Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Tuesday 28 February 2012


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Tuesday, Feb 28 '12, Adar 5, 5772  
Today`s Email Stories:
McCain Charges White House With Israel Leaks
U.S. Official: Israel Won't Warn Us Before Attack
Peace Now Getting Fed Up with Arab Officials?
Over 2/3 of Jews See Press Bias on Shalit
MK Katz: After Beinisch, A7 Radio will Return
PA Arabs Riot, Hurl Firebombs at Israelis
Migron to State: Keep Your Word or No Deal!
  More Website News:
Lieberman Slams Zoabi: Her Hatred is Intolerable
Fuel at $8 Gallon; ‘Go Take the Bus’
Thai Police Grill 3 Iranians Over Botched Bombings
Shabbat Divisions Cross Social Divides
UN to Praise Qaddafi's 'Human Rights' Record
  MP3 Radio Website News Briefs:
Talk: Media Terrorists
Using a Strong Arm
Music: Erev Shabbat
Music from Hassidic Courts





1. IDF Kills Terrorist in Sinai Border Shootout
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu IDF Kills Terrorist in Sinai Border Shootout

The IDF wounded one of several terrorists in a shootout at the Sinai border Monday night, one day after foiling another bomb smuggling attempt.

The soldiers were on routine patrol when they spotted suspects who had infiltrated across the border and did not respond to orders to halt. The patrol acted according to protocol and shot towards their feet, but the terrorists opened fire and engaged the soldiers in a firefight,

One of the terrorists was wounded, and the others fled back into Egypt. The soldiers were not injured, and the terrorist later died of his wounds.

The night before, a routine patrol identified terrorists, who fled but left behind a large bag that was filled with high-powered explosives, which sappers neutralized. A similar incident occurred last week, with the IDF discovering a bag of explosives at daylight after the terrorists escaped at night.

The army has noted that Bedouin tribes are cooperating with Gaza-based terrorists, who have infiltrated into the Sinai Peninsula with explosives intended to be used for attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.

The army has beefed up patrols along the border, where a fence is being built and is to be completed by the end of the year.





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Sunday, February 26, 2012
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2. McCain Charges White House With Israel Leaks
by Gavriel Queenann McCain Charges White House With Israel Leaks



Sen. John McCain on Sunday lashed out at the Obama administration’s handling of rising tensions between Israel and Iran.

McCain told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the administration intentionally leaked to the media the reason for the US national security adviser’s trip to Israel – to try to persuade the country not to attack Iran.

McCain said the leak weakened Israel’s standing in its faceoff with Iran, rightly angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and strained US-Israel relations.

“The prime minister has every reason to be upset,” McCain said. “I can understand why relations are in very bad shape right now.”

This is the second time in as many weeks that McCain has openly criticized senior US officials for their conduct towards Israel in its standoff with Tehran

Last week, McCain backed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in a flare up with the Pentagon, saying “There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat.”

“Unfortunately there clearly is some,” added the Senator.

McCain added differences between Washington and Jerusalem over Iran has caused “significant tension,” adding, “there is very little doubt that Iran has so far been undeterred to get nuclear weapons.”

In recent months Obama administration officials have leaked secret strategy meetings with Mossad chief Tamir Pardo on Iran, as well as Israel's theoretical timetable for an Iran strike.

They have also taken the unprecedented step of siding with Iran in accusing Israel of supporting the People's Mujahadeen of Iran in an assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists.





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3. U.S. Official: Israel Won't Warn Us Before an Attack on Iran
by Elad Benari U.S. Official: Israel Won't Warn Us Before Attack

Israeli officials have made it clear they won’t warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, a U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The official said the pronouncement was delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations.

According to the AP report, Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack.

The report said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered the message to a series of top-level U.S. visitors to the country, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, the White House national security adviser and the director of national intelligence, and top U.S. lawmakers.

The U.S. official, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity, said that Netanyahu delivered the same message to all the Americans who have traveled to Israel for talks.

According to AP, the apparent decision to keep the U.S. in the dark also stems from Israel's frustration with the White House. After a recent visit by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, the report said, Israel became convinced the Americans would neither take military action, nor go along with unilateral action by Israel against Iran. The Israelis concluded they would have to conduct a strike unilaterally, a point they are likely to hammer home in a series of meetings over the next two weeks in Washington, the official told the news agency.

Barak will meet with top administration and congressional officials during his visit, while Netanyahu arrives in Washington on March 5 for meetings with President Barack Obama.

Netanyahu recently said publicly that sanctions against the Islamic Republic are "not working," a sentiment supported by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess in a testimony given to U.S. lawmakers.

Netanyahu is widely believed to back Barak, who believes a pre-emptive military strike on Iran's nuclear program must be made before Tehran enters "the immunity zone."

Barak's so-called "immunity zone" is a theoretical point of no return after which Iran's nuclear program would be so diffuse and well protected that an Israeli strike could not sufficiently delay Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, who recently visited Israel and met with officials on the Iranian issue, was quoted as having told CNN on Monday, “I got the sense that Israel is incredibly serious about a strike on their nuclear weapons program.”

Rogers added, “It’s their calculus that the administration ... is not serious about a real military consequence to Iran moving forward. They believe they're going to have to make a decision on their own, given the current posture of the United States.”

The White House did not respond to AP’s requests for comment on the anonymous official’s remarks, and the Pentagon and Office of Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, as did the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

The remarks seem to back recent reports, according to which Israeli officials told Dempsey that Israel would give President Barack Obama no more than 12 hours notice if and when it attacks Iran.

The report said that the Netanyahu government also will not coordinate with the United States an attack on the Islamic Republic.

Despite the latest reports, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro insisted last week that the United States and Israel are "coordinated" on steps being taken to confront Iran's nuclear program.





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4. Even 'Peace Now' Getting Fed Up With Arab Officials?
by Rachel Hirshfeld Peace Now Getting Fed Up with Arab Officials?

Americans for Peace Now's Director of Policy and Government Relations Lara Friedman has expressed her discontent and dissatisfaction with the failure of Arab officials to acknowledge Jewish rights to Jerusalem.

While Friedman is vehemently against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, military action against Iran, and advocated on behalf of freeing the Islamic Jihad terrorist Khader Adnan from Israeli administrative detention, she nonetheless laments that the Arab League’s Conference on Jerusalem in Doha on Sunday did not give voice to Jewish perspectives.

“When I was invited to this conference, I took this as a sign that the Arab League wanted to capture the full complexity of the issues related to Jerusalem, including openly pro-Israel, pro-peace voices," she wrote Monday in the Forward.  "However, it seems that virtually every conversation I am having here involves me, to a greater or lesser degree, having to defend the two-state solution and having to assert and defend the Jewish stake in Jerusalem..

“[I]t seems to me that by not having more pro-two-state solution, Jewish voices here, the Arab League is doing a disservice to the cause it is ostensibly concerned with — the health and status of Jerusalem — and missing an opportunity. The Arab world, and activists around the globe concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do themselves no favors when they listen to voices that tell them only a piece of the story that is comfortable to their ears.

“Speakers at Sunday’s opening session, including Palestinian [Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas, one after another laid out laundry lists of criticisms of Israel — many of them regrettably marked with exaggerations. All also spoke a great deal about Muslim and Christian attachments to Jerusalem and the importance of defending the holy sites and communities associated with both religions. However, only one speaker, Michel Sabbah, formerly the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, mentioned any Jewish connection to the city,” she added.

“This is a serious problem,” Friedman proclaimed. “If President Abbas cannot acknowledge Jewish claims in Jerusalem, even as he asserts Palestinian claims (a problem Yasser Arafat suffered from), he should not be surprised if it is more difficult for Israelis and Jews, wherever they are, to believe that he can be trusted in a peace agreement that leaves Jerusalem sites precious to Jews under Palestinian control.

“If representatives of the organization that sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish equities in Jerusalem, they should know that they discredit their own professed interest in peace.

“All throughout the day, it was unfortunately the same story. Participants talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians.”

She concluded by saying that she “regret[s] that the conference so far has not taken the issues related to Jerusalem more seriously. Much of the discourse here thus far has been personally objectionable and even painful to me, but I believe my presence here is important for the cause of peace.”

Friedman, like Norman Finkelstein, among others, seem to be disheartened and disillusioned by the liberal, leftist and anti-Israel groups which they espouse. Finkelstein recently admitted that the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he so closely aligned and supported in the past, is “a cult.”  













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5. Over 2/3 of Jews Say Press was Biased on Shalit, Tent Protest
by Gil Ronen Over 2/3 of Jews See Press Bias on Shalit

A poll has found that over two thirds of the Israeli public thinks press coverage of two major stories – the deal for releasing Gilad Shalit and the housing protest – was biased. The poll was revealed at a stormy panel on press bias at the 9th Jerusalem Conference, sponsored by B'Sheva Magazine.

The poll was carried out among Jews by Maagar Mochot for the Jerusalem Conference. It found that 69 percent of those who have an opinion on the matter think that the media covered the Shalit prisoner exchange in a way that was biased in favor of the deal. Twenty-seven percent said the coverage was professional and objective.

Of those with an opinion on the matter, 65 percent said the press covered the summer's housing protest in Tel Aviv in a way that was biased in favor of the protest. About 32 percent said the coverage was professional and objective.

Arutz Sheva website's editor in chief, Uzi Baruch, who spoke at the panel, said that during the tent protest, press hypocrisy was more blatant than ever. "The tents in Rothschild Avenue are no more legal than the outposts in Judea and Samaria that are evicted in the dead of night," he explained – yet the press that demonized the outpost residents lionized the housing protesters.

"The press channels were the ones who ran the tent protest," he said. However, in the end, the media lost out because the social protests led to economic slowdown and a loss of advertising revenues – making press-hyped protests less likely in the future.

The coverage of "women's exclusion," he added, was nothing more than "targeted assassination" against the hareidi religious sector. "Since when does the secular sector care about what happens on hareidi buses? This is one big hoax."

Channel 2's Amit Segal disagreed with Baruch. "There is no leftist conspiracy," he said. Segal blamed fellow religious Zionists for failing to join the mainstream media and said sector-based media outlets cannot offer a solution to mainstream media slant.

Maariv's Kalman Libeskind said that the press purposely inflated the numbers of the participants in the summer's protests and "knowingly published falsedata." In addition, he said, "everyone knew" that the mothers-with-strollers demonstration was led by communist activists but purposely hid this from the public.





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6. MK Katz: After Beinisch, Arutz Sheva Radio will Return
by Gil Ronen MK Katz: After Beinisch, A7 Radio will Return

National Union Chairman Yaakov Katz (Ketzaleh) had no warm words for outgoing Supreme Court President Dort Beinisch Tuesday. He predicted that Beinisch's retirement would eventually enable the reversal of the High Court ruling that closed down Arutz Sheva's popular radio station in 2003.

"In Jewish tradition it is written – 'a person must say a blessing over bad things just as he says it over the good things,'" MK Katz said Tuesday at B'sheva Magazine's Ninth Jerusalem Conference.

"For years, Beinisch has waged wars against sacred values: Judea and Samaria, Arutz Sheva, the Shin Bet, [the IDF in relation to] Sabra and Shatila and many other subjects. She took the unimportant point and made it the central one.

"All of the IDF's successes are despite Beinisch. All of the diverse settlement in Judea and Samaria – is despite Beinisch. A judge who was not elected to rule the country, appropriated the power to rule the country, cancelled important laws, marked a target and then fired the arrows.

"She took the law into her own hands. Who gave her permission? She was not elected.

"The Supreme Court is not permitted to strike down laws that the elected representatives of the people decided upon. Not only this," he predicted, "all of the laws that the Supreme Court canceled will come back to life, including [the law that allowed the operation of] Arutz Sheva, for which we will receive compensation for all of the suffering we have experienced over the years."

Ketzaleh referred to the so-called Grunis Law, which he had authored, which made it possible for Judge Asher Grunis to replace Beinisch. "After the ratification of the Grunis Law, a fundamental change has taken place, as Haaretz wrote," he said. "The Supreme Court no longer decides who will be [its] president and who will be a judge – rather, the Knesset, the representatives of the people, decide this. This is the greatest victory."





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7. PA Arabs Riot, Hurl Firebombs at Israelis
by Chana Ya'ar PA Arabs Riot, Hurl Firebombs at Israelis

Palestinian Authority Arabs rioted in the capital and hurled firebombs at Israelis Monday in what appears to be the start of a third wave of the 'Oslo War,' or what the Arabs refer to as an "intifada."

In Jerusalem, Arab rioters threw large, sharp-edged rocks and firebombs – Molotov cocktails – at Border Police officers in the A-Tur neighborhood. Most of the rioters were Arabs who are eligible to vote in Palestinian Authority elections, although some also carry the blue Israeli identity cards that entitles them to all the privileges of any other Israeli citizen.

Five of the rioters were arrested, and police were eventually forced to resort to using anti-riot measures in order to control the violent mob.



Palestinian Authority Arabs also hurled four firebombs towards the Qalandia crossing, south of Ramallah, on Monday evening. There were no casualties or damage.

Earlier in the day, a vehicle with Israeli license plates was damaged by rocks hurled by Arabs as the driver traveled past the Gilo area, south of Jerusalem. No one was physically injured, although the experience was traumatic. IDF soldiers were dispatched to the scene of the attack.

Last Tuesday, a mob of PA Arabs repeatedly ambushed drivers traveling along Highway 60 as they passed the center of Beit Ummar, a village in Judea located between Gush Etzion and Kiryat Arba-Hevron. One particularly vicious attack that day was photographed by an Associated Press photographer and the victim, Zehava Weiss, shared the details of her experience with Arutz Sheva.

Video footage of the repeated ambushes was filmed, and a gaggle of photographers was also seen eagerly racing to get good shots of the lethal attacks, which appeared to further encourage the attackers. No IDF soldiers or any other security forces were visible, although it is unclear why, since an Israeli “pillbox” military guard post is located right next to the site of the attack.





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8. Migron to State: Keep Your Word or No Deal!
by Gavriel Q & Yoni K Migron to State: Keep Your Word or No Deal!








Ronny Ramon, the strategic consultant for Migron, told Arutz Sheva "The people of Migron are saying; that in three and a half years' time when they finally have to evacuate and go to their new community, that the legal terms are that the current community should not be destroyed, and that the houses should not be demolished."

"According to the law everything that is right [legal,ed.] will stay there forever," Ramon said. "They want to sharpen [clarify,ed.] this in the agreement between them and the government of Israel. "





"And until this is clarified, they will sign this into the paper, into the agreement, between them and the government of Israel. And until this is sharpened [clear, ed.] they will not sign," he added.





Monday's protests by Migron's residents came after state prosecutors had pressured the government into reneging on conditions it previously agreed to in an agreement to move the residents to a nearby location.





In the original negotiations, the residents were the ones who made most of the concessions, yet the state has now performed a face-heel turn on its central concession – the agreement that the structures would remain in place until a court decides on their status.





According to the compromise reached earlier this month, land upon which Migron currently resides would be handed over to the IDF Civil Administration, which will "consider positively" the continued use of structures built on plots that were owned by Arabs who left the Land of Israel long ago, and can no longer claim them.





The compromise was brokered by Minister-without-Porfolio Benny Begin on the basis of a statement by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.





However, Arutz Sheva learned Monday that the state now says there will be no civilian presence at the present site of Migron until claims of ownership of the land are all settled.





In addition, it insists that all buildings at the site be razed and says that only if it turns out that the land has no private owner can they be rebuilt.





Coalition chairman MK Zeev Elkin (Likud) accused state prosecutors of "walking on people's heads."





Begin informed the residents of Migron of the state's new position and asked that they respond to the state's conditions by Monday morning.





"Why does the prosecution have to walk on people's heads, and in fact demand that all the buildings be razed, when the law does not require it? There is a clear retreat from agreements here," Elkin said. 













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More Website News:
Lieberman Slams Zoabi: Her Hatred is Intolerable
Fuel at $8 Gallon; ‘Go Take the Bus’
Thai Police Grill 3 Iranians Over Botched Bombings
Shabbat Divisions Cross Social Divides
UN to Praise Qaddafi's 'Human Rights' Record, NGO Outraged