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1. GOP Surge Expected to Weaken Obama’s Support of PA Demands
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
An expected drubbing of the Democratic party by the GOP Tuesday probably will weaken PA demands and strengthen Israel, foreign analysts say.
By all counts, the Republican party is likely to win a majority in the House of Representatives and whittle the Democrats’ Senate majority to a whisker. The mid-term elections are being fought primarily on domestic issues, especially the economy and “Obamacare.”
Israel is a big factor in several local campaigns, but the overall anticipated Republican sweep is likely to result in a Congress that is “not likely to put heavy pressure and … more likely to give knee-jerk support on all kinds of other issues," strategic analyst Yossi Alpher told the French news agency AFP.
Netanyahu "will probably think he's in a stronger position," Middle East specialist and former U.S. official Robert Danin told a major California newspaper, the Sacramento Bee.
The Palestinian Authority has been assuming that once elections are out of the way, U.S. President Barack Obama will feel freer to pressure Israel, but PA negotiator Nabil Sha’ath recently admitted that if the Democratic party is trounced, President Obama’s leverage on foreign policy will be reduced.
The conservative Tea Party’s unexpected strength is based in part on an isolationist view that wants the United States to stop acting as the world’s watchdog, particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan and the entire Middle East region.
In Israel, local media analysts reflected their newspapers’ editorial stance when predicting the effect of the elections on the diplomatic process.
The left-wing Haaretz, which has been promoting Palestinian Authority demands and a resumption of talks based on its conditions, predicted that President Obama “cannot afford to lose momentum in Israeli-Palestinian talks." It also suggested he might even cave in on supporting Israel against a United Nations resolution to recognize the Palestinian Authority based on 1949 Armistice Line borders. The analyst’s reasoning is that President Obama will be wary of risking the animosity of the Muslim world.
The Jerusalem Post, generally centrist and center-left, concentrated more on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government in the wake of the elections, estimating that the election results in the United States will have little impact on negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
2. New PA Libel: Alleged Israeli ‘Torture Treatment’
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
WARNING: The contents of this article and accompanying pictures may be deemed offensive by some readers and unsuitable for children.
The Palestinian Authority, committed to ending incitement against Israel, has unveiled a new libel: alleged Israeli torture, which has been reported on PA television and translated into English by Palestinian Media Watch.
None of the charges have been reported by any Arab or international human rights groups, in those that are constantly anti-Israel. The charges also do not include any evidence from former Arab prisoners.
At left are some of the caricatures -- without evidence -- of the alleged torture.
Among other allegations, Israeli prison guards of Arab prisoners are accused of:
– Burning into a prisoner's chest with a hot iron;
– Drilling a hole through a prisoner's hand;
– Burning into a prisoner's shoulder with a soldering iron;
– Whipping a prisoner while hanging him by his feet ;
– Squeezing a prisoner's head in a medieval-looking head press; and
– Chopping off a prisoner's arm below the elbow.
The “For You” Palestinian Authority television program, broadcast twice a week, includes footage from the prisoners' home villages and interviews with their family members, who send them televised messages.
PA TV is part of the Ramallah-based government headed by Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Another PA television program tried to get a former prisoner to attest to difficult conditions or torture, but he did not cooperate. The television program host repeatedly asked if Megiddo detention center prisoners lacked anything, but the answer was, "By Allah, the guys in the prison are fine. They lack nothing.”
However, the same week that the libelous programs began to be broadcast, an article in an official Palestinian Authority newspaper reported how prisoners are given the opportunity to earn university degrees, noting that “more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners have attained matriculation certificates while still in the occupation prisons” over the past 10 years.
The newspaper earlier this month interviewed prisoner Ayman Al-Hamoud, who said that many prisoners are registered at the Hebrew University. The article noted, “Many regard released prisoner Fahd Abu Al-Hajj as an example motivating them to achieve the highest degrees: He entered prison illiterate, in 1978, and now he holds a Ph.D... Today there are some 200 prisoners who are registered at various universities around the world."
3. Wide Support for Banning ‘Made in China’ Israeli Flags
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A bill for an Israeli flag that really is Israeli -- meaning not made in China – passed a Cabinet-level committee Monday with backing from a wide spectrum of Knesset Members.
The proposed law would require that all Israeli flags that are purchased by government agencies be made in Israel. Most of the flags the past several years have been bought from Asian countries, most notably China and Turkey, which also straddles the European continent.
"Last Independence Day, tens of millions of Israeli flags were displayed at the cost of Israeli factories and workers,” said Labor Knesset Member Shelly Yechimovich. “Even worse, government offices and the Israeli Armed Forces wave the flag that is made in China. This is an intolerable situation. Manufacturing the flag outside of the borders of Israel damages the income of Israeli workers and depreciates the significance of the flag."
Other backers of the bill include Likud MK Ofir Akunis, Kadima MK Majalli Whbee, Labor Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Israel Is Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu) MK Alex Miller.
Shraga Brosh, head of the Israel Manufacturers' Association, said that the national flag “is one of the hallowed symbols of the country, a symbol to which I salute and fought for. People have paid their lives for it. An Israeli flag made outside the country contradicts those values. It is not justifiable morally.”
The bill must be passed on second reading, pass another committee vote and pass a final vote in the Knesset before becoming law.
4. 49 Jewish Graves Desecrated in Northeastern France
by Chana Ya'ar
Nearly a third of the gravestones in a 200-year-old Jewish cemetery in northeastern France, near the German border, were smashed Friday night in an act of violent desecration.
Of the 126 thick limestone tombstones, 49 were broken and toppled over in the 19th century cemetery in the town of Bar-le-Duc, located in the Meuse district of the Lorraine region. No grafitti was found at the scene.
The vandalism was discovered when a passerby walking his dog noticed that the gate, which was usually locked, hung open. Police were immediately notified.
The French National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism (BNCVA) issued a statement asking the prosecutor to “take into consideration the racist character of the degradations in this old Jewish cemetery, which constitute an anti-Semitic act despite the absence of any inscription.”
Police said they were looking for a group of suspects, rather than a single individual. “These are very heavy gravestones which were moved, fell on the ground and broke due to their heavy weight. A single person could not have defaced the cemetery on his own,” state prosecutor Yves Badorc said. “So the police are looking for several suspects.”
An investigation has been launched into the incident.
A Jewish cemetery in eastern France was similarly attacked in July, when vandals smashed and overturned 27 gravestones in the town of Wolfisheim, in the Alsace region.
In nearby Strasbourg, some 30 Jewish tombstones were broken and defaced at the beginning of the year, in January. “Juden Raus” (Jews Out) was scrawled on one of the gravestones, and 18 others were painted with swastikas.
5. Four of Five Jews: Arabs Would Destroy Israel if They Could
by Gil Ronen
Even as the US, EU and other world powers continue to press Israel to reach a peace treaty with the Palestinian Authority, a new poll shows that Israeli Jews have no illusions about the worth of such a document.
A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that over 80 percent of the Jewish populace of Israel agree with the statement “The Palestinians have not accepted the existence of the State of Israel and would destroy it if they could.”
By contrast, only about 21% of the Arabs polled – all Israeli citizens – agreed with the statement.
Furthermore, over two thirds of Jews polled (67.1%) agreed with the statement: “Even if a peace agreement is signed, the Palestinians will never accept Israel’s existence and would destroy it if they could.” A similar proportion of Arab citizens of Israel disagreed with the statement.
The results appear to show that Arab citizens of Israels are much more optimistic than Jews about their own sincerity regarding peace – and that of their brethren in Judea, Samaria and Gaza – or that they are being insincere in their poll answer as well.
Asked what the most urgent matter on the public agenda is, only 20.1% of Jews answered “reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians,” as opposed to 37.8% of the Arabs. The most popular answer among Jews was “Waging war on corruption and promoting proper administration,” which received 23.6%. “Closing socioeconomic gaps received 20.1%.
6. Hotline for Help: Israel Reaches Out to World Jews
by Elad Benari
In the wake of the al-Qaeda terror plot which was foiled this past weekend and is suspected to have been directed at Jewish communities in the United States, Israel’s Ministry of Public Diplomacy & Diaspora Affairs has decided to reach out to Jewish communities around the world in order to strengthen them.
The Ministry’s Director General, Ronen Plot, sent out a letter on Monday in which he wrote: “We would like to inform you that the Ministry of Public Diplomacy & Diaspora Affairs of the State of Israel has reached out to Jewish communities around the world following the increased threat, which was recently exposed, involving explosive packages.”
The letter explains that the Ministry has opened a hotline which can be used by members of Jewish communities around the world to submit inquiries, concerns, or reports of possible threats. These will be forwarded by hotline staff to the appropriate contacts, government and non-governmental.
The foiled terror plot first made headlines this past weekend, after two explosive packages sent from Yemen were discovered en-route in the United Arab Emirates and Britain. One, discovered at a British airport, contained enough explosives to bring down an airplane, according to British Home Secretary Theresa May. The other, found in Dubai, the UAE's largest city, was similarly powerful. The addresses on the packages were synagogues, one a gay gathering, in Chicago.
The plot was uncovered when police were informed of the possibility of an explosive device in packages aboard a FedEx flight to Dubai. The Saudi Arabian government provided the tracking numbers of the packages, which were then tracked down and neutralized. A woman believed to be connected to the plot had later been arrested in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, where the packages originated.
Following the incident, the United States and Britain announced a ban on all cargo from Yemen. Germany banned both cargo and passenger flights from Yemen. Canada and the Netherlands are the two latest countries to join the ban on air cargo from Yemen.
The U.S. government said Monday it has identified the leading terrorist suspect as 28-year-old Ibrahim Hassan Al-Asiri, believed to be hiding in Yemen. He also is linked to the attempt to blow up a plane bound for Detroit last Christmas and was behind an attempted assassination of a senior Saudi Arabia counterterrorism official.
U.S. deputy national security adviser John Brennan said Sunday that the United States is "at war with Al-Qaeda,” and added that he believes that “they are going to try to identify vulnerabilities that might exist in the system.”
Minister of Public Diplomacy & Diaspora Affairs, Yuli Edelstein, said in a statement: “Israel is committed to the safety of Jews everywhere. We work regularly with Jewish communities to review the security situation, assess the scope and strengthen the connection between Diaspora Jewry and Israel. To further these efforts, we have opened a special hotline in response to recent events, which were allegedly intended to harm the Jewish community of Chicago. We have initiated a public appeal for community members to express their questions and concerns through this official forum.”
The Ministry’s hotline phone number is +972 (2) 6587146. Inquiries can also be made by e-mail at info@masbirim.gov.il
7. Fayyad Blocked from PA Dedication in Jerusalem
by Chana Ya'ar
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and other PA officials have been banned from entering Jerusalem without first obtaining permission.
The order came following a report that Fayyad had planned to participate in official dedication ceremonies Tuesday at two schools and a new road project in Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. All three projects were reportedly fully funded by the PA -- an act seen as a further violation of Israel's sovereignty in the capital.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly ordered security officials to ensure that Fayyad and other PA officials were prevented from attending any official dedication ceremonies in Jerusalem.
The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel had notified Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovitch and the Jerusalem police department last Wednesday of the impending PA ceremonies in Jerusalem. “This is a type of destruction,” noted Legal Forum spokesman Shmuel Klein. “Renovating a school and holding a dedication ceremony is forbidden by law.”
The PA has paved roads and carried out a number of other municipal projects in Jerusalem over the past year, including the multimillion-dollar renovation of some 15 private schools in the city’s Arab neighborhoods.
According to the order, signed by Aharonovitch, Israeli law does not allow PA officials to participate in political activities on Israeli territory without first obtaining government authorization.
More than a year ago, a Palestinian Culture Festival aimed at declaring Jerusalem “the capital of Arabic culture for 2009” led to more than 20 arrests and an order by then-Public Security Minister Avi Dichter to “suppress any attempts by the PA to hold events in Jerusalem and throughout the rest of the country.”
8. General Strike in Israel Averted
by Elad Benari
A general strike that had been planned throughout Israel starting at 6:00am on Tuesday morning was averted at the last minute after marathon negotiations between representatives of the Finance Ministry and the Histadrut Labor Federation.
The Histadrut had asked the government for a 10.5 percent raise over three years. The treasury, however, had offered only 1.5 percent. However, after last minute negotiations which lasted for over 12 hours, the two sides reached an agreement by which the employees would receive a 6 percent raise over a period of three and a half years.
Had the strike gone ahead as planned, government ministries and institutions such as Israel's postal service, water works, and the National Insurance Institute would have ceased operations. The airport and the trains would have been shut down, and even hospitals would have dealt with emergencies only.
The two sides are expected to sign a new wage agreement during the day on Tuesday.
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