Jerusalem – Amnon Rosenberg, 51, father of three, was killed and three wounded Thursday morning when a mortar fired from northern Gaza hit a manufacturing facility of the Nirlat Group on Kibbutz Nir Oz in the western Negev.

The mortar shell crashed into the kibbutz factory, claiming the life of Mr. Rosenberg, a member of the kibbutz since 1982.

Five other employees sustained shrapnel wounds and were evacuated to the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba for treatment.

Hamas, in a statement issued on its official Web site, at ww.alqassam.ps, issued a statement that its “Qassam Brigades launched a mortar shell at Nir Oz settlement” and that a “Zionist settler was killed.”

An IDF helicopter hit a Palestinian rocket launcher as he was attempting to fire another Qassam toward the western Negev region.

Abbas Reaches Out To Hamas

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, with whom the Israeli government is conducting intense negotiations, reached out to Hamas on Wednesday, calling for renewed dialogue. Referring to the latest attempt to bridge the rift with Hamas, Mr. Abbas called for “a national dialogue … to end the internal division that harms our people.” In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu commended the call for talks. “We welcome this call by the President Abbas to launch a national dialogue, and we consider it a positive step,” he said.

For more than a year, Mr. Abbas had insisted he would talk to Hamas once it relinquished control of Gaza.

The premise for Israel and the U.S. allowing Mr. Abbas to arm his troops was an explicit understanding that Mr. Abbas would engage in military operations to crush Hamas. Instead, Mr. Abbas and Hamas are aligning themselves against Israel.

Israeli Arab University Students Turn To Radical Islam

The “Akra” student movement, affiliated with the Israeli Radical Islamic Movement, won the elections at the Israel Arab Student Union at Tel Aviv University after receiving about half of the votes cast.

This was the first time it ran at this university and joins the achievements in elections to Arab student unions in other universities. In the elections two months ago at Hebrew University, the “Rasala” party, made up of activists from the Islamic Movement, won seven out of 17 seats on the Arab Student Union. In Haifa, the chairman of the Akra party, Muadj Khatib, won as leader of the Arab Student Union after his party won five seats.

Bishara Believed To Be Recruiting For Hezbollah

Israeli Intelligence believes that Azmi Bishara, the former Israeli Arab Member of Knesset who defected last year, has been involved in recruiting activists into Hezbollah ranks.

This intelligence assessment was cited in a letter sent by Raz Nizari, an aide to the attorney general, to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which is funded by the Washington-based New Israel Fund, a group organized by Jewish Americans.

Mr. Nizari wrote that Mr. Bishara was wanted for questioning in light of his ties with Hezbollah. “According to the information in the possession of Israeli Intelligence Services, Bishara currently has ties with elements that are hostile to the state of Israel,” he wrote.

Israeli intelligence officials assessed that Mr. Bishara’s talks with people in Israel might be exploited to promote hostile purposes, including the recruitment of activists into Hezbollah ranks and the solicitation of other illegal activity.

Israeli Arab Parliamentarian Jamal Zahalka, chairman of the Balad Knesset faction, responded angrily to Mr. Nizari’s letter: “We will continue our relationship with Bishara. The allegation as if he constitutes a threat to Israel’s security is a desperate attempt at intimidation.”

David Bedein can be reached at Media@actcom.co.il. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.