Israel’s President Shimon Peres, right, shakes hands with Brazil’s Defense Minister Nelson Jobim in Brasilia on Tuesday. (Eraldo Peres/Associated Press)

PUBLISHED:

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2009

Jerusalem – As an integral part of his visit this week to South America, Israeli President Shimon Peres shared intelligence with Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim regarding Iran and Hezbollah being active in the three-way border between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Hezbollah terrorist cells working there are engaging, among other things, in money laundering, arms trafficking, drug trafficking and diamond smuggling in order to finance terrorist activity, according to the information conveyed by President Peres.

Israel warned Brazil and other Latin American countries of Hezbollah’s intentions to perpetrate terror attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets in South America similar to the large-scale, murderous terror attacks that were committed during the 1990s against the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the Jewish community center in that city.

This is the first visit by an Israeli president to Brazil in 40 years.

Upon landing, Mr. Peres received a magnificent reception that included an honor guard, a military parade and a gun salute. Afterwards, Mr. Peres held a long meeting with Defense Minister Jobim, who is considered to be one of the strongest men in the Brazilian government.

Mr. Peres brought three leaders of Israel’s defense industry – the director-general of Israel Aerospace Industries, the director-general of Elbit and a representative of Rafael – to the meeting in order to advance defense deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Brazilian army is currently undergoing a modernization, and Israel’s defense industries wish to take part in this process.

Mr. Peres was invited to address the Brazilian parliament, where Israel’s president made specific reference to the fact that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be visiting Brazil this week. Mr. Peres remarked that he “finds it amazing to come from a nation where it is common to see people branded with concentration camp numbers to address a nation who will hear from another nation’s leader that the mass murder of Jews never occurred.”

David Bedein can be reached at: dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

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David Bedein
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.

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