Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Iran: Missiles Can Now Reach 1,250 Miles

Iran:
Iran has increased the range of its missiles to 1,250 miles, a senior official was quoted as saying Tuesday.

The range would puts parts of Europe within reach for the first time. Military experts had earlier put Iran's missile range at 810 miles, which would allow it to strike anywhere in Israel.

'Now we have the power to launch a missile with a 2,000 km (1,250 mile) range,' the news agency IRNA quoted influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying. 'Iran is determined to improve its military capabilities.'

'If the Americans attack Iran, the world will change ... they will not dare to make such a mistake,' Rafsanjani was quoted as saying in a speech at an exhibition on Space and Stable National Security. "

Disband UNWRA (National Post)

The United Nations should disband its main Palestinian aid organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). The agency was conceived almost six decades ago to help Palestinians displaced after Israel's 1948 War of Independence. But it has since become intertwined with some of the most radical elements in Palestinian society. Indeed, UNWRA may in fact be worsening the Palestinian plight by facilitating the four-year-old terrorist war that has so devastated life in the West Bank and Gaza. At the very least, UNWRA's affiliation with terrorists is bringing shame upon the United Nations.

This disgrace has been acute of late. This past weekend, Peter Hansen, UNWRA's commissioner-general, disclosed in a CBC interview that members of Hamas are on the agency's payroll. In May, after Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli soldiers in the Gaza strip, UNWRA ambulances were caught on tape smuggling terrorists out of the area. Late that same month, an Israeli newscast broadcast footage showing armed terrorists using UNWRA ambulances to flee. And last week, the Israeli army released additional footage that depicts more incidents in which UNWRA relief vehicles have been used to ferry terrorists throughout the disputed territories.

UNWRA's complicity goes beyond terrorist ground transportation. On several occasions, UNWRA-administered schools in Palestinian camps have been found to be teaching anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Israeli troops searching Palestinian schools in Ramallah in September, 2002, found classrooms plastered with posters glorifying suicide attacks. The Israeli government and some aid agencies have also concluded that UNWRA turns a blind eye to Palestinian theft of food and medicine destined for refugees from UN warehouses, for sale on the black market.

Mr. Hansen's reaction to such allegations exemplifies the agency's see-no-evil approach: UNWRA may employ Hamas members, he says, but they are not actually terrorists. Rather, they are supposedly from the organization's medical, educational or political wings. It's similar to the line Ottawa used to offer for not outlawing Hezbollah and its fundraisers in Canada: Yes, Hezbollah employs terrorists, the Department of Foreign Affairs would concede, but what Canada is permitting is only fundraising for Hezbollah' 'humanitarian' operations, such as its hospitals and schools.

Canada's government eventually disabused itself of such nonsense, and so should the world community in regard to UNWRA: Though Hamas may operate community services to help build support and spread propaganda, its raison-d'etre has nothing do with healing people, but rather killing them. Hamas observes no hard and fast internal distinctions in its operations, and the organization's ultimate goal -- the destruction of Israel -- remains constant. Every Hamas member drawing an UNWRA salary frees up money in Hamas's budget for terror operations.

In the short term, eliminating UNWRA would pose logistical challenges: Other agencies and nations would have to step in to deliver the humanitarian assistance the agency provides. But in the long term, it would be in the Palestinians' own best interests. When the refugee camps were originally established, the world community imagined they would be temporary -- and that neighbouring countries would soon find a permanent home for their occupants. But Arab nations refused to co-operate, preferring instead to keep the Palestinians locked up as an ongoing diorama of Arab victimization. Thus are Palestinians kept in an endless state of dependency and transience, with many still entertaining delusions that they will someday be allowed to return to their ancestral homes in Israel.

It has long been believed that UNWRA would keep operating until Palestinians and Jews made peace. But given the organization's role in abetting terror, the world cannot wait that long.

Gaza and Fallujah (WSJ Europe)

Another important battle against terrorism is unfolding as Israeli troops fight Palestinians in Gaza to stop them from firing rockets into Israel. The offensive began after an attack killed two Israeli toddlers on Wednesday. In five days of fighting, more than 60 Palestinians, most of them believed to be terrorists, died as the Israelis carved out a security zone.

One of the things that sets this incursion apart from similar Israeli military campaigns in the past is Europe's rather muted reaction. While normally jumping on every opportunity to criticize the Jewish state for trying to protect its citizens, most European capitals have so far remained unusually silent. 'The international response did not rise to the anticipated minimum level of expectations,' Arafat adviser Saeb Erekat complained.

Many Europeans though still make an artificial distinction between Hamas and the global threat of Islamic terrorism. 'It's the occupation, stupid,' is the catch phrase of a worldview that pretends Hamas's quarrel is with Israel's size rather than its existence - even though Hamas has never concealed that its ultimate goal is to destroy Israel.

The decision by Prime Minister Sharon to withdraw all settlements from Gaza - unilaterally and without waiting for a Palestinian partner to emerge to sign a deal - was a further blow to the charade that Hamas's terror was in any way a legitimate resistance to end the occupation. If that were the case, Hamas would stop its attacks now, at least from Gaza.

Hamas's murderous ideology means the oft-repeated mantra that there is no 'military solution' to this conflict is plain wrong. The opposite is true - just as al-Qaeda and its global networks must be defeated, only a military solution can end the Palestinian terror. And thanks to improved intelligence, targeted assassinations, and the security barrier, the Israelis are saying that it can be done.

Just as the Iraqi and American troops in Samarra and Fallujah must be allowed to fight until victory, so must Israel be allowed to finish off Hamas. Without these 'military solutions' there is no hope for peace, neither in Iraq nor between Israelis and Palestinians.

Plans underway to build nearly $3 billion Saudi-Egyptian Causeway - Israel concerned (IMRA)

www.spa.gov.sa/newsview.php?extend.207842

[IMRA: Israeli security analysts raise serious concerns about this project:

1. It would facilitate the movement of military equipment between Saudi
Arabia and Egypt. While in time of war the causeway could be closed down via
military action, such a move by Israel would be itself an act of war, thus
it could be expected that the route could be used to move considerable
quantities of equipment before Israel would act against it.

2. It would facilitate the movement of WMD between Saudi Arabia and Egypt -
until now such movement was limited to air and sea transport.

3. The causeway itself could be used to restrict access to the Israeli Port
of Eilat since movement of vessels over a certain height will require
coordination with those operating the causeway.

4. The presence of the heavy equipment that would be required for such a
project could itself be a security issue for Israel.

One security analyst was pessimistic about Israel's ability to protect its
security concerns associated with the proposed project, noting that when
Egypt installed an extensive radar installation on the tip of
Sharam-al-sheikh in late 2002 (that can closely monitor all Israeli traffic)
and Israel protested to Egypt and to the United States that its protests and
concerns were essentially ignored.]

Cairo, Oct 4, SPA [Saudi Press Agency]-- Egyptian Minister of Transport
Essam Sharaf said the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are planning to set
up a causeway across the Red Sea for linking the Saudi Port of Diba with the
Egyptian Port of Sharam-al-sheikh.

In a press statement here today, he said the implementation of the project
would depend on the technical studies which are already in a progressive sta
ge.

He added that the cost of the project is estimated to be nearly $3 billion.

On completion of the project, it will facilitate transportation of pilgrims,
Umrah (minor pilgrimage) performers, tourists and commodities.
--SPA"

Stretcher or rocket?

But last night, in the wake of media pressure, the IDF had updated its assessment: The officers said the object in the ambulance was a weapon, but nonetheless 'it's impossible to swear' that it wasn't a stretcher.

UNRWA claims it is difficult for one man to carry a Qassam; the IDF experts say the weight of a Qassam-1 is no more than five kilograms.

It seems that analysis of the image relies more on what was going on at the time the images were recorded than on what exactly can be seen in the frame in question.

The series of images, recorded in Jabalya on October 1, shows militants placing an explosive device in a pit under the road, in an attempt to attack IDF soldiers. The UN ambulance is seen nearby. People accompanying the militants who placed the explosive are seen entering the ambulance, carrying the object in question.

The military logic is this: There was no stretcher involved here, and the object displayed in the images is, apparently, a weapon.

The problem facing the IDF is that the eye of the professional and the eye of the average news watcher differ greatly. What appeared obvious to the IDF analyst seemed to the civilian to be an UNRWA man carrying a stretcher into the van.

Israel Blunts Uprising's Impact (washingtonpost.com)

JERUSALEM -- After four years of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, Israel has established dominance on the battlefield, sharply reduced loss of life among its soldiers and civilians, and advanced its own agenda for the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the absence of negotiations to bring peace, according to officials and analysts from both sides.

In a pivotal shift in the conflict, Israel has crippled the effectiveness of the Palestinian militants' primary strategic weapon -- the suicide bomber -- with frequent military operations in the Palestinian territories, assassinations of dozens of militant leaders, improved intelligence, and construction of a massive barrier through and around the West Bank. At the same time, however, Israel's reliance on military options also has killed Palestinian civilians and inflicted hardships on Palestinian communities."

Israel Kills Islamic Jihad Leader in Gaza Strike

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel killed the military chief of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in a Gaza City air strike on Tuesday that drew vows of revenge and could complicate efforts to end a huge Israeli offensive. Awww... - EoZ

Another helicopter missile hours later killed two militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, and wounded four, two critically, in the nearby refugee camp of Jabalya.

Just in case someone thinks that Hansen is not a complete lying Jew-hater....

From the Jerusalem Post, April 1, 2003:

Terrorist organizations in Palestinian-controlled areas, as well as in Syria and Lebanon, take advantage of UNRWA workers and their vehicles to transport arms and terrorists, according to a document drawn up by defense establishment officials.

The document notes that Palestinian terrorists in Israeli custody admitted using UNRWA facilities, equipment, and vehicles to assist in carrying out terror attacks, knowing that UNRWA personnel are able to travel in Israel and Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, without being subjected to security checks.

The report focuses on UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah, 38, a resident of Jabaliyah in the Gaza Strip, who was arrested last August by security forces as he returned from Egypt.

Attalah first began working for UNRWA in 1987 as a director of food supplies for Gaza Strip refugees. He was provided with a UN vehicle and issued a UN laissez-passer that entitled him to unrestricted travel in the region. According to the report Attalah admitted to investigators that he used his car to transport terrorists and arms.

Attalah told investigators that he was repeatedly asked by officials of Fatah's Popular Resistance Committee to drive them in his UN car as it was never subjected to IDF inspections. He also made use of his laissez-passer to travel to Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria where he contacted officials of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, received funds, and transferred arms.

IDF prevents terrorist attack, kills 4 armed Palestinians

Israel Defense Forces troops prevented a terrorist attack in the Negev on Saturday morning when they killed four Palestinians carrying Kalashnikov rifles who had crossed the Israeli border with Gaza near the Nahal Oz area, in the western Negev.
The military factions of Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group affiliated with Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah, later claimed responsibility for the planned suicide attack.

The militants had crossed a security fence under a thick fog. Their infiltration triggered the fence's alarm system, and security forces were rushed to the area.

The group was located some 400 meters inside Israel's territory. The terrorists exchanged fire with soldiers and border policemen in the area and were shot and killed by the troops.

The same battalion which prevented the Negev attack has killed three other militants in the area in the past ten days.

UNRWA chief Peter Hansen 'sure' Hamas members on payroll (Haaretz)

The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Peter Hansen on Monday told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that he was sure members of the militant Hamas organization were on the payroll in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but that he did not "see that as a crime."
UNRWA distributes aid to the Palestinians in the territories and has frequently been accused by Israel of turning a blind eye to terrorist activity.

"Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime," the CBC web site quoted Hansen as saying.

"Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."

Hansen told the CBC, however, that the UN expects all employees to act with neutrality.

"We demand of our staff, whatever their political persuasion is, that they behave in accordance with UN standards and norms for neutrality," he said.

According to the CBC web site, the Canadian government, which donates some $10 million to UNRWA annually, said it would be "deeply concerned" should Hansen's remarks have been taken in context, and said it "will immediately seek clarification from Mr. Hansen directly and from UN authorities."

UNRWA on Sunday demanded an apology from Israel over accusations that Gaza militants used a UN vehicle to transport a homemade rocket.

The world body sought to refute the charges at a news conference in Gaza on Sunday. It showed what it said was the ambulance seen in footage released by the Israel Defense Forces and presented its driver and rescue workers to reporters.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dan Gilerman has sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanding the dismissal of Peter Hansen from his post.

The letter communicates Israel's claim that Hamas is using UN ambulances as a means of smuggling arms and terrorists through the Gaza Strip.

Last Wednesday the Israel Defense Forces relased footage showing what it said were two men loading a Qassam rocket onto a van bearing a large UN logo.

The photographed images, taken from an unmanned plane in the Jabalya refugee camp, were broadcast Friday night on network television. After the object was loaded, the vehicle left the spot. Army sources say that the IDF avoided firing at the vehicle, as it had done in other instances, fearing that it might be a UN ambulance.

But rescue worker Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run with a stretcher to a school in Jabalya on Friday after he heard that someone there may have been wounded. The wounded boy had already been moved by the time he arrived, he said.

"I came back to the car with the stretcher, and I folded it and threw it inside the car," he said. "If it was a missile, I would not throw it into the car but would put it in carefully."

The director of operations for UNRWA, Lionel Brisson, said UN workers do not carry weapons or armed militants in UN vehicles. "We want an apology from the Israelis, because we didn't commit any wrongdoing," he said.

The blurred black-and-white Israeli video showed three men walking toward the UN vehicle, including one who carried an elongated object. The army said the object was a rocket of the type used by militants to target southern Israel.

UN officials said the object was a stretcher, noting that the man in the footage was carrying it with one hand, a difficult task with a Qassam, which weighs anywhere from 5.5 to 35 kilograms.

UNRWA maintains a fleet of ambulances in the Gaza Strip, which are used for evacuating wounded. UN ambulances have been used before to transport armed Palestinians and weapons. Last May similar scenes were documented by the IDF in Rafah and in the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza.

Israel to soothe battle trauma with marijuana

JERUSALEM, Oct 3 (Reuters) Israeli soldiers traumatised by battle with the Palestinians have a new, unconventional weapon to exorcise their nightmares -- marijuana.
Under an experimental programme, Delta-9 tetrohydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient found in the cannabis plant, will be administered to 15 soldiers over the next several months in an effort to fight post-traumatic stress disorder.

Raphael Mechoulam of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the chief researcher behind a project he described as a world-first, said the chemical could trick the brain into suppressing unwanted memories.

For soldiers haunted by flashbacks of traumatic battle experiences, he said, the drug, administered in liquid form, could be the answer to hundreds of sleepless nights.

''It helps them sleep better, for one thing. These people often wake up from nightmares, and experience sweating or hallucinations,'' Mechoulam told Reuters.

The army said civilian and military committees had approved the experiment.

Millions of people, mainly war veterans, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychiatric condition that can develop after experiencing life-threatening events.

Doctors already use so-called medical marijuana to treat nausea among cancer patients, appetite loss among AIDS sufferers and neurological disorders such as Tourette's Syndrome, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

However, Mechoulam said this is the first time THC would be used to treat post-traumatic stress."

Saudi Money behind Madrid bombing (Guardian-UK)

MADRID, Spain (AP) - A Saudi cleric funneled money to an Egyptian described as one of the masterminds of the Madrid train bombings in March, Spanish and Italian newspapers reported Thursday.

The Egyptian suspect Rabei Osman Ahmed, arrested in Milan, Italy, in June on a request from Spanish authorities, identified Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a former university professor in Saudi Arabia, as his financier while he was living in Spain between 2001 and 2003, Spain's El Mundo and Italy's Corriere della Sera said in a joint report.

The March 11 train bombings killed 191 people and have been blamed on Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida.

In a wiretapped conversation before his arrest, Osman Ahmed reportedly said: ``The Madrid attack is my project.''

Palestinians shun intifada rallies (JPost)

A rally organized in Ramallah on Wednesday to mark the fourth anniversary of the intifada was attended by fewer than 150 Palestinians. Similar rallies in other West Bank cities also drew small crowds, prompting journalists and Palestinian political activists to wonder what went wrong.

Organizers said they expected thousands of people of people to participate in the Ramallah rally, which was organized by The National and Islamic Forces, an alliance of Palestinian groups including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

Husam Izz Addin, a reporter with the PA's daily Al Ayyam, pointed out that the low turnout raised many eyebrows in Ramallah. "Many people, including leaders of the Palestinian factions, expressed astonishment at the small number of participants in what was supposed to be a major rally in the center of Ramallah," he said.

He noted that Hamas and Fatah supporters were conspicuously absent from the rally – to the dismay of the organizers.

U.S. Threatens Green Light to Expel Arafat

(News First Class-Hebrew)
Arafat's personal advisor, Nabil Abu Rodeina, received a "cold shower" during his last visit to Washington.
The Arabic newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yom reported this weekend that senior administration officials who met with Abu Rodeina gave him an unmistakable message:
If Arafat fails to implement the commitments he made to the U.S. by the November elections, the administration will remove its objection to his being expelled by Israel.

IAF cameras catch a UN vehicles transporting a rocket for terrorists (JPost)

Israel plans to call for the resignation of Peter Hansen, the commissioner-general of UNRWA in Gaza, after IDF cameras caught Palestinians terrorists apparently using an UNRWA vehicle to transport a Kassam rocket in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF released footage taken by unmanned aerial vehicles showing masked men loading what appeared to be a Kassam rocket into an ambulance marked 'UN' on its roof. The black-and-white footage showed the men driving off in the vehicle inside the Jabalya refugee camp.

Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said he plans to file a complaint with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the matter.
He told Army Radio that the UN was turning into a tool of terrorists instead of fostering peace.
'It is inconceivable that the UN, which is supposed to be spreading peace is being used as a cover for terror,' Gillerman said.

Gillerman specifically cast blame on Peter Hansen, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip. 'He is a hater of Israel. He is the source of the problem. The UN needs to ask if this man should hold such a central position.'
'We view this incident very seriously, and I intend on Monday to turn to the UN secretary-general with a very strong complaint. I will ask that they come to the necessary conclusions regarding UNRWA, to check the incident, and establish a serious committee of inquiry that will get to the bottom of this thing. It is unacceptable that the UN, which is supposed to further the goals of peace, will turn into a shelter for murderers,' Gillerman said.