Thursday, November 14, 2024
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Deputy PNC Chairman Denies Draft of Charter

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Deputy PNC Chairman Salim Za’noun denied a report attributed to him which was distributed by the Palestine Ministry of Information that there is a proposed draft for a new Palestinian National Charter. The report appears on the Palestinian Authority’s official Internet Website.

The report is provided as an attachment to an article with the notation “For Further Information, please contact: Walid M. Awad, Palestine Ministry of Information 3.3.97” and introduces the proposed draft by writing that “Palestinian press sources were informed that Deputy PNC Chairman Salim Za’noun instructed a special committee of specialists to draft a new proposal for a Palestinian National Charter.”

Zuhair Sanduka, the Director of International Parliamentary Affairs Department of the Palestine National Council told IMRA from Amman this morning that he was able to bring this information to the attention of Deputy PNC Chairman Salim Za’noun before he left for Gaza and that “Nothing of this report is true. Nothing has been said and his Excellency Za’noun denies that there is any draft of a Charter. He denied such reports in the past and nothing has happened in the last seven months on this matter.”

The text of the item, as it appears on the Palestinian Authority’s official INTERNET WEBSITE, appears below in full.

Palestinian press sources were informed that Deputy PNC Chairman Salim Za’noun instructed a special committee of specialists to draft a new proposal for a Palestinian National Charter.

The following is a draft proposal for a suggested Charter:

  1. Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian people, it is an integral part of the Arab world, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab Nation.
  2. The form of government in Palestine is a parliamentary democracy. The commitment to the charter’s text and spirit is absolute, this will strengthen the unity of the nation, people, and government.
  3. Islam is the religion of the state, and Arabic is its official language.
  4. The Palestinians are the Arabs who were ordinarily resident in Palestine up to 1947, those who were forced to leave and those who remained. All those born to a Palestinian Arab father after that date inside Palestine or outside it are Palestinians.
  5. Palestinians, males and females are equal by law, they have the same rights and duties, any discrimination due to gender, race, religion or language is prohibited by law, as they are equal in their constitutional rights.
    They are committed to the supreme national interest, to the national conduct, in a manner capable of releasing and directing the collective material and spiritual power of the Palestinian people to enable it realize the goals of unity, progress and building of its future.
  6. Coexistence between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people is inevitable, dictating the need for each to be committed to the security of the other, to respect the other’s traditions, way of life, and circumstances.
  7. The Palestinian state will respect the State of Israel, the Palestinian people committed to live in peace and security with Israeli people.
  8. The Palestinian state is a state of law and order in its contempory definition, it is a state for all of its people regardless of the diversification and pluralism that might exist in it. It deduces its power from the practical implementation of the principles of justice and equal opportunity, from the Palestinian people’s participation in making their decisions in a manner capable of bringing about an environment of stability, trust in its future, the eagerness to protect state establishments and institutions, and to be proud of belonging to it.
  9. The need to realize Palestinian national security requires paying special attention to the Palestinian armed forces, to enhance its capability and base, to develop it and to mobilize the resources in its support, to enable it carry out its duties to protect the homeland, and to contribute to its construction and development for the purpose of achieving maximum unity between the Palestinian people in all its segments, the commitment to preserve the security of the people and to protect its achievements.
  10. Complete commitment to the rule of law under the supervision of a Palestinian Independent Judicial Authority.
  11. The principles of free speech will be duly respected. Freedom of opinion and thoughts away from any pressure or intellectual repression is guaranteed.
  12. The Palestinian economy will be based on the concepts of free market economy, it will encourage individual initiatives, protect individual private property. It asserts that the state is the owner of all natural resources and strategic projects, it has the right to administer these resources in accordance with the Palestinian national interest. The state will direct and regulate the economy and will allocate resources according to national priorities.
  13. The state will work towards creating work opportunities for all its citizens, formulate policies, and implement plans to encourage economic growth to enable the creation of real work opportunities, provide an educational system and link it to the contemporary needs of the Palestinian society, and to inject ‘value’ concepts in the workplace.
  14. Unity projects between the states of Jordan and Palestine are very much viable. Achieving a lasting unity requires respecting the will and choice of both Palestinian and Jordanians to bring about a formulae for unity to be modeled upon to encompass the whole Arab nation.
  15. To work towards the establishment of one form of Arab unity, taking into account objective, Pan Arab, and regional considerations, with due regard to the individual country’s characteristics.
  16. Commitment to Arab causes and to Pan Arab priorities, to call for clear individual Arab state’s positions, as clarity of position is indicative of each country’s stand vis a vis its Pan Arab intentions.
  17. This charter can only be altered, adjusted, or modified by a special session of the council called for this purpose and by a two-thirds majority.

For Further Information, please contact:
Walid M. Awad,
Palestine Ministry of Information.

Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)

Letter to the Editor

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Dear David:

Is it possible that you missed Ma’ariv’s 7,000 word feature article on the first face to face meeting between Jonathan and an Israeli journalist in 12 years?

If not, what possible reason can there be for you to continue to defame Jonathan by continuing to run the Ronen Bergman article on your March 3 listings for your website? Enough is enough.

We’ve told you over and over again that the article is nothing but slander and lies that was orchestrated solely for the purpose of silencing Jonathan. As long as that piece continues to run, and you totally ignore Jonathan’s own testimony (Ma’ariv, March 28th, 1997) then one must wonder what your true motivation is, and what credibility the rest of your site has.

This will be our last communication on the matter. It is now between you and your conscience whether you continue to run that defamatory piece.

On behalf of Jonathan and myself,

Esther Pollard

Israel Resource Review awaits a point by point reponse to the allegations made by Bergman in HaAretz, and promises to publish it. To simply ask a media outlet to delete an article by a respected journalist, does not seem to be appropriate to news coverage in a free society.

David Bedein
Editor in Chief
Israel Resource Review

Dilemma and a Constructive Approach … for a change

By
David Bedein
-

There are aspects of this issue that yet to surface in public attention, and very few people work to foster new ideas that will mend fences among Jews at this time.

The Reform and Conservative movements in Israel themselves do not recognize the aberrations of the new standards of American Reform, that now includes some Rabbis who perform interfaith marriages, the majority who recognize people as Jews even if only their fathers are Jewish, and some who allow for same-sex marriages.

These are not the traditional standards that my grandfather taught me when he was an active Reform Jew. And only because Reform has changed my grandfather’s standards, Israel now protects itself by not extending general recognition to all conversions and all standards of Jewish identity.

Secular Israeli society fears that if Reform and Conservative were allowed free reign in Israel, then they would do the same thing that they have done in the US, namely, to abandon principle in favor of “pluralism”.

Imagine what a situation we would face if we would see ads in the Israeli papers here for a “same-sex” wedding at the King David Hotel, an interfaith wedding ceremony at the LaRomme Hotel, and to then to get an invitation to a wedding at the Carelton Hotel to a couple who have no pretensions about being Jewish because only their fathers are Jews.

Reform and Conservative Jews are more than welcome to come to Israel to help Judaize a country that now copes with a strong internal Israeli antisemitic fervor, that was expressed in the previous government, when retired Israel Minister of Education Shulamit Baloney virtually eliminated Jewish instruction from the public education school system, as a result of which we have a new generation of Israeli children who are growing up without any sense of Jewish or Zionist history, let alone exposure to Bible, Talmud or other Jewish sources, even from a secularist point of view.

Tragically, instead of the small Reform and Conservative movements joining with the Orthodox to find ways to reach out to the majority of the Israeli Jewish population who see themselves as “traditional”, if not Orthodox Jews, both the Conservative and Reform movements have joined a coaltion known as HEMDAT, which is currently conducting a vigiorous campaign to force an observant Jew to open the shopping center that he owns on Shabbat. HEMDAT is also working to stop the government from protecting the rights of Jews so that they will not have to work on Shabbat. The previous Israeli government worked to allow new firms in Israel to open their industries also on Shabbat, making it difficult for even traditional Jews who would rather rest one day a week to get a job.

I will close with a practical, positive and constructive suggestion, and that is to weave the best of Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews into informal educational facilities throughout the state of Israel. They would be more than welcome, by Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike.

To relate a short personal and professional account: more than twenty years ago, I ran educational summer camping day programs for junior high school students from religious schools in Israeli development towns. The idea was to enthuse these kids to stay in school and to stay with their Jewish identity. I hired fifteen counselors with experience at Camp Ramah and UAHC, and they worked for two summers in the art of applying the best of their know-how from where they came from. Having children wake up in the morning to debbie friedman songs of prayer and having children write their own poems to God were powerful lessons that these kids never forgot. At the end of the first summer, I was called in by an elderly Yemenite superintendent of religious education at the main office of the Israel Ministry of Education in Jerusalem. I did not know why he wanted to see me. I remember to this day how I opened the door to his office, and how HE greeted me with a warm handshake, asking me if I could get some more counselors like this who worked from their hearts in education. He could have cared less that none of the counselors were Orthodox in practice.

The message is very clear. The non-Orthodox Jewish world can make a deep and serious contribution to Israel. They will be loved, appreciated and not patronized if they do so. That is what KLAL YISRAEL – the people of Israel- should be like.

David Bedein
Media Research Analyst
Beit Agron International Press Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
e-mail: media@actcom.co.il
Fax: (+972-2) 623-6470

Beyond Words

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

The first revelations were reported on the evening of April 10, 1997. The partially decomposed body of Staff Sgt. Sharon Edri was unearthed in the Arab village of Tzurif by the IDF. Sharon Edri, a twenty year-old Jewish soldier who went missing September 9, 1996, was finally found, dead. Although denials of less the than admirable behavior of the Israeli police concerning the Edri case rang throughout the media, the police could not hide from their claims all along that Edri had disappeared for his own reasons and went into hiding due to personal difficulties with army life. The police even suggested that Edri had committed suicide. Regardless of family cries that Sharon was not that kind of young man, the police insisted that they knew otherwise. Now the blue of the Israeli police is red from embarrassment and shame. Why? Two reasons account for the stunningly inadequate conduct of the police, security agents and most government officials (Minister of Defense Yitzhak Mordechai is one exception). The first reason may be expected due to the nature of the Israeli socialist beast, that is to say, the government and its bureaucrats knew the soldier better than his family. However, the second reason (upon which the first reason is primarily based) is totally incomprehensible and key individuals must be held accountable for the supposition that because there was no intelligence reports about terrorist activities, Sharon Edri could not have been a victim of this sort of foul- play. In other words, the absence of any hard data on terrorist activities clearly indicated to these bureaucrats that none existed.

Israeli officials were unwilling or unable to believe that organized terror was thriving under their noses as the hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil, Palestinian security forces looked the other way. There were no intelligence reports of terrorist activities because there was no intelligence. Israel, as a gesture of good-will and trust removed it agents from Palestinian controlled areas leaving those Arabs who cooperated with Israel as canon fodder for the PA “preventive” security forces. Countless Arab informants were massacred at the hands of Arafat’s minions. Israel’s vast web of informational resources came to an abrupt end as Palestinian death squads targeted Arabs cooperating with Israel’s security agents. Israeli pompous certainty that if something was going on, they would know about it, led to their inability to accept the reality that terrorist activity of this kind had not ceased.

The authorities finally learned of Sharon Edri’s tragic fate through what can only be described as a sequence of mishaps on the part of the terrorists. The book on a number of terror attacks remained open with no intelligence information pointing in a particular direction. Israeli security agents were unable to string the pieces together until the Apropo cafe terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv on March 21, 1997 gave the first clue. The bomber, who now appears was not supposed to die in the explosion, was from the infamous Arab village of Tzurif in Judea just outside of Hebron.

Tzurif is infamous because the Arab residents of the village were responsible for the mass slaughter of thirty-five Palmach fighters in the 1948 War of Independence. The result of Tzurif’s butchery in 1948 was the loss of the Gush Etzion settlement from Israeli control. The “Lamed Hay Battalion” (thirty-five), was to bring supplies to Jews under siege by troops of the Jordanian Legion, they never made it and all was lost.

Although Tzurif still remains under Israeli military administration, it took Israeli investigators until April 10th to uncover a fully functioning Hamas cell operating out of the Arab village. The reason the terrorist cell was so difficult to expose was not because of Israeli ineptitude, but because of its blindness. The terrorists were able to move in and out of Palestinian controlled Hebron and Halhoul, well protected by their neighbors and the Palestinian security forces. Israel’s dismantling of its intelligence infrastructure in Judea and Samaria prevented information relating to terrorist activities from reaching Israeli security agents. Oslo was supposed to ensure that Palestinian security forces do the job that Israeli security forces once did. The lack of adequate preventative security measures by the Palestinian para-military police should come as no surprise and the blame is squarely upon the shoulders of Israel for entrusting a sworn enemy with the job of protecting the Jewish people. The Tel Aviv bomber, it ends up, was part of a cell of tens of terrorists responsible for at least eleven Jewish murders and numerous attempted murders going back to November of 1995.

This terror unit kidnapped and brutally murdered Sharon Edri; shot dead Major Dr. Oz Tivon, Sgt. Yaniv Shimmel, Efrat Unger, Yaron Unger, Uri Munk, Rachel Munk, Ze’ev Munk; blew up Anat Rosen Winter, Dr. Michal Meidan, Yael Gilad and injured 49 others as Israel, with its Oslo preoccupation, sat idly by. All this while the “peace process” was in full-swing and Nobel Peace Prizes were still being fondled by their recipients. Wishing for peace is not enough in the Middle East, in fact, it is criminal when it means the death of Israelis at the hands of their “peace partners”.

Had not Israel unilaterally withdrew its intelligence apparatus from Judea and Samaria, such a horror might not have occurred. Peres, Beilin and company need run to a city of refuge lest the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Sharon Edri hunt them down for the murder of this young man. Television pictures of Edri’s family, still hoping their son and brother would return for Passover, can never be expressed in words as they received the news of their loved one’s murder at the hands of ruthless terrorists.

A commission to prosecute the crime of genocide need be convened against those responsible for what in years past would have been terrorist atrocities quickly halted by bullets of undercover Israeli security agents. How many of the known Jews murdered by the Hamas cell could have been saved? Jewish blood covers the hands of all those involved, both the Arab murderers and the Jewish collaborators. While Israel found a pact with the devil, satan’s agents were busy sacrificing Jews upon the alter of their aspirations to wipe out the entire Jewish nation.

Every Jew must be sickened by the revelation that as Israel let down its guard, terrorist utilized the opportunity to kill. The Arab/Islamic plan is no less than genocidal and the Israeli lackeys that allowed this heinous force to exercise its will are guilty of the worst form of collaboration. The vile nature of this crime is unspeakable. The righteous indignation of the Israeli “peace” proponents only compound their collective guilt, making their behavior beyond words. Not only must Oslo and the “spirit of Oslo” be immediately abandoned, but all those responsible should be forced to account for their actions.

A call of sanity, of normalcy, of self-preservation necessarily must be sounded from every corner of the Jewish world. Not one moment longer can the Jewish people allow the obscenity of the “process” to continue. The “new chances” and “rare opportunities” for peace that rock the Israeli/Jewish body politic every few weeks as part of the “process” are nothing more than ruses in the continuing battle to destroy the Jewish nation in the Land of Israel. Nothing has changed in Tzurif just has nothing changed in the Arab desire to rid the Land of Israel of the Jews. There exists a hatred that runs deeper than peace and economic prosperity. This is the lesson of the infamous Arab village of Tzurif and Israel must now learn it.

Dr. HaKohen is the head of B’tzedek

Beit Tzurif: Candidate for “Collective Punishment”?

By
David Bedein
-

Two weeks ago, there was a discussion about the morality of collective punishment in the context of the latest wave of terror attacks in Israel.

The town of Beit Tzurif, located next to Cfar Etzion, just south of Bethlehem, on the road to Tel Aviv, has given full and complete support to the murders of Israeli citizens that have been performed by at least 18 of its residents.

Every journalist who has visited the town is amazed by the sight – children, old people, women, men, you name it – support the killings.

And this is a well-to-do village, not a refugee camp, posesses lands under its ownership and productive fields of fruit trees, while a high percentage of the town works in academia, services and government.

Indeed, the man arrested for masterminding the murders of 11 Israelis and wounding 49 Palestinians is none other than the director of the main hospital in Hebron and a resident of Beit Tzurif.

This town is the same village that “took credit” for massacring the 35 Haganah reinforcements to Cfar Etzion in January 1948 and massacring Cfar Etzion AFTER their surrender in May 1948. This is also the home village of Faisel Husseini.

In 1967, Israel Minister of education Yigal Allon, who commanded the Palmach in 1948, suggested hat the IDF raze the village of Beit Tzurif, an idea that Israel Minister of Defence Moshe Dayan rejected.

As things stand now, Beit Tzurif is about to join the Palestine Authority, with the IDF transforming it into another “legally” armed camp of the Palestine Liberation Army, in striking distance of Tel Aviv.

Most people in Israel do not know where Beit Tzurif is – the Israeli media reports that it is in the “Hebron district”, which means “somewhere over the rainbow” to most people.

It is no comfort to note that most residents of the Jewish communities of the Etzion region have no idea where Beit Tzurif is located.

How should Israel cope with a village that is committed to killing Jews?

David Bedein
Media Research Analyst
Beit Agron International Press Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
e-mail: media@actcom.co.il
Fax: (+972-2) 623-6470

Goodbye, Nechama

By
David Bedein
-

Back in 1970, when I was a visiting student at the Hebrew University. thanks to the initiative of Hebrew University educator Mike Rosenak, Prof Nechama Leibowitz was the first teacher whom I met in Israel.

She gave her model Bible lesson, and gave us the ground rules: bring a full Bible to every class, do not chew gum, ask lots of questions, and “call me Nechama”, she would often say, with her perennial smile, beret, and good humor.

“Nechama”, as she indeed preferred to be called, gave lessons in the Great Book to anyone and everyone, always ready to receive invitations to speak, at schools, youth clubs, or in your very home.

Nechama synthesized two worlds as a teacher.

Nechama relied on all the traditional sources – Abarbanel, Ramban, Rashi, and more, yet she made the Bible story come alive with a potpourri of modern analogies, always to make her point.

Who will ever forget Nechama’s unique way of introducing the “Joseph Story” – “Now what was that ‘Jew-boy’ doing in the palace of a king and how did he get there?”

As she did with Joseph, Nechama made each significant figure of each character in the Bible. Often, I would watch her sip tea in the Hebrew University and seek out students to talk with and teach. It didn’t matter who the student was or where the student was from. And outside the University, Nechama made herself wecome in kibbutzim, in Mea Shearim, and in every walk of Israeli life.

Something refreshing at a time of increasing internal Israeli religious strife.

Two experiences with Nechama tell something about her.

Many years ago, when I went to work at a Jewish summer camp in the US, I asked Nechama for advice about preparing the Bible curriculum at the camp. She asked me to meet her right away. I thought that a busy lecturer and author like this would not have the time for such things. Nechama spent the better part of four hours helping me create a curriculum that transformed what might have been a bunch of boring lectures into what we today would become an interactive Torah theatre for children, and the kids loved it.

The other experience that I had was much more personal. I had long ago made a quiet prayer that if I were ever to have a daughter, that they would be able to understand and teach the Torah with the love and the vigor of Nechama.

So, when we had our first girl, eleven months after our first boy, I called Nechama and asked her if she would come and give a shiur in honor of our baby Rivka, on the subject that I had heard her speak during my first week in Israel: Rivka and the attribute of hesed.

At the same time, I asked Nechama if she had any objections to us adding a name in her honor, so that she would be Rivka Nechama. I knew that Nechama did not have any children. Nechama did not hesitate to give her agreement to the gesture, and she also agreed to come to Tzfat for Shabbat.

After word spread in Tzfat that Nechama was coming, more than three hundred people showed up on the lawn of the Wolfson community center, carrying Bibles – at Nechama’s request.

David Bedein
Media Research Analyst
Beit Agron International Press Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
e-mail: media@actcom.co.il
Fax: (+972-2) 623-6470

The Man Who Swallowed Gaza

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-
  • The cement monopoly, The Al-Bahr Company, belongs to Muhammad Rashid, Arafat’s chef de bureau and economic advisor.
  • Palestinian Authority chief Yasser Arafat maintains what people in the know in the territories call “A-Sunduk A-Thani,” Fund B, the Chairman’s second, secret budget in the Hahashmonaim branch of Bank Leumi, only two people, Arafat and Rashid, have the right to sign vis-a-vis this account. Since it was opened in 1994, Israel has transferred at least NIS 500 million – rebates for taxes on fuel paid to Israel for fuel bound for the autonomy – into the secret account in Tel Aviv, which an International Monetary Fund (IMF) internal document states “is not under the control or supervision of the Palestinian finance ministry.”

    The money was used to cover an inflated bureaucracy, fund a fall back plan to relocate Arafat and in the event of a coup, and cover other expenses which the contributing nations would never approve such expenses.”

    The Palestinian Authority put the West Bank under the jurisdiction of Jordanian law of the 1960s, and Gaza subject to Egyptian law of the same time period. The result is that in the territories of the Authority today there is no obligation to register a company, or to compete in tenders; there is no organized system for enforcing or collecting debts; there is no law governing mortgages for housing; no way of documenting joint entrepreneurial initiatives; the list goes on and on.

  • Under the economic agreement between the Authority and Israel, the Authority pledged not to interfere with contracts between Israeli suppliers and Palestinian customers that had been signed before the signing of the Paris protocol. Overnight, the Israeli energy company, Pedasco, found itself without contracts, without customers, and without the equipment it had leased to the gas stations. Instead Dor Energy sells the fuel to the Palestinian monopoly at a certain price, and the monopoly sells it to the station owners at a much higher price.
  • Every merchant and truck owner must pay the preventive security apparatus a tithe to Rajoub or Dahlan in order to proceed at the transit points. Sometimes, its done in a simpler fashion. An Israeli importer of cleaning products, who opened a branch in Gaza, was asked to pay $2,000, a “donation” to Force 17. A year ago, a rich Arab from East Jerusalem was asked to purchase 14 new jeeps, out of his own money, for Rajoub’s organization’s use.
  • Yiftah fuel transport company director Eli Mutai: “It’s not just a question of taxes and monopolies. It is Middle Eastern economics. Nothing works without bribery. Its first and foremost Jibril Rajoub, and then Dahlan. Business there runs smoothly, everyone gets a piece, the people in power receive percentages.
  • Husam Khader, PLC representative from Nablus: “They cut up the pie among themselves. The Palestinian leaders thought that our economy was some sort of inheritance due them and their children. Every honcho got himself a fat slice of the imports into the Authority. One got the fuel, another got the cigarettes, yet another the lottery, and his crony the flour. Gravel is a monopoly belonging directly to the security apparatuses, and they earn a fortune from it that finances their operations.”
  • The monopolies’ activities in several sectors have jacked up the prices to the consumer. Feed for sheep (khalta) sold under Israel’s administration at 120 dinars a ton. Today, the price is 300 dinars a ton. The price of a six-kilogram bag of flour has nearly tripled, from $15 to $40. Khadr does not object to the Authority’s collecting a commission on import taxes. “The problem is that the money does not get to the Authority, and the Authority has no idea of what is happening or what the monopolies’ profits are. Freedom of information. You make me laugh. I could yell in parliament and set up commissions of inquiry, but nothing would come of it. We don’t get the information from the Authority that we ask for. We don’t know how much the monopolies earn, or where the money goes. The senior economists and monopoly owners, especially Muhammad Rashid, are not willing to appear before the parliament; and when they do appear, they just leave unanswered questions behind them — and all this they cloak under the guise of state security, and it’s all classified.”

    According to American State Department reports, 27 monopolies are currently operating in the Authority’s territories. In addition, the Authority issues import licenses to only a few of the applicants. Thus, Nabil Shaath’s Egyptian company imports computers into the territories. Ramallah is the headquarters of Paltech, importers of consumer entertainment electronics (televisions, VCRs), owned by Yasser Abbas (the son of Abu Mazen) and Sami Ramlawi, one of the top officials of the Palestinian ministry of finance were supposedly doing the work for the Authority and selling it equipment, but in actuality, all the work was ours.”

  • Dr. Hisham Awartani: “When it was founded, the Palestinian Authority promised a market economy. In actuality, it is doing exactly the opposite, interfering constantly in private enterprise while its leaders stuff their pockets. We, the Palestinians, have a tendency to blame Israel for all our economic problems. That is a major mistake. We have to blame ourselves as well. First of all, I think we have to get rid of the Authority’s entire economic leadership: Nabil Shaath, Abu Ala, Muhammad Shtiya, Muhammad Rashid. We can’t possibly allow a man like Nabil Shaath, who has such extensive private business dealings in the Authority, to preside over its official economy in a manner that places him in a position of constant conflicts of interests. We cannot possibly take such an ineffectual economics minister [the reference is to Mahr al-Mitzri]. They have all failed. They must all go home.”

    It is possible to enter into an agreement with a senior official to agree on the import of a certain product into the territory of the Authority in amounts much greater than the needs of the local market. The Authority will get the full amount of the taxes from Israel, and kick some of it back to the importer. This way, the Authority earns money on merchandise that was never marketed in its territory, while the importer, who has gotten back some of the duties he has paid, can sell his goods at a very cheap price on the Israeli market. Yoni Shastovich, the importer of Gillette products in Israel estimates that approximately 10% of Gillette’s turnover in Israel, which was previously his alone, has been captured by merchandise that comes back from the territories to be sold in Israel.

This Song Must be Stopped

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

It is estimated that the market for pirate recordings in Israel has reached NIS 250 million while the legal market is NIS500 million. Israeli, Palestinian and Eastern European criminals have joined forces to turn the autonomy into the source for pirated music. Factories in Ramallah, Hebron and other locations produce virtually identical copies of the original recordings. The factory in Ramallah is owned by the family of the mayor. While there are heavy pirate music sales in Saturday markets in Israeli Arab cities where Israelis can buy recording sometimes by weight, the copies are also now making their way into the regular stores. The music industry fears that soon the pirating will collapse the market.

“Kill & Run” Precedent of the Oslo Accord?

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

The March 21, 1997 explosion at a Tel Aviv cafe once again brought the issue of terrorism to the forefront of the peace process.

In order to allay Israelis’ fears and resume negotiations, both Netanyahu and Clinton have demanded that Arafat take a stronger initiative against terrorism, resulting in the arrest of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists.

The arrests are meant to demonstrate that Arafat is committed to eliminating terrorism. However, both Israel and the United States have refrained from issuing a greater demand on Arafat, a demand which would have a much greater effect in demonstrating that Arafat no longer tolerates violence: arresting and handing over to Israel the Palestinian terrorists who have committed murder within the areas of Israel’s jurisdiction and taken refuge in the areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian autonomy

Under the terms of the interim agreement the PA is obligated to comply with Israeli requests for the transfer of suspected killers.

Israel has already made 27 such requests. Not one has been honored.

Yet while the PA clearly is culpable of violating an important part of the Oslo accords, Israel cannot place responsibility entirely on the Palestinians.

Yet in some cases in which Israelis were murdered by terrorists who then fled to the Palestine Authority, the government has never issued any demand that the killers be arrested, let alone handed over.

In light of such a lack of committment on the Israeli side, the Palestinian response is less than surprising.

Perhaps the Israeli government’s attitude towards Palestinians who murder Israelis and then find refuge in the Palestine Authority was best typified by MK Michael Eitan, the chairman of the Israel Knesset Coalition,who referred to the murder of Yakov Yamin, a sixty year old Israeli whose killer fled to Bethlehem and promptly received a warm reception, as a “small infringement.”

Such a cavalier response by an MK to a murder may be surprising. However, politicians would not make such comments, nor would the government treat the matter so lightly if the population as a whole felt differently.

The murder of Yaakov Yamin occurred on the day of the Hebron agreement between Arafat and Netanyau, and it quickly escaped public attention.

So when Rabbi David Foreman, a leading member of Rabbis for Human Rights, was asked about the case of Yaakov Yamin, he simply blurted out, “who?” Rabbi Foreman said that despite the PA’s inability of keeping convicted killers behind bars, (Ten Palestinians recently convicted in the Palestine Authority of killing Israelis are now serving in the Palestinian Preventive Security Force) the Rabbi said that he did not have a strong opinion on whether Yamin’s killer should be turned over to the Israeli authorities. “I’m not big on double standards,” he said, noting the case of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, a leader of the Hebron Jewish community who received a light sentence for killing a Palestinian after his car had been stoned. Other human rights groups seemed to apply a similar “two wrongs make a right” approach in dismissing charges against the Palestinian judicial system. A staffer for B’Tselem, a group that monitors both Israeli and Palestinian human rights violations in the West Bank, stressed that both sides have failed to administer justice in a fair manner, saying that she doubted whether a Palestinian could receive a fair trial within Israel, adding that B’Tselem does not involve itself in matters which it considers to be of a primarily political nature and not directly relating to human rights.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Bat Shalom, a human rights peace group dedicated to protecting rights of women, said it was insincere for Israel to pretend that it was innocent in such a matter, since in the past Israeli courts have released Jewish killers. Bat Shalom, she said, cannot address “every” legal issue of the Oslo process, although she defended her group’s decision to support the release of a group of Palestinian women prisoners, including convicted murderers, because Israel is legally obligated to do so by the Oslo accords. She said that Bat Shalom had no position on the matter of the PA turning over killers, even though this remains part of the accords. “I’m sure there are people that take care of that,” she said.

The widely held assumption that the Israeli government makes every possible effort to get justice for the murder of its citizens is far from the truth. Despite Justice Minister Tzachi Hanegbi’s March, 1997 tough posturing – he threatened to “send Arafat back to Tunis if the peace process broke down” – HaNegbi failed to ask his counterpart, PA Justice Minister Abu Medein, to investigate Yamin’s murder as well as the May, 1996 murderer of 16-year old David Boim nor the mastermind of the October 1994 abduction and murder of 19 year-old Nachshon Wachsman.

Boim and Waxman were American citizens. In a letter to President Clinton, U.S. Representative James Saxton of New Jersey asked the president if the arrest of Mohammed Deif, the man behind the Wachsman killing three years ago, remained a top priority. Saxton mentioned the public promise that Clinton gave to Wachsman’s parents at Nachshon’s grave in Jerusalem, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk, mentioning that Israel did not have to make any further concessions until Deif was in custody. However, when Indyk’s spokesman was asked about Deif, he refused to comment, claiming that “he had not seen the letter” that Saxton had also forwarded to Indyk. Another State Department official said that the U.S. was making efforts to locate Deif, who is believed to be living in Gaza, and that the killer of David Boim was in custody. When asked if he could provide any letter that detailed the United States’ attempts to locate Deif, or evidence pertaining to Boim’s killer’s arrest, he would not do so. Was any such request ever really made by the American government to Yassir Arafat?

The reluctance of United States and Israeli officials to pursue the matter of Palestinians who murder Israelis and find refuge within the PA may result from their unwillingness to do anything that might disturb the peace process.

Speaking at an Israeli Labor Party sponsored press briefing at the Knesset, Hebrew University Professor Ehud Sprinzak, a respected Israeli intelligence expert, said there was no point in trying to force the PA to hand over terrorists. Sprinzak’s remarks show a certain prioritization. Not angering Arafat takes on a greater importance than protecting individuals from terrorism. “It doesn’t mean a great deal to the peace process,” said Sprinzak, dismissing the significance of the PA’s failure to fulfill its committments under the Oslo accords.

One wonders when Israel’s citizens will begin to put as much importance on human life as its government and the United States put on the peace process.

The question remains:

Will Palestinians feel free to kill as many Israelis as they like, since neither the American or Israeli government will take any real action if they do so?

The “kill and run” principle remains a relatively unknown precedent of the Oslo peace accords.

Where are the human rights groups? Where are those who advocate adherence to the Oslo accords?

David Bedein
Media Research Analyst
Beit Agron International Press Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
e-mail: media@actcom.co.il
Fax: (+972-2) 623-6470

Rabbis Who Masquerade AFTER Purim

By
David Bedein
-

Once in a while, an eccentric person walks into the press center in Jerusalem, going from one news agency to another, telling you that he is something that he is not. Sometimes he tells you that he has met Moses or Jesus, sometimes he tells you that he has seen the Messiah. Sometimes he tells you that he is the Messiah. The standard attitude to these visiting sources from outer wherever is to write their stories on a proverbial yellow pad and show them the door.

A few years ago, a certain Rabbi wandered the press center, claiming to represent all Orthodox Rabbis in North America. He was carrying stationary to prove it, he said. He carried with him a number of proclamations from all the “leading” Rabbinic authorities around the world – that Israel must immediately annex Judea and Samaria, expel the Arabs, and declare that any Jew who was not an observant Jew to be declared invalid to participate in the government of Israel. I wrote down his story and showed him the door. This Rabbi was persistent, insisting that I organize a press conference for him. I only got rid of him when he realized that press conferences cost money, and, well, he did not have any money to pay for it. He left me his card and his letter of reference from some unknown Rabbinical organization. And then I noticed something funny. He was carrying Rabbinic stationary with most of the Rabbis on the letterhead who are no longer of this world.

I thought that was that and that I wouldn’t hear from this joker again. When I got home that night, I was more than surprised to turn on the radio newsreel and hear this Rabbi giving press interviews to the Voice of Israel. he had managed to convince the night editor of Israel radio that HE was the voice of American Orthodox Jewry. And then I saw him pop up on a few of the wire services. And then he was featured in a few Orthodox-owned newspapers. He only stopped his schvung when he could no longer pay his hotel bill. I know because a friend of mine was the hotel manager who called the next day with an amazing story: a Rabbi was staying at the hotel wanted the Chief Rabbinate to pay his bill but they nothing about him, so the Rabbi mentioned that the reporters at Beit Agron press center vouch for him.

The hotel sent him packing, which is what the press should have done, but he was so articulate, so genuine, and he made such a good story.

The Rabbi made one more visit to the press center, this time leaving his picture because he wanted a “shiduch” – a match made in heaven for this devil who was 40+.

I didn’t hear from this “Rabbinical source” for quite awhile. I can’t say that I missed him.

And then, the night of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, that same Rabbi was on all the prime time radio and TV programs in New York, and quoted in the New York Times, expressing joy and praise at the news of Rabin’s death. Once more, the Rabbi was saying that represented the biggest organization of American Orthodox Rabbis.

In the aftermath of the assassination, the same Rabbi, again on a roll, went one step further, claiming to know one Moshe Gross, a Rabbinc student who had raised half a million dollars for the YIGAL AMIR LEGAL DEFENCE FUND. A cooperative media in shock picked up on the Moshe Gross story and published it all over the world. The New York Times, the Israeli consulate in New York, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and many others publicized the fund as fact, although nobody had met Gross and nobody had seen any bank statement. The Rabbi had a way to convince people. He simply faked another voice, claiming to be “Gross in hiding”, and gave tens of interviews to hungry reporters who were ready to hear about an Orthodox Jewish conspiracy to kill Rabin & protect his killer.

The Rabbi went one step further – he fabricated a tape recording on a telephone line in Brooklyn that advertised the fact that Yigal Amir sought a “shiduch”, a match that would marry the assassin while he served his life sentence. That tape played on Israel radio and Israel TV, with the number for young eligible ladies to call.

And, you guessed it, women who called the line got a call back from the horny single Rabbi who was “available”. If you can’t love the nut you want, love the nut you’re with.

After some reporters smelled a rat, the Rabbi again disappeared from the public eye.

Well, the Rabbi resurfaced.

While discrete discussions were underway in the Israeli Knesset to try to organize a compromise between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Knesset members over new proposed religious identity legislation, the same Rabbi Of Fraud appeared in the office of one of the major wire services in New York at the end of a work day, with his Rabbinic proclamation that declared that anyone who was not Orthodox was simply not Jewish. The release was carried on all major wires, having an immediate international lightening effect, and the story was headlined up as a serious news item by the hundreds of member syndicates of New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and many others, as it reverberated to the Israeli news services, and bounced back to the US with seeming Israeli verification, as the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jewish movements shried with justified anger and repulsion.

Later the next day, the three authentic Orthodox organizations in the US and Israel denounced the initiative. However, the damage was done. As my grandmother used to say, you never get more than one chance to make a first impression.

Any Orthodox denial of the story simply gave the news item more attention and credibility, as the wily Rabbi continues to flood the wire services and every possible media outlet with faxes of his Rabbbinic decree with his proclamation of excommunication… to a media and public that is ready to believe and swallow this garbage.

The Rabbi plays the stereotype of Orthodox Jews that the Jewish and Israeli public would like to believe, and the Rabbi knows how to play the press for what it is worth.

What will it take to convince the reps of the non-Orthodox Jewish movements of fraud? Does it matter? One of my colleagues who fundraises for the Movement for Conservative Judaism in the US confides to me that he makes his best money when Orthodox Rabbis mouthe off like this, and that he expects the money to flow thanks to a certain Rabbi with diarreaha of the mouth.

David Bedein
Media Research Analyst
Beit Agron International Press Center,
Jerusalem, Israel
e-mail: media@actcom.co.il
Fax: (+972-2) 623-6470

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