensus. There is no cost to attacking them; that is considered normal behavior. And so the people of Ramat Aviv, my dear neighbors, too cowardly to wage more important and just struggles, have established an action committee against the Haredim. But the Ramat Aviv of this committee is not only pretentiously trendy Ramat Aviv. The issue is not simply a single liberal neighborhood. This is Israeli society as a whole. Until we learn to accept those who are different or exceptional, we cannot call ourselves a tolerant and just society. Hatred of Haredim in Ramat Aviv, or Arabs in Safed, is the same disease. Is the cashier in your supermarket wearing hijab? That's heartwarming. Next let's let her wear a hat, or a wig.

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Last update - 09:34 15/03/2009

'Those children were animals'

By Tamar Rotem

About a month ago, M. came to the Sarah Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem to visit her young son (the court has prohibited the publication of their names). For a year now the boy has been lying there unconscious and on a respirator. His mother has been under arrest ever since her son was hospitalized and the revelation of the child abuse - among the most shocking this country has known - by members of Elior Chen's cult, on his instructions if not with his participation.

Chen's wife, Ruth, recently broke her silence, just before she traveled to Sao Paolo in Brazil, to where her husband fled and was arrested. Now he is awaiting the decision on Israel's request to extradite him. In a telephone conversation from Brazil, where she was staying until not long ago with Satmar Hasids, she denied the accusations against her husband. "We're being persecuted," she said. "The press likes to lynch ultra-Orthodox people especially if someone is called a rabbi."

Of the abuses - "corrections" in the cult's terminology - she says they were educational methods. "Those children were animals. They behaved like wild beasts. They were uncivilized and rude. We made human beings out of them. They had had a faulty upbringing. Children who after they ate would get up to play, without saying a blessing. They were expelled from school. Except for one boy, they didn't want to learn. We tried to rehabilitate them. My husband is a gentle soul who wouldn't hurt a fly. We're not people who hit."

The affair came to light a year ago in March 2008, when M.'s 4-year-old youngest son was rushed to Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in an unconscious state. At that time the mother was already at the hospital, sitting at the bedside of another son, only a year older than his brother, who was suffering from burns. The coincidence aroused the suspicions of the welfare personnel who were called in, and she was arrested on suspicion of abusing her children.

Two days after the arrest, Chen fled to Canada and his wife joined him. He was later arrested in Brazil.

Under questioning, M. told the police that it had been Chen who ordered the carrying out of "corrections in the children, the purpose of which is to exorcise the demons and ghouls from the children." The "corrections," she explained, were intended "to help the child overcome and change his bad characteristics."

The systematic abuse detailed in the indictments includes beatings and burns, forcing the children to eat excrement and binding them with handcuffs and ropes. In one instance, they put one of the children in a suitcase, with his skullcap stuck in his mouth so he would not be able to scream.

M., who was not aware of the details of the abuse, believed at that time in Chen's special powers and did not doubt him for a moment. The connection between them began in 2000 when M.'s husband, D., joined Chen - who called himself a rabbi - and his three disciples, who are also charged with abuse: Avraham Kugman, Shimon Gabai and Avraham Mascalchi. Later, D. fell out of favor and Chen saw to separating him from his wife. M. moved into Chen's apartment and even married him in an improvised ceremony.

Due to a court order, it is not possible to interview the mother or anyone else involved in the affair, but at Chen's apartment in Betar Ilit documentation was found that details conversations between him and his disciples in 2005. The conversations centered around miraculous acts, healing and magic supposedly performed by Chen, and a lot about his relationship with M. The conversations were written down as questions and answers, sometimes with the disciples asking and Chen answering, and sometimes the other way around.

"I had difficulty breathing," wrote M. "My chest hurt unbelievably. The rabbi told me to take my urine and smear it on my chest and this was very, very effective, and also to take a lemon and smear it on the place and also warm bread, which were less effective, and in the end everything felt better, thank G-d. G-d will strengthen the saintly rabbi's hands and continue to help the entire people of Israel."

In a conversation about the fate of M. and D., apparently one of the disciples asked: "In the matter of my rabbi and teacher's feelings toward M., and the matter of D.'s passing away - is this supposed to happen the way it came to my rabbi and teacher in his thoughts, that D. will give a get [bill of divorce] and go to a distant place where he will commit suicide?"

The answer: "There is truth in this."

Question: "Is there rejoicing in heaven about the way the matter is progressing between the rabbi and M.?"

Answer: "There is great rejoicing in heaven."

Question: "What does the rabbi's wife [Ruth Chen] feel about the matter of M.?"

Answer: "She has suspicions."

Question: "Should my rabbi and teacher get married to M?"

Answer: "Yes."

Question: "And what about her husband, D.?"

Answer: "He will pass from the world."

In the police search of Chen's home in April, 2008, heating stoves, a hammer and knives were found that according to the suspicions were used in some of the abusive acts. "Don't you have a knife in your home? A hammer? A heating stove?" responded his wife Ruth. "Are these signs that anyone was abusive? We helped the family, we took care of them in all innocence," she lamented.

"They lived with us, and with us they found refuge from their crazy father. Their father is insane. My husband tried to help him in all innocence. The father would go to cemeteries all the time to prostrate himself on the graves of saints. Then he ran away. His wife was left without means of support. They stayed with us for a month and a half. Who gave food to those children? I did. Who checked them for lice while their mother was going around the stores outside? Me and my husband."

"Our educational method was the personal example of my husband, a cultured and supportive individual who radiates light. For 24 hours a day we gave those children hugs, kisses, love - as though they were our own children. We hardly got any sleep. The whole day was spent caring, preparing food, laundering and tidying the house. Me and my husband and friends ... everything pleasantly and joyously. Here it works in a loving way."

Of M., she says: "She was a very good friend of mine. I still love her. But she came too far into our lives."

And of the husband, D.: "From the moment he came into our house I hated him. He came as a friend and made himself a student, but he was a betraying and loathsome student. How my husband tried to bring about domestic harmony, and they have brought a holocaust down upon us."

When visiting her son at the hospital, M. has already learned to ignore the stares at her and her retinue: lawyers and police who accompany her from the Neveh Tirza prison. On entering the room, she picked up her son who lay there limply and took him in her arms. For about two hours she sat with him in an armchair and sang Sabbath songs to him.

"She doesn't let herself break down near him, or cry. She is totally focused on taking care of him," says Dvora Atia, her lawyer, who was present during the visit. "Maybe it is difficult to hear this, but she is a loving mother."

Nevertheless, even after she was arrested, for many months M. was still under the influence of Chen, who had ordered the abuse, and she defended him. Last week, however, a month after the visit to her son, she signed a plea bargain to the effect that she would testify against Chen and his followers. In the wake of her consent, the number of charges in her indictment has been reduced from 21 in the initial indictment to six in the amended version. She is no longer charged with active involvement in the deeds together with Chen's disciples as she was initially, but only of not having prevented the abuse, and accordingly she can expect a lighter punishment: a prison sentence of five years.

The details of M.'s testimony in the context of the plea bargain are still confidential, but the prosecution is convinced that by means of her testimony it will be able to base the evidence against Chen, which will bring about his extradition. M., apparently, is now changing her attitude toward him and is prepared to testify against the man whom, to herself, she called "my Lord Messiah the king."

Attorney Reuben Bar-Haim, who is representing M. together with Atia, says that "absurdly, she believed in all innocence that the deeds that were being done to her children, by him or at his command, were done for their benefit, to exorcise demons and ghouls from them."

And indeed, the initial information about the affair was provided by the children, not by her. Hours of talking with a psychologist, the shock of the encounter with prison and the distance from Chen have proven effective. As her frequent rocking back and forth over her prayer book ceased, and her Breslav garb was replaced by a denim skirt, she realized the seriousness of what she had done.

In the deepest sense, the meaning of the plea bargain is the realization that her sin was silence and concealment, and her "correction" is in speaking out and revealing the abuse of her children. All this was possible only following a process of freeing herself from the spell of Chen, of whom, Atia is convinced, she has also understood she is a victim. In the past, says Atia, she asked to testify from behind a screen, so that she would not have to face him. "Today she is not afraid of him."

Attorney Ariel Atari, who is representing Chen, has said that "If the mother testifies truthfully, Elior Chen can rest easy. If she decides to lie - if a trial is held, I would estimate that her lies will be easily revealed and Chen will be acquitted."

Attorney Avigdor Feldman, who is representing Avraham Krugman, has refused to comment, while attorney Yehudah Shushan, who is representing Avraham Mascalchi, says that his client's involvement was minor, adding that the procedure "is unworthy from the legal perspective in light of the fact that the child's testimony was conditioned on him not testifying against the mother, which in effect forced the state to arrive at a plea bargain with the mother."

Attorney Yair Nehorai, who is representing Shimon Gabai, has said that in his opinion "it appears that it will not be possible to avoid a request to have many of the witnesses who already testified testify again and, in a certain sense, to reopen the trial."

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Last update - 10:03 05/05/2009

Israeli ambassador to Spain called 'Jew dog' at Real Madrid game

By Barak Ravid

A torrent of anti-Semitic epithets met Israel's ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, Saturday evening as he walked home from a Real Madrid-Barcelona soccer match in the Spanish capital. Shotz said the three perpetrators, patrons of a pub, shouted slurs like "Jewish dog" and "dirty Jew" until they were driven off by Spanish police escorting Shotz.

Shotz and his partner Michal chose to walk from Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu Stadium to their nearby home. Three patrons of a pub noticed the ambassador, whom they apparently recognized from having seen him on television.

In a wire report Shotz sent the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem under the heading "Anti-Semitism - a personal testimony," Shotz wrote the perpetrators stood mere meters from him, shouting slurs like "Jewish dog," "dirty Jew" and others "which cannot appear in print."

The ambassador and his partner ignored the slurs and continued walking; meanwhile dozens of bystanders watched the scene, but did nothing to stop the verbal assault.

Shotz told Haaretz yesterday, "It was an ugly incident, the kind one hears about or reads about in a newspaper, but to experience personally the force of hatred and anti-Semitism is difficult and emotionally charged."

Spain's ambassador to Israel, Alvaro Iranzo, told Haaretz that "Spanish security forces protected the ambassador and prevented any harm coming to him."

Spain has seen an upsurge in anti-Israel sentiment in recent years, fueled by critical media reports about Israel Defense Forces operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Operation Cast Lead earlier this year.

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Last update - 15:22 03/03/2009

Rabbi charged with repeated sexual assault

By Fadi Eyadat, Haaretz Correspondent

The Haifa District Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment on Tuesday against the Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Bialik for sexually assaulting and harassing three women.

According to the indictment, between December 2003 and January 2004, Rabbi Aminadav Krispin allegedly committed lewd acts and sexually harassed a female housekeeper who worked in the Rabbinate's office.

The indictment further reveals that Krispin was charged with a similar offense in June 2003, when a woman came to him for counseling with her husband. The rabbi allegedly asked the husband to leave the room and, once alone, kissed the woman's head, claiming that he was giving her a special blessing, and made other sexual overtures.

An incident from 1998 is also included in the indictment, even though the statute of limitations on the crime has run out, in which the rabbi allegedly sexually harassed a secretary at the religious council. The defendant is not charged with the crime, but it is included in the indictment in order to demonstrate a pattern. The indictment also charges that the rabbi tried to intimidate one of the witnesses in the case after these allegations came to light.

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Last update - 01:51 08/05/2009

Yad Vashem hoping pope's speech doesn't strain already tense ties

By Nadav Shragai

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land next week will provide another test for the often tense relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community. The pontiff will be expected to address the Holocaust, which has proved to be a bone of contention in the emotionally charged history between Jews and the Holy See.

"We expect that Pope Benedict XVI's speech at Yad Vashem will include a reference to the memory of the Holocaust in the present as well as in the future," said Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem's chairman of the directorate.

Shalev recalled that Benedict spent his childhood as a member of the Hitler Youth and later enlisted in the Wehrmacht.

"It is impossible to claim that these things do not have an impact," he said. "A person's habitat bears an influence on him, despite the fact that immediately after the war he disengaged from these things and devoted himself to studying religion."

Shalev made the comments during a briefing for reporters in the run-up to the pope's visit to Yad Vashem.

Shalev spent much time reflecting on the matter of Holocaust denial. He quoted the Holy See's envoy to Israel, Archbishop Antonio Franco, who told a Yad Vashem symposium that anyone who denies the Holocaust cannot be considered a Catholic.

"This certainly was not a slip of the tongue, but a statement that was coordinated with his superiors," Shalev said.

He also reminded reporters that pressure from Yad Vashem and the Israeli government compelled the Vatican to force Williamson to acknowledge that the Holocaust did indeed take place.

Jewish-Catholic relations have been extremely tense since Jan. 24, when Benedict lifted excommunications of four renegade traditionalist bishops in an attempt to heal a schism within the church that began in 1988, when they were ordained without Vatican permission.

One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, denies the full extent of the Holocaust and says there were no gas chambers. The priestly society to which he and the other excommunicated bishops belong, the Society of St. Pius X, was recently found by a probe to have openly propagated virulent anti-Semitism.

The probe's results were made public on Thursday. They found that the society's official U.S. Web site described Jews as "the enemy of man, whose secret weapon is the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy," adding that "heads of Jewry have for centuries conspired methodically and out of an undying hatred against the Catholic name."

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Last update - 10:03 05/05/2009

Israeli ambassador to Spain called 'Jew dog' at Real Madrid game

By Barak Ravid

A torrent of anti-Semitic epithets met Israel's ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, Saturday evening as he walked home from a Real Madrid-Barcelona soccer match in the Spanish capital. Shotz said the three perpetrators, patrons of a pub, shouted slurs like "Jewish dog" and "dirty Jew" until they were driven off by Spanish police escorting Shotz.

Shotz and his partner Michal chose to walk from Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu Stadium to their nearby home. Three patrons of a pub noticed the ambassador, whom they apparently recognized from having seen him on television.

In a wire report Shotz sent the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem under the heading "Anti-Semitism - a personal testimony," Shotz wrote the perpetrators stood mere meters from him, shouting slurs like "Jewish dog," "dirty Jew" and others "which cannot appear in print."

The ambassador and his partner ignored the slurs and continued walking; meanwhile dozens of bystanders watched the scene, but did nothing to stop the verbal assault.

Shotz told Haaretz yesterday, "It was an ugly incident, the kind one hears about or reads about in a newspaper, but to experience personally the force of hatred and anti-Semitism is difficult and emotionally charged."

Spain's ambassador to Israel, Alvaro Iranzo, told Haaretz that "Spanish security forces protected the ambassador and prevented any harm coming to him."

Spain has seen an upsurge in anti-Israel sentiment in recent years, fueled by critical media reports about Israel Defense Forces operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Operation Cast Lead earlier this year.

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Last update - 20:39 14/05/2009

Netanyahu urges Pope: Sound your moral voice against Iran

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday asked Pope Benedict XVI to condemn the anti-Semitic declarations of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I asked him, as a moral figure, to make his voice heard loud and continuously against the declarations coming from Iran of their intention to destroy Israel," Netanyahu told reporters following the meeting between the two in the Israeli town of Nazareth.

"I told him it cannot be that at the beginning of the 21st century there is a state which says it is going to destroy the Jewish state, there is no aggressive voice being heard condemning this," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu said he was pleased with the pope's response. He said that "he

condemns all instances of anti-Semitism and hate against the state of Israel - against humanity as a whole - but in this case against Israel."

During their meeting, Netanyahu underscored before the pope the threat that he felt Iran poses to the Middle East and to world peace. Fending off the Iranian threat will advance peace, Netanyahu said, adding that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians but only the kind of peace that brings security. "We don't want to dominate another people, but we also don't want a terror state backed by Iran to rise alongside us and jeopardize Israel's safety," he said.

The pope replied that he believed extremism must be battled and that moderate elements in the region must be supported. The pontiff stressed the fact that he has spearheaded the battle against anti-Semitism around the world.

The pope asked Netanyahu to step up the negotiations between Israel and the Vatican surrounding the payment of taxes collected from Catholic Church institutions inside the state of Israel. The prime minister insisted that he was in favor of resolving the issue and that he would take steps to speed up the talks.

Netanyahu yielded another of the pope's requests and promised that he would increase the number of visas granted to priests living in Arab states who are interested in visiting Israel.

Prior to the 2006 Second Lebanon War, priests were eligible for long term visas, but after the war, the number of visas granted was dramatically reduced for security reasons. Netanyahu said that Israel would be willing to discuss increasing the number of visas and to ensure that more Catholic priests are granted such visas.

The pope also asked Netanyahu to consider granting more "family unification" authorizations to Christians living in Israel who have family members in Jordan or the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu voiced reservations regarding this request, saying that it would not be possible for Israel to discriminate in favor of Christians. Members of other religions will demand the same treatment, Netanyahu explained.

Following their one-on-one meeting, the pope and the prime minister invited advisers to join them and the expanded meeting focused on the relations between Israel and the Vatican, while stressing financial issues.

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Last update - 18:38 14/05/2009

Libya submits anti-Israel draft to UN Security Council

By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent

Libya's representatives at the United Nations Security Council presented a resolution draft proposal Wednesday which included a series of severe condemnations of Israel in the wake of Operation Cast Lead.

Libya, the only Arab member of the Security Council, used an unofficial consultation between council members in order to submit the draft, which is based on UN findings on the Gaza war a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1083191.html">released two weeks ago.

The harsh report accused Israel and the IDF of damaging UN buildings, and of responsibility for the deaths of innocent civilians.

According to UN sources, the wording of the Libyan draft is even more radical than the original UN report, which was deemed one-sided by the Israeli government.

UN diplomats, however, suggested that the draft had little chance of being officially adopted. They indicated that never before has an internal UN report, like the one prepared after Israel's Gaza offensive, come to be discussed by the Security Council.

The diplomats said that Libya, tacitly supported by other Arab nations, was merely trying to keep the Gaza war on the UN's agenda.

Russia's UN ambassador and Security Council president Vitali Churkin told reporters that it was his impression that Libya would not push the draft forward, since most of the council's members, including those with veto power, have expressed their reservations at its content.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had also expressed his objection to the draft, rejecting the recommendation to continue investigating IDF actions during Operation Cast Lead.

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Last update - 15:43 05/05/2009

Ban: UN report on Gaza war not legally binding

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said a damning UN report on Israel's conduct in its recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was not legally binding.

The Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Tuesday morning that the probe accuses the Israel Defense Forces of deliberately firing at UN institutions as well as using disproportional force and causing unnecessary harm to civilians.

Israel later rejected the report Tuesday as being "tendentious" and "patently biased."

Ban made the comments in a letter he agreed to attach to the report at the request of Foreign Ministry director-general Yossi Gal, who traveled to New York on Monday for meetings with Ban's aides on the matter.

In the letter, the UN chief condemned Hamas cross-border rocket fire on Israeli civilians, attacks that sparked the conflict and, according to the Israeli paper, were ignored by the UN committee in its report.

Ban also commended the Israel Defense Forces for its close coordination with the world body during the 3-week operation, as well as the cooperation given by Israel with the report's authors. He said his representatives were holding meetings with the Israeli government on implementing the report's recommendations.

The UN chief added there would be no further reports by the world body on the subject.

In its official response, the Foreign Ministry said: "Both [in] spirit and language, the report is tendentious, patently biased, and ignores the facts presented to the committee."

"The committee has preferred the claims of Hamas, a murderous terror organization, and by doing so has misled the world."

The Foreign Ministry noted that immediately upon the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, the codename for the operation, Israel carried out independent inquiries into the damage caused to the UN installations.

It said the findings of those inquiries proved "beyond doubt" that the IDF did not intentionally fire at the UN installations.

"Not only have the Hamas terrorists not conducted such inquiries," the ministry added, "they use violence and intimidation against citizens of Gaza as tools to prevent them from presenting the actual truth. In this manner they have deceived the investigators, the UN and public opinion."

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Last update - 01:19 23/04/2009

Barak: Gaza probe shows IDF among world's most moral armies

By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent

The Israel Defense Forces announced on Wednesday that an internal investigation has determined that no civilians were purposefully harmed by IDF troops during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

Following the release of the investigation results, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the army's willingness to probe itself "once again proves that the IDF is one of the most moral armies in the world.

"The IDF is not afraid to investigate itself and in that, proves that its operations are ethical," said Barak. The defense minister added that he has "complete faith in the IDF, from the chief of staff to the last of the combat soldiers."

The inquiries were performed by five IDF colonels who were not involved in the fighting in Cast Lead, and examined reports of attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, medical personnel and facilities, United Nations facilities, and also the use of white phosphorous.

The investigation, which was supervised by IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, did find cases of civilians killed by mistaken fire on the part of IDF troops, but said the incidents were isolated.

Deputy IDF Chief of Staff General Dan Harel said that in the dozens of cases they examined, they found that throughout Cast Lead the IDF "adhered to international law and maintained a high level of professionalism and morality."

The most glaring case of mistaken fire found by the inquiry was the attack on the Al-Dahiyeh family home in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun, in which 21 members of the same family were killed.

In the incident, the IDF called a household that was suspected of being a weapons storehouse and told the residents to evacuate, saying an attack was imminent.

The subsequent IAF strike, which was targeting a suspected weapons storehouse, landed dozens of meters from its target, slamming into the Al-Dahiyeh household.

The mistaken fire reportedly came as a result of a malfunction in the targeting system of the aircraft carrying out the mission.

The IDF has called the incident "regretful", but said it resulted from "an operational mistake that is bound to happen during intensive fighting."

Another incident reported in the probe's findings was the case of an IAF attack on a truck that military intelligence had reported was carrying Grad rockets. After the attack, which killed 8 Palestinians, including 4 Hamas gunmen, it was determined that the truck was transporting gas canisters.

Tibi: No reason to acknowledge IDF inquiry

MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List) on Wednesday criticized the findings of the probe, saying "there's no reason to acknowledge the IDF inquiry, which comes from a murderous, secretive, and moaning army known for being murderous and for complaints and cover-ups."

Tibi said "if these hundreds of civilians were killed knowingly, that is a war crime, and under Israeli law, it is considered even more severe."

Tibi added that he is "not surprised that the IDF has refused to cooperate with UN probes of mass killings in Gaza."

Head of the Hadash party Mohammed Barakeh also blasted the report, saying those who performed the inquiry are obscuring the truth about "war crimes that Israel committed in Gaza. There is a price for committing war crimes, and also for mistakes that cause war crimes."

Barakeh also criticized the source of the inquiry, saying "military officials are not commissions of inquiry, there are a part of the system that perpetrated these crimes, and is carrying out a cover-up."

Barakeh added that eventually those responsible for the "war crimes" will be brought to trial "from those at the top of the pyramid, all the way down to rank-and-file soldiers."

Human rights group B'Tselem: IDF inquiry flawed

An Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, called the military's investigation flawed. and said it "does not answer the need for an independent inquiry outside the army that would look at the whole range of violations the army is incapable of looking at."

"It shows how important it is that Israel cooperate with the fact-finding mission of [Richard] Goldstone that would look at violations," said spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli, speaking on behalf of a group of human rights groups that have made this demand in the past.

Goldstone, a former United Nations chief prosecutor for war crimes, was recently appointed to head a UN investigation into atrocities allegedly committed during Israel's three-week war against Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers.

The investigation called by the UN's Human Rights Council was only supposed to look at Israeli conduct. But Goldstone did not accept the assignment until the mandate was changed to also examine Palestinian actions.

Israel has not said whether it would cooperate with the Goldstone

investigation. But it has rejected council investigations in the past, calling them biased.

Among questions being raised is whether Israel used disproportionate force and failed to protect civilians.

In one case, Israeli artillery fire reportedly hit near a UN school where hundreds of Gazans had sought refuge, killing an estimated 42 people. Israeli said its troops were responding to fire from militants near the school, and both the incident and number of casualties have been disputed/

In another instance, Gazans allege Israeli soldiers ordered 110 civilians into a warehouse, then shelled it the next day, killing 30. Israel denies the army targeted the warehouse.

Israel also has been criticized for using white phosphorus weapons, which can be legitimately used in war to create smoke screens or provide illumination.

But rights activists have said its use over populated areas can indiscriminately burn civilians and constitute a war crime.

Israel says its army took great care to avoid harming civilians in Gaza,

preceding some airstrikes with leaflets or phone calls warning civilians to flee - a contention confirmed by Gaza residents.

Israel is preparing for potential legal action, barring the media from

publishing pictures of officers' faces and their names for fear of

investigations. It has promised legal and financial support for any officers facing trial, despite the difficulty of prosecuting Israelis.

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Last update - 18:17 14/05/2009

Are the people who 'really run the world' meeting this weekend?

The Bilderberg group, the topic of many conspiracy theories, is now meeting behind closed doors in Greece.

By Adam Abrams

From today until May 17, approximately 150 of the most influential members of the world's elite will be meeting behind closed doors at a hotel in Greece. They are called the Bilderberg Group or the "Bilderbergers," and you have probably never heard of them.

The group, co-founded by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, has been meeting in secret every year since 1954. This year, says the British broadsheet The Times, they are meeting at the Nafsika Astir Palace in Vouliagmeni.

The individuals at the meeting come from such power houses as Google and the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Senate and European royalty. Governments, the banking industry, big oil, media and even the world of academia are amongst the Bilderberg ranks.

Those reportedly in attendance at last year's conference in Virginia include former U.S. senator Tom Daschle; Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner and his predecessor Henry M. Paulson; former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice; Microsoft executive Craig Mundie; senior Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot; World Bank President Robert Zoellick and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

There is no official list of who's who in Bilderberg and there are no press conferences about the meetings. This is because the group operates under the "Chatham House Rule," and no details of what goes on inside are released to the press.

This secrecy has led to many claims that the Bilderberg Group are the world's real "kingmakers," and, some even suggest, behind the global financial crisis.

There are also rumors concerning Bilderberg's 2008 conference in Virginia, claiming that the recent U.S. presidential election was decided upon in a secret meeting between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, courtesy of Bilderberg.

Those involved in Bilderberg reject such claims outright, arguing that the forum offers a chance for world leaders to discuss international affairs openly and honestly.

Former British cabinet minister, Lord Denis Healey, who was one of the founders of the group, branded assumptions of world domination as "crap!" and said that the group's aims were much purer.

In an interview to journalist Jon Ronson of the Guardian, Healey said: "Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing."

Veteran Bilderberg-watcher Daniel Estulin says that the big topic on the agenda for this year is the global depression.

Estulin quotes sources connected to the group as saying that the group is looking at two options, "either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline, and poverty... or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency."

As the BBC's Jonathan Duffy noted in 2004, the air of mystery has fueled the increasingly popular conspiracy theory that the Bilderberg meetings are where decisions affecting the entire world are made.

"No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted," Duffy wrote. "In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg."

Recently, mainstream press coverage of the Bilderberg meeting has grown, largely due to the internet. This year's conference may have been covered by British broadsheets, but don't expect to see any coverage from U.S. news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post - they will most likely be at the conference.

Adam Abrams is a British-American blogger, currently working as an intern at Haaretz.com

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Last update - 14:01 26/03/2009

Will U.S. financial woes lead to new world order?

By Adam Abrams

Is the U.S. about to lose its status as the dominant global superpower? Will the dollar collapse? If so, what would become the new global reserve currency and what would replace U.S. hegemony in a new world order?

American troops are currently stationed in over 150 countries around the world and have been actively engaged in combat since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. The pretext for the invasion of Afghanistan was provided by the 9/11 attacks.

A second front in the U.S. "war on terror" was opened in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq. As well these military expenditures, the U.S. has an outstanding national debt of $10.8 trillion and rising.

Although U.S. President Barack Obama has outlined a timetable for complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq by 2011, he has ordered an increase of 17,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. With no clear end in sight to U.S. military engagement and with the U.S. national debt growing at an accelerating rate, it seems reasonable to ask whether or not the U.S. might be irreversibly overextending itself.

What does "new world order" mean? There are two distinct variations. Both expressions - a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power and the advent of a cryptocratic or totalitarian world government - have relevance.

The global geopolitical climate is changing rapidly and appears to be on the verge of a realignment. This has become more apparent since the start of the world financial crisis, which finds its roots in the U.S. economic downturn.

So how would a new world order emerge? It seems that the global population would only be willing to accept the implementation of a new world order, in either form, in the event of a major global crisis, such as the complete economic collapse of the United States of America.

The U.S. is at the heart of the global economy because the U.S. dollar is currently the reserve currency of the world. Oil, gold and all major commodities are measured in U.S. dollars. If the U.S. were to collapse in the same way that Iceland and Latvia already have, the whole world would be affected. A new world order would need to be formed that no longer relied on U.S. global hegemony.

Many experts believe that this is not only possible, but likely. According to Professor Willem Buiter, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee who is now at the London School of Economics, "There will, before long ... be a global dumping of U.S. dollar assets, including U.S. government assets... The past eight years of imperial overstretch, hubris and domestic and international abuse of power on the part of the Bush administration has left the U.S. materially weakened financially, economically, politically and morally."

Other economic gurus agree. Peter Schiff, an American economic commentator and president of the stock brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital Inc. was mocked by economist Art Laffer, when he accurately predicted, in 2006, that the U.S. housing market "bubble" would burst. Schiff now predicts that gold will climb to $2,000 per ounce in response to the U.S. dollar dropping "like a stone" and losing its status as the global reserve currency.

Schiff was also an economic adviser to Ron Paul during his 2008 presidential campaign. Paul has been articulating similar concerns regarding the U.S. financial system for over 30 years, and advocates the legitimization of gold and silver as currency, as well as the elimination of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. This he says, "will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy."

Paul sees the Federal Reserve as the main culprit in perpetuating and exacerbating the current U.S. financial crisis: "Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people." He has repeatedly introduced a bill to the U.S. Congress that would allow for the auditing of the Federal Reserve Board and provide transparency into its dealings, to no avail.

Meanwhile, the man who accurately predicted the stock market crash of 1987 and the collapse of the Soviet Union has an intriguing prediction that goes even further. Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, has forecast that by 2012 there will be a revolution in the U.S., accompanied by food riots and tax rebellions.

So, with this in mind, who or what could replace the United States as the world's dominant player?

One possibility is that the United Nations will take on the role of a global government. This theory seems to be supported in a speech by then-president George H. W. Bush before Congress on March 6, 1991, following the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

"...We can see a new world coming into view," said Bush. "A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a 'world order' in which 'the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ...' A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations."

Until recently, the advent of a global government seemed unrealistic, and reserved for conspiracy theorists. But since the acknowledgement by then-president George W. Bush in September 2008 that the United States is indeed "in the midst of a serious financial crisis", there have been numerous calls for a "new world order" by global leaders and prominent intellectuals.

In January, Henry Kissinger told CNBC reporters that the current world economic crisis is a "great opportunity" for President Barack Obama to help form a "new world order."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown actually began the call for a new world order before the acknowledgement of the current financial downturn.

Speaking in June 2007, Brown said: "I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created."

The British leader has continued to press for a new world order since that speech. Even a few weeks ago he declared the need for a "global new deal."

"Britain and America may be separated by the thousands of miles of the Atlantic, but we are united by shared values that can never be broken. And as America stands at its own dawn of hope, I want that hope to be fulfilled through us all coming together to shape the 21st century as the first century of a truly global society."

Could this "truly global society" be the same society that Bush Sr. spoke of, with the UN fulfilling "the historic vision of its founders"?

It is certainly possible, but would be rather difficult to implement. The government of every nation in the world would either have to willingly surrender sovereignty to the United Nations or be forced into doing so by the use of military force. Both options are utterly improbable -unless an unpheaval on a massive scale resulted in a new-found willingness by the big players in the global arena to submit to an international body.

The only such event that seems even remotely likely is the end of Western global dominance and the transfer of global hegemony to the Eurasian powers. Perhaps it would not be a "global government", but a "new world order", with the central power of the world residing in Asia.

This seems to be the most realistic scenario, particularly as China is the largest creditor to the U.S. If the Chinese government decided to dump all of its U.S. dollars, the entire U.S. economy would collapse overnight.

But would China do that? The motivation would be two-fold; firstly, the U.S. Federal Reserve's "inflationary policies" (as described by Ron Paul) devalue the U.S. currency to the point that China no longer has an incentive to hold U.S. dollars, and secondly, China sees an opportunity to become the dominant player in the new world order.

Perhaps this is the scenario that Buiter envisions when he describes a "global dumping of U.S. dollar assets." If the Chinese government were to abandon the U.S. dollar it would certainly trigger such a "dumping" of U.S. assets.

In fact, just last week China's premier hinted that Beijing is concerned about its creditor-debtor relationship with the U.S.:

"We have lent a huge amount of money to the United States. I request the U.S. to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets."

In addition, the Kremlin last week called for the creation of a "supranational reserve currency" to be on the agenda at the upcoming G20 meeting in London. Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of China's central bank, has expressed a similar desire for a new global reserve currency "that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies."

China and Russia have both experienced severe economic downturns since September 2008, but both blame the U.S. for initiating the global crisis.

If such a currency were to be formed, one that was "disconnected from individual nations," it is possible that some form of global bank would be the creditor. According to Zhou Xiaochuan, the International Monetary Fund is one potential candidate for this role. The U.S. president, meanwhile, has said that he does not support a global currency.

Looking at history, there is only one circumstance under which a very large and diverse population would be willing to accept such a massive override and restructuring of the global order. That circumstance is chaos.

The collapse of the United States of America would certainly create the chaos necessary to justify the formation of a new global reserve currency and ultimately a new world order, with its central power residing in Eurasia.

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Last update - 08:01 14/05/2009

New West Bank roads jeopardizing chances for peace accord

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

Palestinian interest in the intentions of the new Israeli government tends to focus on one small area in the West Bank, Ma'aleh Adumim and its environs, particularly the area known as E1 linking the settlement to East Jerusalem.

Earlier this month Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad participated in mass Friday prayers against land expropriation in the area, and the Palestinian media was full of reports of Israeli settlement plans in Ma'aleh Adumim and E1.

The concerns are not baseless. E1 is the only area that Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly committed to developing, on the eve of February's elections. His political rival, Labor Party chairman Ehud Barak, also publicly expressed support for building there.

Plans for expanding the Israeli presence around Ma'aleh Adumim continued apace under the Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert governments, in the interest of creating contiguous Jewish settlement from East Jerusalem to Mitzpeh Yeriho, on the outskirts of Jericho. Visitors to the area in recent weeks can see that the gradual annexation is continuing, even if its goal is far from being reached.

Still, a significant hurdle lies around the corner: the firm, declared opposition of the United States government, opposition that is likely to be expressed during Netanyahu's meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington next week.

One of the main developments in the area is at Kedar, a small settlement of 80 families, south of Ma'aleh Adumim, that is at the center of a prolonged legal battle. The security establishment, under Sharon's inspiration, designed the route of the separation fence so that 8,000 dunams (2,000 acres), including Kedar, would be on the Israeli side of the barrier. The route would have expropriated lands from the Palestinian village of Sawahra and forced the evacuation of hundreds of Bedouin living between Kedar and Ma'aleh Adumim.

After residents of Sawahra petitioned the High Court of Justice on the matter, The Council for Peace and Security drafted a new plan that placed Kedar on the Palestinian side of the fence. After a two-year delay, the defense establishment presented yet a third plan, this one expropriating 4,000 dunams but including Kedar on the Israeli side of the barrier.

In early June the High Court held a hearing on the petition against the new plan. Meanwhile, an Interior Ministry-appointed committee recommended uniting Kedar and Ma'aleh Adumim into a single community, a step that would facilitate authorization of the new route.

GOC Southern Command Gadi Shamni has issued orders to pave an additional road passing south of the fence's route in Kedar, linking the Bethlehem area with Mitzpeh Yeriho. The cost of the project is estimated at hundreds of millions of shekels.

In E1, as Haaretz reported in February, infrastructure plans were completed last year for the construction of a new neighborhood, to be called Mevasseret Adumim. Construction of settlements and outposts has also continued, particularly in the northeastern part of the Ma'aleh Adumim bloc, in the settlement of Kfar Adumim and the satellites that have sprung up around it.

All of these developments share a single common denominator - by taking "a dunam here and a dunam there," they are tightening Israel's grip on the land. The new roads and junctions were designed to allow a separation between Israelis and Palestinians. In tandem to roads built for Israeli use, Palestinians coming from Ramallah will travel via Hizmeh and the al-Zaim Junction south toward Bethlehem, or east toward Jericho via a bypass road near Kedar.

These steps seriously diminish the already narrow possibility of reaching a final-status agreement with the Palestinians. Over the past decade Palestinian officials have hinted that they could come to terms with Ma'aleh Adumim, but that willingness is unlikely to extend to the giant "bubble" developing around the settlement.

Colonel (Res.) Shaul Arieli of the Council for Peace and Security, one of the framers of the Geneva Initiative, says that Israel's actions can be explained in one of two ways - as the deliberate sabotage of a future final-status agreement, or as the wanton waste of taxpayer money.

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Last update - 10:30 11/05/2009

Obama is changing the rules of Mideast pressure

By Akiva Eldar

It is not hard to imagine what a tumult it would stir in Jerusalem if the United States decided to temporarily ease the pressure on Iran regarding its nuclear program. Or if President Barack Obama ordered a freeze, for the time being, on the sanctions against Syria. God help the U.S. administration if it even considers lifting the boycott on the Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip before the Palestinian group agrees to a two-state solution within the 1967 borders. And how nice that Congress is delaying the emergency assistance package to the Palestinian Authority until a new government is formed in Ramallah, in order to ensure that it's one we like.

International pressure on neighbors has always been a welcome and even essential tool. Without pressure from the outside why would Iran give up, voluntarily, its nuclear capability? If the United States does not pressure Syria to disengage from terrorist groups, what reason does Damascus have to clash with Hamas and Hezbollah? Were it not for the pressure applied by the Reagan administration on the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian National Council would not have declared a cessation of the armed struggle against Israel and would not have adopted UN Resolution 242. Presumably Benjamin Netanyahu will not complain about pressure that the Obama administration might apply against the Palestinians; for example, to push them to recognize Israel as a state of the Jewish people.

However, the legitimacy of international pressure comes to an end when it has to do with Israeli interests, or more precisely, with what the politician at the wheel perceives as Israeli interests. Why should the European Union pressure Netanyahu to resume the negotiations on a permanent settlement? Where did this audacity come from, to condition upgrading ties with Israel on the commitment of its government to abide by a two-state solution? What are they thinking? Are we Arabs? When Israel promises the U.S. president to evacuate outposts and freeze settlement activity, it does not need any pressure to keep its promises. In our case, our word counts for something.

Like a spoiled child, Israel is in no rush to willingly surrender real estate it holds and has settled for decades. (A survey by Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal and Dr. Eran Halperin found that 53 percent of Israelis consider the West Bank liberated territory and only a minority sees it as occupied territory?.) Even though the threat of Israel becoming a binational or apartheid state increases annually, such pressure is insufficient to make it pull out of the territories. Israeli decision makers have decided to give up the territories only if the price of the status quo, in foreign currency, is much higher than the price they will have to pay in local currency for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of settlers and the division of Jerusalem.

Obama had already announced during the campaign for the presidency that a "friend of Israel" is not, in his opinion, synonymous with being a Likud member. In his first days at the White House he has made clear that whether a two-state solution is acceptable to a Likud government or not, that is the only formula up for negotiation. Moreover, according to Quartet envoy Tony Blair, the establishment of a Palestinian state is considered a U.S. national interest in Obama's eyes. This means that pressure on Israel to end the conflict with the Arabs will certainly not disrupt efforts to pressure Iran to halt its nuclear program, and may even contribute to it.

President George W. Bush enjoyed the title "friend of Israel" because he made do with paying lip service to pressure on Israel and passed around documents that lacked teeth. He taught the Israelis that it is possible to behave contemptuously and make a laughingstock of the road map, all the while preserving a most important strategic asset - special ties with the United States. Obama has already managed to alter the rules of the game of the U.S. in the Middle East; everyone, with no exception, is welcome to choose between understandings and sanctions, between carrots and sticks.

The question is not whether Obama will pressure Israel; the pressure is already there. There were times when an invitation to an Arab leader to Washington before an invitation to an Israeli prime minister was considered a serious offense. Once a visit by an American president to a neighboring Arab state, without a promise to also come to Israel, was interpreted as serious pressure.

The repertoire of pressure available to the president of the United States is extensive and multifaceted. It looks like we will have to learn about it the hard way.

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Last update - 05:26 14/05/2009

Ex-diplomats, U.S. Jews urge Obama to push two-state solution

By Natasha Mozgavaya, Haaretz U.S. Correspsondent

A number of leftist Jewish groups and former diplomats have urged United States President Barack Obama to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming visit to Washington.

Four former U.S. ambassadors and officials of a left-leaning Jewish organization sent a letter to Obama on Wednesday asserting that there was a broad consensus within the American Jewish community and among policymakers in support of an active U.S. role in assisting the sides to reach such a solution.

"We believe that this formula both advances America's interests in the entire Middle East and is the best achievable means of ensuring Israel's survival as a Jewish state and a democracy," they said in the letter, which is expected to be published this week in the New York Times.

The former envoys are: Samuel W. Lewis, former ambassador to Israel; Robert H. Pelletreau, Jr., former ambassador to Egypt; Thomas R. Pickering, Jr., former ambassador to Israel and Jordan; and Edward S. Walker, Jr., former ambassador to Israel and Egypt.

They also called for an immediate renewal of U.S.-mediated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a freeze on West Bank settlement construction, the immediate reconstruction of Gaza and the cessation of Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis.

The letter's other signatories were all officials at the Israel Policy Forum: Peter A. Joseph, President; Nick Bunzl, Executive Director; and Larry Zicklin, Chairman.

The dovish Jewish dovish lobby J Street, meanwhile, has launched a petition urging Obama to ignore calls to "go slow" and take a "hands-off approach" to Middle East peacemaking.

"This Administration's first year is crucial to promoting peace in the region - and the President needs to know that he has strong support in Congress if he chooses a path of leadership and real action," the group says in the petition.

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Last update - 18:33 13/05/2009

U.S. man sentenced for stealing NGO funds for Palestinians

By The Associated Press

The former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine has been sentenced to eight months in prison Wednesday for stealing more than $100,000 in contributions to the nonprofit.

Raafat Dajani admitted he had intercepted donation checks and deposited them in a bank account he secretly set up, as well as forging his boss' signature on thank you letters.

The scheme went on from 2004 to 2008, when the group's president confronted Dajani. He admitted his crime and immediately began paying back the $107,520 he took, with $14,000 left as of Wednesday.

His attorneys argued for probation because of his cooperation and remorse. Dajani, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen born in Kuwait and raised in Lebanon, cried in court as he asked for a second chance.

But U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the length and sophistication of the crime warranted time at a minimum security prison.

Dajani said he was ashamed of his crime and determined to atone for it. He said he had overcome difficult circumstances before, including growing up without a father in Lebanon's civil war and immigrating to the United States, and hoped to overcome the felony conviction as well. He said he would always live with a feeling of shame indelibly stamped on my soul.

Friedman said it was difficult to sentence Dajani to prison, even more so after hearing him speak, but he believes that white collar criminals deserved to be punished along with street criminals.

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Last update - 17:32 13/05/2009

Australian Holocaust denier sentenced to prison

By The Associated Press

An Australian who has denied the Holocaust occurred was sentenced Wednesday to three months in prison for defying an order to stop publishing anti-Semitic material on his Web site.

Fredrick Toben remained free after the sentencing, however, because the judge gave him two weeks to lodge an appeal.

Justice Bruce Lander of the Federal Court found Toben, 65, guilty of 24 counts of contempt of a 2002 court ruling that barred him from publishing anti-Semitic material on the Web site of his organization, the Adelaide Institute.

The material found to be in breach of the order included suggestions the Holocaust did not happen, that questioned whether there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, and that challenged the intelligence of Jews who questioned Holocaust deniers' beliefs.

Toben said the ruling was a defeat for free speech.

"I am quite prepared to sacrifice my physical comforts for the sake of free expression," Toben told reporters outside the court.

Toben last year avoided prosecution in Germany on a Holocaust denying charge when a British court ruled against extraditing him after he was arrested in London on a German warrant. Prosecutors said at the time they still wanted to pursue the charge.

Toben was previously arrested while traveling through Germany and convicted by the Mannheim court of Holocaust denial in 1999. He served seven months in prison before being released.

The case against Toben stemmed from allegations made by Jeremy Jones, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, who welcomed Wednesday's ruling as a victory against the vilification of minorities online.

In Australian law we have very open debate on most subjects, but that debate does not include a right to insult and abuse and humiliate people based on their race and ethnicity, Jones told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Toben participated in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2006 conference called to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place, where he argued the Auschwitz death camp was too small for the mass murder of Jews to have been carried out there.

He suggested only 2,007 people could have been killed at the camp.

Researchers estimate that between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people - mainly Jews - were killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis. In total, six million Jews were killed in the genocide.

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Last update - 18:46 12/05/2009

Facebook about-face: Site won't ban Holocaust deniers

By Haaretz Service and DPA

The popular social networking site Facebook will not disqualify users who use the site as a forum to deny the Holocaust, a spokesperson for the company told an Internet tech blog on Tuesday.

Responding to widespread indignation, Facebook appeared Monday to have taken down several Holocaust denial sites, though several others were still viewable.

The move came after a Facebook spokesman had earlier declined to shut down the Holocaust denial groups with names like Holocaust: A Series of Lies, Holohoax, and Holocaust is a Myth. While these sites were still live on Monday, others were deleted, including: Based on the facts ... there was no Holocaust, and Holocaust is a Holohoax.

But on Tuesday it seemed as if the company was making an about-face. "Denying the Holocaust is not a violation of our terms," Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt told the website Techcrunch.com

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a Jewish former Harvard University student.

"We abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant," a spokesman said over the weekend. "Just being offensive or objectionable doesn't get it taken off Facebook. However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas, and we want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed."

Dallas lawyer Brian Cuban went public with Facebook's policy late last week, prompting outraged responses from across the internet. Many people pointed out that earlier this year the site had in fact used its power to ban pictures of breastfeeding.

"Jew-haters welcome at Facebook as long as they aren't lactating," the influential blog techCrunch noted in a headline.

Facebook Product Manager Ezra Callahan was cited by techCrunch as defending the company's policy.

Facebook Spokesman Randi Zuckerberg referred critics of the policy to an article written by Callahan on the subject:

Facebook is a "company run by a prominent Jew" and can't "possibly show preferential treatment to one offended group over others," Zuckerberg cited him as saying. According to Zuckerberg, Callahan himself is Jewish.

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Last update - 03:34 12/05/2009

Survivors angered by pope's 'lukewarm' Yad Vashem speech

By Jonathan Lis, Nadav Shragai, Jack Khoury and Cnaan Liphshiz

The speech by Pope Benedict XVI Monday at Yad Vashem drew criticism from staff members of the Holocaust memorial, who described it as disappointing and lukewarm.

The chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Avner Shalev, said he expected the pope, "who is a human being, too," to draw on his personal experience to issue a stronger condemnation of Nazis and Germans, who were not directly mentioned in the speech. The pope grew up in Nazi Germany and served in both Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht, before deserting from the army in 1944. Shalev, however, said the speech was "important," especially in its criticism of denial of the Holocaust.

The pope spoke at length about the importance of remembering the victims of the Holocaust. "One can rob a neighbor of possessions, opportunity or freedom. One can weave an insidious web of lies to convince others that certain groups are undeserving of respect. Yet, try as one might, one can never take away the name of a fellow human being," he said.

"May the names of these victims never perish! May their suffering never be denied, belittled or forgotten! And may all people of goodwill remain vigilant in rooting out from the heart of man anything that could lead to tragedies such as this!"

The chairman of Yad Vashem, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor, complained of the pope's usage of the word "millions" instead of the more specific "6 million" when speaking of the Holocaust's Jewish victims, as well as over his use of the word "killed" rather than "murdered."

"There's a dramatic difference between killed and murdered, especially when a speech has gone through so many hands," Lau said.

Lau also said that the speech "didn't have a single word of condolence, compassion or sharing the pain of the Jewish people as such. There was a lot about the pain of humanity, cosmopolitan words," Lau said. Lau, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and a former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, also described the speech as "beautiful and well scripted and very Biblical," however.

Some of the Holocaust survivors chosen to shake hands with the pope at the ceremony also expressed mixed feelings about the pontiff's speech.

"It was exciting to meet with the most important dignitary of the Christian world, and his coming to speak at Yad Vashem is very meaningful," said Avraham Ashkenazi, who as a 4-year-old boy in Nazi-occupied Greece attended church with his parents, who pretended to be Christian in order to survive. "But he's not all innocent, he was in the Hitler Jugend and the Wehrmacht. He might not have had a choice, although his father opposed the Nazis."

Other survivors were less critical. "People who expected the pope to apologize or change his mind demonstrated a poor understanding of diplomacy and the Catholic church," said a founder of the the Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims' Assets, Avraham Roth, who attended the ceremony.

Later yesterday the pope met with the parents of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. He promised to do everything he could to obtain a sign of life from him and to aid the negotiations for his release. The Shalits told the pope they were disappointed with the conduct of the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose delegates have not visited Gilad. They gave the pope a copy of the children's book written by their son before his capture, translated into Italian especially for the pontiff and inscribed in Gilad's name.

Meanwhile, police declared a "zero tolerance" policy regarding any attempts of protest during the papal visit. In East Jerusalem's Ambassador Hotel, a press center set up by Palestinians for foreign journalists covering the visit was shut down by police, who also dispersed a press briefing conducted there.

In another incident, right-wing Jewish activists protesting near the President's Residence in West Jerusalem were dispersed by Border Police.

Two Jews carrying protest signs near Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem were detained, as was a man who was seen throwing paint at a Vatican flag elsewhere in the city.

The traffic jams in Jerusalem yesterday caused by the papal visit were much worse than police had anticipated. Further congestion is expected tomorrow, when Hebron Road will be closed for the duration of the pope's visit to Bethlehem.

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Last update - 21:56 24/11/2008

Germany pursues arrest of well-known Holocaust denier set free by U.K. court

By The Associated Press

Germany will continue to pursue Gerald Fredrick Toben, a well-known Holocaust denier even after a British court ruled against his extradition and set him free, a German state prosecutor said Monday.

"Toben is wanted on charges of denying the Holocaust for articles posted on his Web site," said Mannheim prosecutor Andreas Grossmann.

Toben was arrested on October 1, on a warrant issued by Germany, at London's Heathrow airport while traveling from the United States to Dubai. But he was released from custody on Nov. 19 after a court ruled that we would not have been able to satisfy the U.K. courts - for jurisdictional reasons - that the conduct amounted to an extradition offense, British prosecutors said in a statement.

Although Toben is Australian and his Web site is hosted there, Grossmann argued that because his Web site is accessible from Germany, he can, by law, be prosecuted for Holocaust denial in Germany.

"England will not extradite him, but we will continue to attempt to have him arrested in other countries," Grossmann said.

Toben was previously arrested while traveling through Germany and convicted by the Mannheim court of Holocaust denial in 1999. He served seven months in prison before being released.

More recently, Toben participated in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 2006 conference convened to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place, where he argued the Auschwitz death camp was too small for the mass murder of Jews to have been carried out there.

The 64-year-old suggested only 2,007 people could have been killed at the camp. Researchers estimate that between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people - mainly Jews - were killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis.

Toben's attorney did not immediately return calls for comment on Monday. But a statement from his Web site said that he will "proceed with his historical work secure in the knowledge that despite the perfidy of British politicians, the London courts have rescued their country's honor and preserved the proud heritage of Magna Carta."

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Last update - 23:34 10/05/2009

Pope fever hits Facebook with new Holy Land quiz

By Haaretz Service

Just in time for Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Israel this week, the Consulate General of Israel in New York announced the formation of a Facebook application that will allow users of the social networking site to learn about the Holy Land.

View The Pope in the Holy Land in a larger map

In a press release on Sunday, the Consulate General of Israel in New York described the application as "helping users discover the country's holy places and modern sites."

"The application, entitled "Holy Land Trivia: From Creation to Creativity," offers a pictorial encounter with many significant places in Israel, and gives users the opportunity to share their newly-gained knowledge with their Facebook friends," the press release states.

The application, which is non-denominational but especially targeted towards Christians, contains three multiple-choice quizzes about locations in Israel.

At the end of the quiz, users will be able to view their results and post them on their profile and news feed for bragging rights over their online friends.

According to David Saranga, Consul for Media and Public Affairs in New York "the Pope's visit gives us the opportunity to expose people to Israel's historic locations as well as the modern Israel and all its many important sites."

"Many people hear about Israel and the Holy Land in an abstract sense and we want to help develop their connection to the real place. We want to help people on Facebook appreciate the many sites in the Holy Land, including the Temple Mount, Bahai Gardens, and the Bauhaus buildings of Tel Aviv's White City, and share what they learn with their friends," Saranga said.

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Last update - 19:37 10/05/2009

Facebook founder's roommate recounts creation of Internet giant

By Guy Grimland, Haaretz Correspondent

Five years ago, hardly anybody had heard of Facebook. Today, it seems that there is nobody in Israel or the world over who is not familiar with the social networking Web site, which recently crossed the 200 million user threshold. Facebook is estimated to be worth $15 billion after Microsoft bought 1.6 percent stock in the company for $240 million.

Arie Hasit, 26, witnessed the birth of Facebook. He shared the same apartment as Mark Zuckerberg, the site's founder, joined the same college fraternity, and witnessed first-hand the company's initial climb from a dormitory start-up to a dominant mega-monstrosity on the Web.

Hasit grew up in Philadelphia. Since he was young, he dreamed of immigrating to Israel, which he did two years ago. Today he is serving in the Israel Defense Forces Spokespersons Unit. He chose to enlist for a year-and-a-half rather than the six months which are required of new immigrants in his age bracket. Israel is not foreign to him.

"Every summer I was in Jewish summer camp in the U.S. From time to time I would visit Israel."

After completing high school at age 18, he enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied the history of the Land of Israel. "I thought this would make it easier for me after I would get to Israel," Hasit said. "My parents actually thought I should learned computers so that I would work in high-tech when I got here."

Hasit focused his studies on the hip-hop genre in Israel, a subject which would become the topic of his thesis. He met Mark Zuckerberg in 2002 after they had joined the same fraternity which primarily concentrated on activities within the Jewish community.

"We ate Shabbat dinner together," Hasit said. "Every year we raised money for charities in Israel. Mark was one of the members of the fraternity, like many other Jewish students at Harvard."

Hasit, who wears a skullcap, says the 25-year-old Zuckerberg feels an affinity with Judaism. "He fasts on Yom Kippur," Hasit says of Zuckerberg. "Sometimes he would come to the Hillel House, a Jewish organization that ran various activities."

Hasit and Zuckerberg struck up a friendship, though they were not the closest of friends. They later lived together in the college dorms.

"Mark just happened to live in the apartment where I lived in the dorms," Hasit said. "He was in one room while I was in the other. This was a large apartment, we were seven students crammed into five bedrooms. We saw each other every day for a number of hours. When Mark moved into the dorms I was already in my third year while he was in his second year."

Hasit says that Zuckerberg decided one day to build a Web site that would serve as a utility for students at Harvard. "He built the site for fun," Hasit says. "We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was 'hotter' and according to the votes there would be a ranking."

"He only ranked people who received the most votes for being good looking, not everybody," Hasit said. "There were about 1,000 people in all. Within four, five hours the site became so popular that at one point it became impossible to surf the Web on Harvard's Internet server. This was on a Sunday in October 2003."

"The next day, the head of the university denied Zuckerberg access to the Internet. People complained that Mark used their pictures without permission. He apologized and ultimately the university decided not to expel him even though there were columns in the campus newspaper that argued that what he did was completely improper."

Zuckerberg's stunt came at a time when students were appealing to the university to develop a Web site that would include the pictures and contact details of students in dorms. Now they feared that the Zuckerberg episode would compel the administration to shelve the idea.

"Mark heard these pleas and decided that if the university won't do something about it, he will, and he would build a site that would be even better than what the university had planned," Hasit said. "Before founding Facebook, he built the site Course Match which allowed students to find out who among those living in the same dorm are taking what courses, so that they could form study groups."

Zuckerberg started developing Facebook from his modest dorm room. Every visitor who registered at the site received a serial number. The first, second, and third user who registered took up dummy pages. The fourth user was Zuckerberg himself.

The fifth user is Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who also served as the company's spokesperson. Dustin Moskovitz, the third part of the site's founding triumvirate, occupies the sixth user spot. Moskovitz led the technical staff at Facebook before quitting the company to found a start-up in 2008.

Hasit's is the seventh registered user, which in practice makes him the fourth real user to log into Facebook. "Often people ask me how I became the fourth user. Sometimes I tell them."

"Mark came to me on the day he built Facebook, and he said to me, 'Arie, I built this site. I want you to sign up.' And that is how I signed up to Facebook. I put a favorite quote of mine in the profile. I specified my favorite books, which courses I take at Harvard. I uploaded one picture to the profile. There was no Wall. There was no News Feed. There weren't too many things in Facebook, which only began its lifespan on the Web.

"Initially Zuckerberg asked a small group of people to sign up to Facebook. At a certain point he told us to start inviting friends, and that is what we did on the first and second day which the site went up on the Web. We could only invite students enrolled at Harvard. In fact, if you did not have a Harvard e-mail address you could not sign into Facebook. At first, dozens of Harvard students registered. The numbers then reached the hundreds, and by the fourth day it had already reached the thousands. People were very enthusiastic about the site. It enabled them to know who took what courses and to meet new people. It conquered Harvard. In less than a week, some 4,000 students signed up for Facebook."

Hasit recalls how Zuckerberg spent hours in front of the computer. "He studied computers and psychology," Hasit said. "Despite the fact that he developed Facebook, he continued his studies as per usual. His grades were okay. He was even in a relationship with a girlfriend. During Facebook's initial days, the walls in his room were filled with graphs and charts which showed how many people joined on a daily basis, who used what application, and who has the most friends."

"After a few weeks, he decided to open up Facebook to another university. He had two friends, one at Stanford and the other at Dartmouth, whom he asked to promote the site there. He also asked for help from his ex-girlfriend who was a student at Dartmouth."

Facebook quickly attracted a following in other leading universities. "Every user specified which university he belonged to, and that was how he kept in touch with other students at the university in which he studied, but all the networks were under one Web site."

"The graphs and charts in his room became graphs and charts which included statistics from all the universities. At one point he received requests from students at other universities who were not in Facebook to open the site to them as well."

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Last update - 15:03 13/05/2009

OPINION / Criticizing Pope Benedict's Yad Vashem speech misses the point

By Anna Ekstrom

These are strange, almost Kafkaesque times in Europe: Many find it more offensive to call someone an anti-Semite than to act like one and the Shoah has been drafted as a tool of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. Iranian President Ahmadinejad's latest Hitlerian speech got semi-positive reviews in parts of European mainstream press, some of which said he was "sort of right."

A critical mind is one of the most important assets for moral and physical survival - but there are times when one's verbal battles must be chosen with more than usual care. This is certainly true of the pope, whose words in the Holy Land are being scrutinized under a microscope, much like the one needed to read the nano-Bible presented to him by President Shimon Peres.

The pontiff's speech at Yad Vashem on Monday was philosophical. It is true that he did not make apologies for historic crimes in his speech. But he did something else, something urgent: He reminded the world that anti-Semitism is still rearing its ugly head, and he committed the Catholic Church to combating it worldwide - today and tomorrow.

In his speech, Benedict departed from the notion or concept of the name. In Latin, "nomen" means both 'name' and 'word of substance.' According to the Bible, the word preceded matter. The Book of Genesis describes God as a creative author. And the name was so important that Adam's first task as keeper of Eden was to name the creatures.

Faith aside, this imagery is pertinent. We know what results from the reverse of naming. The boy in Imre Kertesz's novel "Man Without a Fate" was defined by others as a Jew. Before then he had been a human being, an individual with a name.

The drowning of the person within the collective was, and still is, a prerequisite for the reification of the human being. Once that is achieved, one ugly connotation after another can easily be linked to the word that labels a mass of nameless entities. Soon enough, you find yourself incapable of recalling that "number so-and-so" was once your neighbor Miriam.

The late pope John Paul II also understood the importance of the name, and lifted individuals out of anonymity. Among them was Edith Zierer, whom he had helped when his name was still Karol Jozef Wojtyla and he was a young priest in Poland. They reunited when he visited Yad Vashem in 2000.

The young Joseph Ratzinger had quite another wartime youth experience, and he lacks his predecessor?s direct link between heart and speech.

But Benedict made some noteworthy clarifications during his Middle East visit. In Jordan, he said that religion, like science, can be perverted for political purposes. The distinction is interesting. Most certainly those hungry for power are opportunistic in their choice of ideological justification; the fact that Nazism used biological theory neither means that Nazism is right nor that biology is to be condemned.

Knowledge, Benedict said, can broaden the mind and lead to tolerance when it is united with faith. The academic attitude is not uncontroversial and it is certainly no guarantee for moral action. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel even said that it was not the scholars who tried to help his family - it was their illiterate housekeeper.

The Bishop of Rome does seem to have chosen the road of reason over that of the heart. But it would be hard to claim that he is not making a supreme effort to explore it for heart-felt causes: to promote peace within and between human beings, and to purify the meaning of vital words such as human, freedom and rights.

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Last update - 10:58 13/05/2009

'Syria willing to resume talks as soon as Israel is ready'

By Haaretz Service

Damascus is prepared to resume indirect peace negotiations with Israel and is waiting for the latter to take initiative, Syria's newly appointed ambassador to Turkey said on Tuesday.

On his first official visit to Turkey, Nadil Kabalan thanked Ankara for its "decent role" in mediating the negotiations, and urged continued participation.

"The ball is in Israel's court right now. Whenever Israel thinks it is ready, then we are ready to talk," Nadil Kabalan told the state-run Anatolian Agency.

Kabalan added that Syria was committed to following "peace as a strategic option," as long as Israel vowed to return land it has occupied in war.

"We have chosen peace as a strategic option and we are determined to go down that road so long as the territories under occupation are returned to their owners," the envoy said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said in March that a clear position by the United States on Israel-Syria peace negotiations was essential to progress in the talks.

We don't expect much, at least in the foreseeable future, within this framework," Assad said. "Especially since [U.S. President Barack Obama] has announced clear positions on Iraq and Afghanistan, but we haven't heard an American position yet on the peace process."

The Syrian leader also reiterated his assertion that Damascus would engage in peace talks with any Israeli government, whatever its political orientation.

Syria has conditioned peace talks on Israel as long as they focused on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

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Last update - 11:12 13/05/2009

Berlin university translates Holocaust archive for students

By Haaretz Service

The Freie Universitat in Berlin on Tuesday launched a project that will give high school students across Germany access to more than 50,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses.

"The goal of our efforts is to sustainably integrate working with the biographical accounts into classroom teachings about National Socialism," said Dr. Ursula Lehmkuhl, Vice President of Freie Universitat. "Nothing may document an era or a historic event more strikingly than personal narrations of the lived history."

The project, called "Witnesses of the Shoah: The Visual History Archive in Secondary Education" provides students access to the video archives of the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California, the project launched by Steven Spielberg that has culled survivors' accounts.

The Berlin university effort has translated the digital archive's English-only user interface and has also established a specially equipped classroom at the Freie Universitat, in which students may view the testimonies with guidance from researchers and experienced instructors.

"The translation of the Visual History Archive interface will facilitate the use of Holocaust eyewitness testimony as a foundation for education, scholarship, and research in Germany," said Kim Simon, Interim Executive Director and Director of Programs at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, during the presentation in Berlin.

She added, "The project may serve as a model for similar undertakings that aim to make the testimonies more widely accessible."