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1. EU Struggles with Immigration
by Maayana Miskin
Germany's multicultural approach to immigration “has failed, utterly failed,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel in a speech to members of the Christian Democrats party. In the future, immigrants should be expected to integrate into German culture, she said.
While stating that immigrants should be expected to learn German, Merkel cautioned against setting standards too high. “We should not be a country either which gives the impression to the outside world that those who don't speak German immediately or who were not raised speaking German are not welcome here,” she said.
If Germany were perceived as opposing all immigration, it would do “great damage” to the national economy, she said. “Companies will go elsewhere because they won't find the people to work here anymore,” she predicted.
Merkel's speech was seen by many as a gesture to those in her party who have criticized her over the presence in Germany of immigrants who do not wish to adapt to German society.
A recent survey found that almost one-third of Germans feel their country is being “overrun by foreigners.”
Over 16 million of Germany's nearly 82 million citizens are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Four million of Germany's immigrants are Muslim, and the largest immigrant group is Turkish.
Immigrants have won both praise and condemnation. German President Christian Wulff recently declared that Islam “belongs in Germany.” However, months earlier senior Central Bank official Theo Sarrazin said that Muslim immigrants are more likely than others to be “strongly connected” with welfare payments and crime. Sarrazin resigned after his statements created an uproar, but polls found that his views met with significant sympathy among the public.
Sweden: 'Anti-Immigration' Party Grows
In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats won 5.7% of the vote last month, making it into Parliament for the first time. The party takes a strong stance on immigration. It hopes to cut immigration by up to 90%, and has accused Islam of standing in opposition to Swedish values.
Party leader Jimmie Akesson said after the elections, “We won't cause problems. We will take responsibility.”
Akesson denies charges that his party is racist or is against all immigration. He says the Sweden Democrats simply feel that immigration is happening too quickly. “We haven't had the capacity to receive all those who have been let in. We haven't had the capacity to get them out into society, get them to work, to assimilate them into Swedish society,” he told the Associated Press three months before the elections.
2. Iran Becomes President of OPEC
by Chana Ya'ar
The 12 member nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have elected Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer and one of its founding members, to become the organization's 2011 president.
Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi announced Thursday the Islamic Republic would take up the rotating presidency in the 50-year-old organization for the first time in 36 years. Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi was unanimously elected to the position at a one-day meeting on October 14, during the organization's 157th session in Vienna.
OPEC, which provides 40 percent of the world's oil, is comprised of Algeria, Angola, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador and Venezuela.
The group also decided not to make any changes to its official oil production target, currently standing at 24.84 million barrels a day. Current President Wilson Pastor-Morris of Ecuador told reporters after the meeting the decision was made “because the market is good.”
The price of crude has varied between $70 to slightly more than $80 per barrel over the past year and was quote at $81.48 a barrel at the close of Friday's trading,. Strong energy demand combined with an uncertain economic future have prompted OPEC to maintain steady prices, rather than risk slowing a global economic recovery.
3. Interview: 'A Citizenship Law for Jews Around the World'
by David Lev
A change in the citizenship law is welcome, if only because it makes clear – both to Jews and others – that Israel is a Jewish state, says Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, Chief Rabbi of Beit El. But if the Knesset is changing laws, Rabbi Melamed has what he says is a much better idea for legislation – a statute that would confer Israeli citizenship on Jews all around the world.
“Of course, such citizenship would require some action on the part of those accepting it – and it would be limited,” Rabbi Melamed tells Israel National News. “Those accepting the citizenship would not necessarily have to live here, but they should visit Israel on a regular basis and work for the country when they return to their homes. And, they would not be able to receive all the benefits and rights Israeli citizens have, since they do not have the responsibilities of living in Israel.”
Nevertheless, says Rabbi Melamed, granting such citizenship would be a positive thing, both for Jewish communities around the world and for Israel. “It would increase the connection between Jews and the State of Israel, and make clear to everyone that this is a Jewish state.
”The Citizenship Law as proposed – which would require non-Jews seeking to become naturalized Israeli citizens – would have the same effect, making clear to those taking it that Israel is a Jewish state. However, it would not have any halachic (Jewish legal) impact on them. “And of course, we do not discriminate against anyone, and we must treat them with respect and dignity,” Rabbi Melamed says.
But more important is encouraging Jews to strengthen their connection to Israel, Rabbi Melamed says – and a law that grants Israeli citizenship to every Jew would be an excellent way to do this. “Any Jew that visits Israel should be able to become a citizen, at least to some extent. This is the state of the Jewish people,” he adds.
4. International Uproar Over Jerusalem Building Approvals
by Chana Ya'ar
France, Russia and the U.S. are calling on Israel to freeze construction in all areas of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinian Authority for its hoped-for state.
The French Foreign Ministry expressed “deep disappointment” Saturday over a municipal decision to move ahead with the sale of 240 plots of land in the neighborhoods of Ramot and Pisgat Ze'ev. Both neighborhoods are located on the northern edge of the capital.
The Israel Lands Authority and the Housing Ministry together this week announced the sale of a total of 4,000 plots for the construction of housing units, only 240 of which were in Ramot and Pisgat Ze'ev.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero expressed concern that the approval of the tenders would damage chances of renewing direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. “France calls on the Israeli government to reconsider the decision,” he said.
Valero's statement echoed a similar statement made Friday by U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who said the Obama administration was “disappointed by the announcement of new tenders... It is contrary to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties.”
Russia also stated its displeasure over Jerusalem's decision to move ahead with plans to build more housing for its residents. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly wrote on the country's government website, “The Israeli government's plans are perceived with extreme concern and disappointment in Moscow. They contradict international efforts aimed at the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. We consider it important that the sides avoid unilateral actions which may affect the fate of settlements.”
However, U.S. Representative Gary Ackerman (D-NY), meanwhile, bluntly expressed his strong support for Israel's right to build housing in its capital.
“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” said Ackerman, chairman of the U.S. Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. “It is not a settlement. As such, the resumption of construction in Jerusalem is not a justification for a crisis, a showdown, a meltdown or even hissy fit.”
Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Ramot, Pisgat Ze'ev, French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, Gilo and others, which have been home to tens of thousands of residents for more than 40 years, are referred to as “settlements” by the PA .
5. Demand to Retroactively Acquit Har-Shefi
by Hillel Fendel
The anniversary of the late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin's assassination is rolling around once again, and the first issue to surface this time is Margalit Har-Shefi.
Har-Shefi,19 at the time of Rabin's death 15 years ago, was sentenced to nine months in prison for having "known in advance" of Yigal Amir's plans to kill Rabin, yet not divulging them.
Knesset Members and rabbis have begun an initiative on her behalf, asking Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to vindicate Har-Shefi retroactively. Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, head of the Petach Tikva Hesder Yeshiva, explained that he joined the initiative because "of the terrible injustice that was done to this girl. They ruined her life with no justification." Carmi Gillon, who headed the Shabak (Israel Security Agency) when Rabin was murdered, said in the past that no one in his organization believed that Amir would try to kill Rabin - and others have said that Har-Shefi similarly did not know.
Many on the left-wing, such as Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now and MKs Tzipi Livni and Yoel Hasson of Kadima, have jumped to oppose the proposed vindication. In addition, Israel Broadcasting Authority political talk-show host Yaron Dekel ran a series of interviews on the topic Sunday, attacking the idea from several angles. He said that the timing of the initiative is suspect, and he angrily told Rabbi Cherlow that he resents the "rewriting of history" regarding "incitement by rabbis."
Dekel declared, "A prime minister was murdered, and before that there was incitement by rabbis, and there were those who said that he was a rodef [a Halakhic term referring to one who must be killed because he is endangering others – ed.], and this must never be forgotten."
In fact, however, the only mainstream rabbinic article or speech that mentioned rodef was one by Ramat Gan Chief Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, who wrote in answer to a question that Rabin was not a rodef.
Attorney Penina Guy, who represented the State in its prosecution of Amir and later of Har-Shefi, also spoke with Dekel, agreeing that the timing was questionable, and added, "How can there be a request for a pardon when no new facts have come to light?"
Actually, however, one new fact that has come to light since the conviction of Har-Shefi is a statement by Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shabak, who said categorically that Har-Shefi had been wrongly convicted. "Har-Shefi did not know that Yigal Amir wanted to murder the Prime Minister," Ayalon is now quoted as having said in 2007. "I know this from intelligence sources; I was head of the Shabak. She paid a price… I know that she had no idea that he would kill the Prime Minister. She was just a part of an insane situation."
Among those backing the initiative to erase Har-Shefi's conviction are MKs Otniel Shneller (Kadima) and Uri Ariel (National Union); Rabbis Yaakov Medan (head of the Alon Shvut Yeshivat Hesder in Gush Etzion) and Cherlow; and grassroots activist leaders Orit Strook, Susie Dym and Nechi Eyal.
Shneller's endorsement of the idea has aroused great opposition within the Kadima party. Party MK Nachman Shai has publicized a letter he wrote, demanding that the party disassociate itself from the initiative and that Schneller do so as well.
Lador, not Weinstein
Attorney General Weinstein has disqualified himself from dealing with the case, because he was in contact with the Har-Shefi family regarding the case at the time when he was a private attorney. It appears that State Prosecutor Moshe Lador will handle the request.
Har-Shefi, an acquaintance of Amir's from college, heard him say - as did hundreds of others - that the Prime Minister should be killed. She was convicted more than five years afterwards of "knowing of a crime and doing nothing to prevent it." She was sent to prison for nine months in March 2001; after her request for parole was turned down in July, her sentence was reduced by then-President Moshe Katzav, and she was freed in August 2001 - nearly five months after entering prison.
"They Had to Find Someone to Blame"
When she began her jail term, Har-Shefi stated, "I am being sent to prison today for one reason only: They had to find someone to blame, to cover up for an entire network that fell asleep on the job - as if I, a 19-year-old girl at the time, was the one who could have saved the country from this terrible trauma."
In September 2002, Miriam Rosental, outgoing District Attorney of the Tel Aviv district, said she regrets having indicted her. Rosental told the Yediot Acharonot newspaper that she differed at the time with Attorney-General Elyakim Rubenstein and State Prosecutor Edna Arbel: "I felt that we could not place on the shoulders of a 19-year-old girl the entire matter of knowing and internalizing all the serious things that were said before the murder. No one imagined that such an extreme thing would happen, and neither did Har-Shefi."
6. Foreign Media Turns Jewish Victims into Attackers
by Chana Ya'ar
In a piece written more like an Arab editorial than a hard news item by a professional journalist, the French news agency AFP news agency “reported” Saturday on the Yahoo! News site that a blaze allegedly “lit by Jewish settlers” but in fact set by Arabs in a Jewish field that spread out of control- destroyed an olive grove in the “occupied West Bank.”
IDF artillery brigade soldiers at the scene Friday spotted an Arab fleeing a blazing field set afire at nearby Havat Gilad (Gilad Farms) but did not manage to catch him.
The hot winds and high temperatures in the area quickly whipped the flames into a fury that leaped across the fields of clover, reaching to the trees in the Arab-owned olive groves. According to Itai Zar, head of the small community, it also threatened homes, where firefighters fought to contain the raging blaze that consumed tens of thousands of shekels' worth of agricultural products.
However, without quoting any authority other than the Palestinian Authority Arabs who made the accusations, reporter Phillippe Agret wrote “the firebombers swooped down from Havat Gilad, a wildcat Jewish settlement unauthorized even by the Israeli government.”
The Jewish community of Havat Gilad, located between Yitzhar and Kedumim in Samaria, is home to 25 families. It is built on privately owned land by a man named Moshe Zar, who purchased the land from a Palestinian Authority Arab. It is, in fact, a community the U.S. government has pressured the Israeli government to dismantle. But one could hardly refer to the vast majority of its population, mostly women and small children, as “wildcat firebombers.”
Quite the opposite –in September 2009, on the second day of the Rosh Hashanah Jewish New Year holiday, Arab arsonists torched a field on the site, which quickly spread to the small community’s infrastructure. Within minutes, two homes were burned to the ground. The main sewerage line was badly damaged, as was the community’s electrical grid, leaving more than 100 residents without electricity and sewerage systems for days. Damage was estimated at half a million shekels ($1.4 million).
The oft-repeated accusation of Israelis setting fire to Arab olive groves is not new but is rarely backed up with hard evidence. Each year during the olive harvest, Arabs, protected by IDF soldiers, gather their crops while unprotected Jews, harassed by Arabs, anarchists and foreign activists, attempt to pick their own crops.
But the hysteria of the allegedly bereft Arab farmer, combined with the dramatic visuals, usually plays well in the foreign media, and this day was no exception. A gaggle of foreign photographers accompanied the British Oxfam organization as it made its way through Samaria to the community of Havat Gilad and possibly Elon Moreh. (Israel news photo: Yehuda Simon)
But Agret wrote, “Thick black smoke billows from the olive grove under the gaze of Israeli soldiers as Palestinian farmers use branches to try to beat out the fires lit by Jewish settlers. Encircled by barbed wire, the makeshift dwellings glower down on the surrounding Palestinian olive plantations…”
The fact that the barbed wire is designed to prevent terrorist attacks from local Arabs who have repeatedly attempted to murder their Jewish neighbors escaped the writer.
Likewise, the word “plantation” is a rather grandiose description for a simple grove of olive trees nestled among the rocky hills of this ancient land. (Israel news photo: Yehuda Simon)
Agret parroted the claim of Arab farmer Shaher Tawil: “We were gathering the olives when the settlers arrived. One of them started a fire.” The AFP reporter then told his readers, 'Tawil points to a bearded man wearing a T-shirt and a Jewish kippa or skullcap, now safely behind an Israeli military barrier.”
The image conjured up in the reader’s mind is unmistakable. No judge and jury is needed; Agret has done it all. He continues to relate Tawil's testimony: “’When we saw the flames, we called the fire service but the soldiers wouldn’t let them come any closer to prevent clashes with the settlers,’ the old man says.”
Agret painted a graphic epic for his reader: the poor old Arab man against the backdrop of the brutal Israeli soldiers who won’t let the fire trucks put out the flames that are destroying the olive orchards. But Agret adds a fillip of hope; perhaps the drafted youth among Israel's forced military may someday relent.
“The young Israeli conscripts, visibly embarrassed and restricted by their uniforms in the oppressive midday heat, finally let the fire-truck through after about an hour, by which time the flames have already been well-fanned by the wind. At last the fires are put out, as again the soldiers look on.”
Agret apparently did not question the IDF military command, to find out whether there was an investigation into the incident? Did he call any government authority at all, in fact, asking for a comment? Nor did the journalist ask the Samaria Regional Council for a statement about the blaze, to see if perhaps the leadership condemns such an act, if it proves to be arson by Jews? He also did not report if he questioned the Palestinian Authority security force to see if there was an investigation?
Instead, he proceeded to further indict the Jewish residents of Gilad Farms as thieves. “Tawil says last week settlers from Havat Gilad harvested the fruit of 800 trees belonging to his family. ‘Every year they steal our olives and burn our trees,’ he says,” Agret wrote, without bothering to seek a response from those accused.
Agret added with dripping contempt that the Jews who live in the community are “among the most hardline in the West Bank” and are wont to quote “one of their spiritual and ideological gurus, the late rabbi Mordechai Elyahu.” (sic).
The rabbi to whom Agret referred with such cavalier indifference, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, was one of the Jewish world’s most revered rabbis, a prominent Jewish legal adjudicator and spiritual leader, who recently passed away this past June. He served as the official Chief Sephardic Rabbi of the State of Israel from 1983 to 1993.
Events ‘Obviously Planned and Orchestrated’
Meanwhile, David Ha’ivri, director of the Shomron (Samaria) Liaison Office, charged the incident was linked to an attack at the Jewish community of Elon Moreh, in which two residents were set upon by a mob of Arabs and foreign anarchist activists, who beat them with rocks and metal bars, and a similar attack in which a field was torched at Havat Gilad.
“Friday’s violent events at Havat Gilad and Elon Moreh were obviously planned and orchestrated by provocateurs posing as givers of humanitarian aid," Ha'ivri said.
“Activists of the British Oxfam organization accompanied by journalists were photographed at the site (Israel news photo: Yehuda Simon) where events led up to the arson of crops belonging to residents of Havat Gilad,” he noted.
“The fires were lit by local Arabs who were spotted by the IDF fleeing the scene of the crime. Residents of the Gilad Farm worked for hours putting out the flames.”
Ha’ivri warned that Oxfam and similar foreign organizations enter the region “not to promote peace, but on the contrary, to use confrontations between local Jews and Arabs who would have gone about their daily lives had it not been for the ‘help’ of the outsiders.”
IDF spokespersons told Israel National News they are “checking into the incident.”
7. Pollard Lawyers Ask Obama for His Immediate Release
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The recent groundswell of Congressional support on behalf of Jonathan Pollard, coupled with new claims of an unfair trial and broken agreements, have prompted his lawyers to ask U.S. President Barack Obama for immediate clemency for their client.
Pollard was sentenced to life in prison 25 years ago for passing classified documents on to Israel when he worked for US Naval Intelligence as a civilian analyst. The offense generally carries a punishment of 2-4 years. Years of attempts by Pollard’s wife and friends to win his release by presidential pardon or otherwise have fallen on deaf ears.
However, a recent coincidence of events have encouraged them, and his two American lawyers - Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman - filed a request to President Obama on Friday for clemency. "Jonathan is not asking for his offense to be erased" in the form of a pardon, his wife Esther explained. "All he is asking is for President Obama to commute his life sentence to time served."
Last week, an unusual coalition of Orthodox and Reform Jewish leaders in the United States backed a letter initiated by several Congressmen for clemency for Pollard. Leading Congressman Anthony Weiner, along with Reps. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Bill Pascrell of New Jersey and Edolphus Towns of New York - all of them Democrats - did not argue whether Pollard is guilty or not.
The letter stated, "There has been a great disparity from the standpoint of justice between the amount of time Mr. Pollard has served and the time that has been served - or not served at all - by many others who were found guilty of similar activity on behalf of nations adversarial to us, unlike Israel."
The National Council of Young Israel, the Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism backed the letter.
The Congressmen also linked clemency with President Obama’s dilemma in his Middle East diplomatic effort, which has ground to a halt. They said granting clemency would improve ties with Israel and would be “useful at a time when those decisions are being made," meaning the impasse between the Palestinian Authority and Israel over the resumption of direct talks for recognizing the PA as a country within Israel’s borders.
The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reported that the Obama administration is ignoring pleas to release Pollard in exchange for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s renewal of the expired 10-month freeze on building new homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria. “It’s not a new development,” a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Stein. “They deploy [it] all the time.”
Nationalist groups have strongly objected to the idea, and Pollard himself previously has said that he is unequivocally opposed to being released as part of a deal that would jeopardize Israeli lives via the release of Palestinian murderers or would uproot Jews from their land.
Stein also wrote that “incremental progress on the settlements is not worth agitating CIA officials, who are still seething over the Justice Department’s investigation into whether its interrogations of suspected terrorists were illegal.”
The letter from the Congressmen is only one link in a chain of events that has recently unfolded on Pollard's behalf.
Lawrence J. Korb, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, recently wrote to President Obama that Pollard’s punishment was too harsh. "Despite Pollard's admission of guilt, cooperation with authorities, [and the fact that he] asked for a plea bargain, he received a disproportional punishment," he wrote. Korb also charged that one reason for the severity of the sentence was his boss, Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, who has since died.
Korb wrote, "Based on the knowledge that I have firsthand, I can confidently say that the punishment was so severe because of lack of sympathy for Israel by… Weinberger.”
Weinberger once called Pollard one of the most dangerous American spies, although he was convicted for passing on classified information and not for “spying.” In his autobiography, Weinberger did not mention the Pollard case, and later said that the case was a “minor matter... made much more important than it was.”
Another recent development was a statement from Rafi Eitan, who was Pollard’s handler at the time of his arrest, that an oral agreement between Israel and the United States called for Pollard to be sentenced to no more than 10 years in jail.
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