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Arutz Sheva Daily News Service
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1. PLO Raises Flag over Washington
by Maayana Miskin
The PLO flag flew in Washington, DC for the first time Tuesday, with
PLO officials hoisting their banner over their United States mission.
Chief of Mission Maen Areikat praised U.S. officials for allowing the
flag to go up. “I think it indicates the willingness of the American
administration to deal with the realities on the ground,” he said.
“It's about time that this flag that symbolizes the struggle of the
Palestinian people for self-determination and statehood be raised in the
United States,” Areikat stated.
The Obama administration's willingness to allow the flag to go up was
met with criticism from Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Raising this flag in DC is
part of the Palestinian leadership’s scheme to manipulate international
acceptance and diplomatic recognition of a yet-to-be-created
Palestinian state while refusing to directly negotiate with Israel or
accept the existence of Israel as a democratic, Jewish state,” she said.
The PA has been working to convince the international community to
recognize a new Arab state in all the territory between the 1948
armistice line and Jordan, in an attempt to circumvent talks with
Israel. Israeli leaders have repeatedly rejected the PA's demand for all
land east of the armistice line, saying that Israel plans to keep
control of Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria, and of
Jerusalem, Israel's capital.
2. Hizbullah ‘Practicing to Take Over Beirut’
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Hizbullah's black-clad terrorist militia are training to take over
Beirut’s airport and highways and carried out dry-run maneuvers early
Tuesday as Beirut residents fled in panic, Lebanese media reported.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said it is throwing up its hands in the effort
to help stability, adding, ”Lebanon is dangerous.”
Hizbullah’s army early Tuesday carried out exercises, without weapons,
aimed at taking control of Beirut’s airport, major highways and the
seaport. The drill spread fears of a return to the violent street
violence that nearly set off a new civil war two years ago. Reports
stated that schools closed and people kept their children off the
streets.
Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency quoted a retired Lebanese general
saying that the next prime minister of Lebanon may come from the ranks
of Hizbullah, which is backed by Iran and allied with Syria.
The IDF has heightened its alert along the border between Israel and
southern Lebanon, where Hizbullah has stockpiled at least 60,000
missiles. A Lebanese newspaper reported that Hizbullah forces might
attack United Nations posts.
Hizbullah toppled the government
last week by quitting the coalition on the eve of the presentation of
findings of a United Nations tribunal. The tribunal submitted a sealed
indictment, whose contents will not be known for several weeks. A
Belgian judge is studying the case to determine if there is enough
evidence for a trial of Hizbullah leaders suspected of involvement in
the bloody 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik
Hariri, who was fiercely opposed to Syrian control of the country that
had been wracked by civil war for 15 years.
His son, Sa'ad Hariri, now heads the caretaker government and has
allied himself with Syria. Hizbullah hopes to pressure him into
rejecting the United Nations report.
Although Saudi Arabia has given up hope of helping to achieve political
stability in Lebanon, the foreign ministers of Qatar and Turkey visited
Beirut for talks with Lebanese officials, a day after Syria hosted
them.
%InAd1%
3. ISA Head Diskin: Some Jerusalem Arab Areas Are De Facto PA
by Maayana Miskin
While overall terrorist activity dropped in 2010, it remained high in
Israel's capital city of Jerusalem and the surrounding area, Israel
Security Agency (Shin Bet) head Yuval Diskin said Tuesday at a meeting
of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Israel has lost hands-on control over several Arab neighborhoods of
Jerusalem, and they are is in effect a PA region, Diskin said, despite
the fact that residents carry blue Israeli ID cards. That is true in
particular for the areas east of the Jerusalem separation/security
barrier, he added.
Some of these neighborhoods are turning into lawless regions in which
terrorists and PA Arabs who have illegally entered Jerusalem take
refuge, Diskin said, adding that illegal building in those neighborhoods
is rampant.
Terror Up in 1949 Israel
More Arab citizens of Israel were found to be involved in terrorism
over the past year than before, Diskin said, with 46 arrested in 2010
compared with 24 in 2009. However, he added, many of the arrests were
connected to the discovery of a single terrorist cell in Nazareth and
did not necessarily indicate a larger trend.
Terrorism remains outside the Israeli Arab consensus, but Israel must
be careful, he continued. A failure to deal with increasing violence and
illegal weapons trade in the Israeli Arab sector now could lead to
terrorism becoming more frequent even in longtime, established Israeli
Arab communities.
The Shin Bet is not allowed to fight the trade in weapons within the
1949 armistice line demarcation of Israel. According to court rulings,
enforcement of weapons laws within this territory is the sole
responsibility of the police.
Warning: Terrorists Seek Base in Sinai
Diskin also warned that terrorists see the Sinai Peninsula as a
preferred base of activities. “The level of Egyptian governance in the
Sinai is very low,” he said, leaving the region vulnerable to a rise in
terrorism.
He criticized Egyptian authorities for doing too little to fight
terrorism. “Their shared border with Gaza is 14 kilometers long... If
they wanted to, they could end smuggling in 24-48 hours.” Instead, he
said, “the Egyptians are determined to prevent [smuggling] only when
there is a significant threat to Egyptian national security, and even
then, there are just pinpoint operations.”
More than 400 Jewish-Arab Clashes
Diskin also revealed data on the extent of clashes between Jews and PA
Arabs in Judea and Samaria. On more than 400 occasions, vandalism and
fighting involved Jews and Arabs. Sixteen of those, he claimed, were
acts of more serious vandalism, such as arson, associated with the
“Price Tag” activists – a group seeking to fight both PA terrorism and
the destruction of Jewish homes by forcing the PA and the IDF to “pay
the price” for any such actions.
4. Senators Pressure Clinton to Veto UN Anti-Israeli Resolution
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Sixteen U.S. senators have urged U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton to order a veto of a United Nations resolution condemning Jewish
development in United Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
The motion was tabled Tuesday, the same day the Palestinian Authority raised its flag
over its mission in Washington for the first time. No vote is expected
for at least several days, while Arab and Israeli interests lobby the
Obama administration. The U.S. government has not hinted whether it will
exercise its veto privilege in the U.N. Security Council.
The senators' letter, led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York,
reminded Secretary Clinton that the resolution, drafted by the
Palestinian Authority, is an attempt to unilaterally dictate terms to
Israel and avoid direct negotiations, which the United States has
unsuccessfully tried to arrange.
“We believe such a move hurts the prospects for a peace agreement and
is not in the interest of the United States," the letter stated. "A
resolution of this nature would work against our country’s consistent
position, which has been that this and other issues linked to the Middle
East peace process can only be resolved by the two parties negotiating
directly with each other.
“Attempts to use a venue such as the United Nations, which you know has
a long history of hostility toward Israel, to deal with just one issue
in the negotiations, will not move the two sides closer to a two-state
solution, but rather damage the fragile trust between them.”
The United States previously has vetoed almost all anti-Israeli
resolutions, but U.S. President Barack Obama’s vocal opposition to a
Jewish presence in United Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is identical with
the demands of the Arab world.
The PA is counting on all of the other 14 members of the Security
Council to vote for the resolution or abstain, without exercising a
veto. PA leaders have rejected repeated requests by the Obama
administration not to table the resolution, which places the United
States in a tight diplomatic corner.
U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley rebuffed repeated
attempts by reporters on Tuesday to state the American position.
“We’ve made that clear in our discussions with the Palestinians and
others,” Crowley said. We do not think that New York or the U.N.
Security Council is the right forum for this issue, and we’ll continue
to make that case…. I’m not going to speculate on what happens from this
point forward."
Journalists covering the State Department pointed out that the
resolution “merely restates what has been U.S. policy for some time,
that – basically, it criticizes settlement activity. Why are you opposed
to the U.N. adopting a resolution that isn’t – that supports existing
U.S. policy?”
Crowley, as usual, did not flinch and stuck to being noncommittal. “We
believe that the best path forward is through the ongoing effort that
gets the parties into direct negotiations, resolves the issues through a
framework agreement, and ends the conflict once and for all. We do not
think that the U.N. Security Council is the best place to address these
issues,” he said.
He conceded that the “peace process” is not succeeding but maintained that the proposed resolution is not a "productive step.”
%InAd2%
5. Former UN Ambassador: Freedom of Speech Is Also for Rabbis
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Freedom of speech applies to rabbis as well as other citizens, says
Prof. Ruth Gavison, former Ambassador to the United Nations, a legal
expert and a leading intellectual. She said that rabbis often are
“annoying” because they “make people look in the mirror.”
Speaking at a conference of the institutes of Israel Democracy and Van
Leer Jerusalem, the law professor declared that efforts to prosecute
rabbis for a letter they recently wrote about the issue of selling real estate to Arabs are a danger to the foundations of freedom of speech.
While not taking a stand on the issue of the controversy over whether
Arabs should be allowed to buy homes, even if they are part of a move to
erode a Jewish presence, Prof. Gavison addressed the aspects of rabbi’s
civil rights. Considered a liberal Zionist, not a rightist and not
identified with the national religious camp, Prof. Gavison has distanced
herself from the radical left that favors a one-state solution, which
would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
“There are those who want to bring about a prohibition of freedom of
expression for rabbis because rabbis annoy them,” she said. “Freedom of
expression means allowing things to be said, even if most of them are
annoying and place people in front of a mirror. People want to silence
them.”
A founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, she
said rabbis should not be made an exception for freedoms granted to
others. Prof. Gavison added, "You could not have prevented the murder
of [former Prime Minister Yitzchak] Rabin by arresting someone who said
he [Rabin] is a traitor.” She added, "It is a terrible thing to say
but, it is not illegal to state it."
Prof. Gavison’s intellectual, outspoken views of civil rights and
Zionism may have cost her a seat on the High Court three years ago. She
was nominated to be a justice, but then-Justice Minister Daniel
Friedmann reportedly asserted that High Court justices, headed by
President Aharon Barak, opposed her nomination because of their
disagreement with her views, especially with her criticism of Barak's
statement that "everything is justiciable." Prof. Gavison claimed that
since judges in Israel are appointed by other judges and Israel has no
constitution, the court should not give itself the broad powers it has
taken.
An opposing view at the conference was expressed by Prof. Mordechai
Kramintzer, who argued that the Justice Minister should have immediately
opened a criminal investigation against Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, whose
letter he said was grounds for charges of racism and incitement.
Prof. Gavison maintained that the letter did nothing to destroy
democracy, which she said includes “listening to the needs and crises of
others. In an action consistent with her expressed beliefs, several
years ago Gavison and Rabbi Yaakov Meidan of the Har Etzion Hesder
Yeshiva cooperated on drafting a proposed "covenant" between secular and religious Israelis on how to run a modern Jewish state.
6. Palin on Blood Libel Uproar: Nobody Is Going to Shut Me Up
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A thunderous uproar over Sarah Palin’s charge that she is a victim of a
media blood libel has not outdone her. "They [the critics] are not
going to shut me up. No one will shut me up,” she insisted, following
accusations that her use of the term was out of order.
The shining star of the Tea Party continues to remain the person that
U.S. voters seem to either hate or love following the attempted
assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords two weeks ago.
She was immediately accused of inciting the shooting because her
political action committee, during her 2008 election campaign, posted a
map with crosshairs and a ”target list” of political districts,
including Gifford’s.
After the shooting attack, in which six people were murdered, she
responded that the Democratic party also had used the crosshairs image
for years.
Following a massive media attack on Palin, she broke her silence
earlier this week and said she was the victim of a blood libel, a
comment that unleashed a new barrage of criticism. This time several
Jewish groups were among her critics. Some Jewish leaders reminded her
that the expression "blood libel" refers to slander in the Middle Ages
that encouraged pogroms against Jews. However, other Jewish leaders
defended her use of the term and it is known that Israeli leaders
frequently have adopted the term when referring to media campaigns,
particularly about accusations against nationalists.
Critics accused Palin – who has seemed in the past to be poorly-versed
in world affairs – of being ignorant of the origin of the term.
Speaking in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday, she came
out swinging. The “blood libel” term “means being falsely accused of
having blood on your hands and in this case that's exactly what was
going on," she said.
“And yes, the historical knowledge that people have of the term ‘blood
libel' – it goes back to the Jews who were falsely accused back in
medieval European times of using the blood of children. And you know,
the criticism of even the timing of this statement is being used as
another diversion,” she continued.
As for criticism by Jewish leaders, she commented, “I think the
critics, again, were using anything that they could gather out of that
statement. And ...you know, you can -- you can spin up anything out of
anybody's statements that are released and use them against the person
who is making the statement. But, no, I appreciated those who understood
what it is that I meant, that a group of people being falsely accused
of having blood on their hands, that is what blood libel means. And just
two days before I released my statement, an op-ed in the Wall Street
Journal had that term in its title and that term has been used for
eons.”
Palin also said that although Democrats have used “bull’s-eye maps” for
targeting political districts and that Bill Clinton’s political pros
had a “war room,” critics pick on her because “I am not hesitant at all
to spread [my message] across this country...
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who like Palin is a potential GOP
candidate for the 2012 election, chided Palin Monday for her
shoot-from-hip style. "I think that she's got to slow down and be more
careful and think through what she's saying and how's she's saying it,”
he advised.
Palin insisted she will not change her style: "I know that a lot of
those on the left hate my message, and they will do all they can to stop
me because they don't like the message. So, I will continue to speak
out. They're not going to shut me up. They're not going to shut you up
or Rush or Mark Levin or Tea Party patriots or those who, as I say,
respectfully and patriotically petition their government for change.
They can't make us sit down and shut up. And if they ever were to
succeed in doing that, then our republic will be destroyed.”
%InAd3%
7. China's Military Advances Undermine Balance with Taiwan
by Amiel Ungar
Negotiations between the United States and China, highlighted by this
week's state visit to the United States by Chinese President Hu Jin Tao,
have prompted the display of defense technology by China and Taiwan.
When US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited China last week, the
Chinese unveiled a prototype of the J-20 aircraft with stealth
technology features. Although there was some talk that this was
coincidental, the message was driven home that China is rapidly closing
the gap in military technology with the U.S., with the intention of
denying the U.S. regional naval and air supremacy.
Across the China Straits, Taiwan conducted an air defense exercise with
far less impressive results --6 out of the 19 antiaircraft missiles
failed to hit their target. One embarrassed spectator was Taiwan's
President Ma Ying-jeou, who as a result of the failed test sounded like a
teacher issuing a report card by commenting "there is still room for
improvement."
The two separate but related events illustrate that a delicate balance
existing since 1949 between China and Taiwan may be in the process of
unraveling. When the Chinese Communists won the Civil War and the
defeated Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, the latter, although they
eventually realized that they would be unable to recover the mainland,
felt reasonably secure on their island redoubt. Communist China had the
superior manpower, but its mammoth and immobile army was equipped for a
land defense of China. It lacked the capacity to cross the straits and
mount an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. Taiwan had the weapons to deny
Beijing the requisite naval and air supremacy and furthermore the United
States 7th fleet was nearby.
China, for its part, had sufficient missile power to threaten Taiwan in
case the latter decided to declare its independence and implement a Two
China policy. For Beijing, Taiwan is merely a rebellious province that
will be restored to the motherland one day just as Hong Kong and Macau
were returned to Chinese sovereignty.
The US preferred the status quo: Taiwan would not rock the boat and
declare independence and China would insist that it would seek
unification only by peaceful means. The military balance was a powerful
argument for the status quo and the US could afford to guarantee it in
the knowledge that its pledge would not have to be cashed.
With a change of the military balance, China may soon be able to mount
an invasion of Taiwan. Moreover, it is developing the technology and
building a Navy that can make US intervention on Taiwan's behalf a
costly and perhaps losing affair.
Taiwan, like other countries in the region, is worried about China's
greater assertiveness in the region. China appeared willing to lure
Taiwan into unification by economic carrots and strengthening commercial
and communication ties. It also offered the Hong Kong model, allowing
Taiwan a degree of autonomy in terms of political institutions such as
competitive elections.
Although the current Taiwan government has enjoyed friendlier relations
than its predecessor by shelving the idea of unilateral independence,
it still feels the need for a major weapons upgrade and can be expected
to approach the United States on this issue. Ironically, the failure of
the US-made missiles can prove a good opening. The US can offer a
guarantee or conclude a major arms sale, but each alternative is bound
to damage US-China relations.
8. Intel Hangs Out ‘Help Wanted’ Sign in Israel
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Unemployed? No future in Silicon Valley? Intel again has hung out the
“help wanted” sign in Israel, where it is recruiting 1,000 new workers
this year for nanometer technology that produces semiconductors.
The giant chip maker also announced it is investing $2.7 billion over
the next two years at its Kiryat Gat facility, located between Be’er
Sheva and metropolitan Tel Aviv.
During the introduction of the nanometer technology, “There will be an
exchange of machinery that will lower the pace of production while we
are bringing in the machinery with new technology at the same time,”
according to Intel’s general manager in Israel, Maxine Fassberg.
Intel already is one of Israel’s largest private employers, with more
than 7,000 employees. Fassberg claims that the company indirectly
provided jobs for an additional 20,000 people.
Intel has been operating in Israel for 25 years, and Israeli computer
engineers at Intel's Israel Development Center in Haifa have been
overseeing the development of processor microarchitecture for next
generation personal computers in a special project that began in 2005.
Intel unveiled the architecture of that project, dubbed Sandy Bridge,
earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One
of the new features will be the ability to remotely disable one's PC or
erase information from hard drives, useful in case of theft or loss.
Shlomit Weiss, the architect of Sandy Bridge, told Globes that the project included more than 1,000 software engineers.
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