Jerusalem Vantage Point
By: Caroline B. Glick Wednesday, July 25, 2007

An Idiot's Guide To Diplomacy

The simple fact that a state’s foreign ministry’s job is to use the tools of diplomacy to advance the state’s national interest has escaped the attention of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

This month Israel extended an official invitation to Martin Scheinin, the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, to visit the country to examine Israel’s counter-terror efforts.

During his eight-day visit, Israel gave Scheinin the red carpet treatment. He met with Livni, officials from the Foreign Ministry, Justice Ministry, IDF, Shin Bet, the prime minister’s counter-terror bureau, members of Knesset, the former and current Supreme Court chief justices, lawyers, academics and victims of terror. He was taken to visit Hadarim and HaSharon prisons to conduct interviews with jailed terrorists. He was brought to the Ofer military court to observe trials of terrorists.

Scheinin also visited the Palestinian Authority and met with officials in PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s office. He visited Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah and toured the route of Israel’s security fence.

Livni no doubt invited Scheinin to visit because she believed that by showing him what it is actually doing, Israel could convince Scheinin that it is not a human rights violator. Scheinin would finally see that Israel does more than any other country to uphold the human rights of its enemies. Indeed, he would see that Israel knowingly endangers the lives of its own citizens to protect the rights of its enemies.

And so he came and left, and on July 10 issued his preliminary report. No doubt to Livni’s surprise and the surprise of her staff, Scheinin’s report found fault with every single counter-terror technique that Israel employs. The security fence that prevents terrorists from entering Israeli population centers is bad because it is built past the 1949 armistice lines and makes it hard for Palestinians to get from place to place. Checkpoints, also aimed at preventing terrorists from killing Israelis, are bad because they make it difficult to move around.

To read more go to: http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/22397/Jerusalem_Vantage_Point.html

Two States for Two Nations on Two Sides of the Jordan River‎


Recently, Arieh Eldad, an Israeli Knesset leader, has brought up discussion of a two state solution - Israel and Jordan/Palestine. A summary of the historical distribution of land in this vital part of the middle east is shown below. For a detailed discussion and analysis use the article link to visit our website.
Contents:
1. Two States for Two Nations on Two Sides of the Jordan River, Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR), Arieh Eldad
Two States for Two Nations on Two Sides of the Jordan RiverArieh Eldad
Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR), February 01, 2004
Map 1: An Ancient Kingdom Map 2: First Partition(1921-1922)Map 3: Fourth Partition(1949)Map 4: Following the Six Day War(1967)
For the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=1594

Saudi Arabia’s Secret Nuclear Program Exposed

TEHRAN, July 25--A Saudi website revealed the secret nuclear program of the Saudi Arabia which is underway with the help of Pakistan.The news website ’Sawt Al-Salam’ announced on Wednesday that a group of Pakistani nuclear scientists who entered Saudi Arabia during the Hajj ceremony in 2003 have been working to expand the secret nuclear program of the country, Fars reported.

“During the Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca from 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims have come to Saudi Arabia and helped it expand its nuclear program,“ the website said.It adds that between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them slipped off from pilgrimages, sometimes for up to three weeks.

According to Western security services, the website added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998. It says the scientists advised the Saudi government to build its nuclear laboratories below prisons that are under construction. “The Saudi government has also hired some Iraqi nuclear scientists to help its nuclear program. Some residential complexes have also been constructed in southern Riyadh for them,“ it said.Sawt Al-Salam also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi barcodes can be found on half of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons because Saudi Arabia co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program.

The website also said satellite images indicate Saudi Arabia has set up a base in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles.

Murdoch, Son Differ Sharply Over Israel

BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 25, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/59052

The pro-Israel outlook of the Wall Street Journal and many News Corp. outlets could waver if one of Rupert Murdoch's sons, James Murdoch, takes the helm of the publishing and broadcasting company, a new book suggests.

The just-published diaries of a communications director for Prime Minister Blair, Alastair Campbell, indicate that James Murdoch launched into a foul-mouthed tirade that suggested that the behavior of Palestinian Arabs was justified by their poor treatment by Israelis. The outburst occurred at a private dinner with his father, his brother, Lachlan, Mr. Blair, and others at no. 10 Downing St. in January 2002.

The elder "Murdoch was at one point putting the traditional very right-wing view on Israel and the Middle East peace process and James said that he was ‘talking f— nonsense.' [Rupert] Murdoch said he didn't see what the Palestinians' problem was and James said that it was that they were kicked out of their f— homes and had nowhere to f— live," Mr. Campbell recorded, adding that the News Corp. chairman was "very pro-Israel, very pro-Reagan."

The prime minister's aide said James Murdoch's outburst drew a rebuke from his father, who said "he didn't think he should talk like that in the Prime Minister's house."

"James got very apologetic with [Mr. Blair], who said not to worry, I hear far worse all the time," Mr. Campbell wrote.

James Murdoch, who heads News Corp.'s BSkyB satellite broadcasting division, has been intimately involved in the firm's $5 billion bid to take over Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal. The elder Murdoch brought James to a critical meeting last month in Manhattan at which the pair sought to win over members of the Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones.

The takeover talks have been difficult in part because members of the Bancroft family have demanded assurances that there would be no interference with editorial practices at the Journal.

It is widely assumed in financial and publishing circles that James Murdoch would have ultimate responsibility for overseeing operations at the Journal if the takeover bid is successful. James Murdoch, 35, is also seen as the most likely heir to chairmanship of News Corp. when his father, 76, retires.

Advocates for Israel expressed distress yesterday at the report of James Murodch's stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Certainly, it's troubling," a spokesman for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Alexander Safian, said. "It's a little upsetting to hear that perhaps a son who might eventually have a lot of power is not favorably inclined towards Israel."

Mr. Safian said several News Corp. properties, including the New York Post and Fox News, usually present a positive image of Israel, though some British outlets have a more mixed record. He said the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is presently "very pro-Israel," but the news pages are not.

A spokesman for News Corp., Andrew Butcher, and a spokesman for BSkyB, Robert Fraser, declined to comment on Mr. Campbell's diary entry or on how the Murdochs' views on Israel could affect the press and broadcasting operations.

A former editor of the Jerusalem Post who now works as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens, said he expects an agreement being worked out between the Bancrofts and the Murdochs to insulate the Journal from any interference. "If the Murdochs are intent on preserving our editorial independence, as they profess to be, neither Rupert's apparent pro-Israel bias nor James's reported anti-Israel bias should make any difference," Mr. Stephens said.

A pro-Israel activist in London, Jonathan Hoffman, said he was not aware of other instances where James Murdoch had expressed views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It's clearly interesting," Mr. Hoffman said.

While Mr. Safian criticized Israel-related coverage by Sky News, the service James Murdoch currently oversees, Mr. Hoffman said he had no issues with Sky. "I've never had any cause for complaint about their coverage on Israel, in contrast to the BBC," he said.

Mr. Hoffman, an economist, said he considers James Murdoch's views on Israel fairly typical in Britain, particularly in younger circles. "The generation that remembers World War II and the Holocaust, that generation knows why Israel was created as a Jewish state and appreciates it," the activist said. "I think makes a huge difference."

While many Europeans are steeped in anti-Israel sentiment at universities on the Continent, James Murdoch attended Harvard University for a year before dropping out to start a rap music label.

A pro-Israel lobbyist in Washington, Morris Amitay, said family dynamics may explain James Murdoch's exuberance but that the outburst did not reflect well on the young executive. "For a son to say his father was talking ‘f—ing nonsense,' that's a little bothersome … particularly in that venue."

While Rupert Murdoch generally hews to a pro-Israel line, he maintains business contacts in the Arab world. A Saudi prince who is a major investor in News Corp., Alwaleed bin Talal, has expressed confidence in the elder Murdoch, as well as James and Lachlan, as future leaders for the company. In 2005, Prince Alwaleed reportedly complained to the elder Murdoch that Fox News was labeling disturbances in Paris as "Muslim riots." The graphic was later changed to read "civil riots."

US Treasury Cracks Down On Two Muslim Charities Funding Terror

by Ezra HaLevi

Legal action is being taken against two Muslim charities in the United States due to their support of the Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist groups.

On Tuesday, the US Treasury began legal action against the Iran-based Martyrs Foundation and what it says is a front-group for it – the Goodwill Charitable Organization (GCO), which has a US branch in Dearborn, Michigan. The organization is accused of providing funding to Hizbullah. Action was also initiated against al-Qard al-Hassan, a Lebanese firm believed to have been used by Hizbullah as a front for managing its finances. The administrative order also includes a warrant for the arrest of two Lebanese men who acted as go-betweens from the charitable foundations to Hizbullah.

The legal action translates into the freezing of all assets and accounts of the foundations and individuals, as well as a ban on doing business with any of the entities for any US citizens.

"We will not allow organizations that support terrorism to raise money in the United States," Stuart Levey, the Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told reporters.

Treasury investigators found that potential donors were instructed by US-based Hizbullah terrorists to send contributions to the GCO, which would pass the money to the Martyrs Foundation in Lebanon.

In addition to Hizbullah, the Martyrs Foundation channels funds to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Islamist terror groups.

Another Islamist organization, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, is on trial after a decade-long FBI investigation into the group’s funding of Hamas.

"The charity's leaders lied about their purpose because to tell the truth is to reveal what they were all about - the destruction of the State of Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian Islamic state," Prosecutor James T. Jacks said in his opening statement Tuesday.

The fund channeled money and support to families of suicide bombers, according to the prosecution. Federal agents raided the group’s US offices in December, 2001.

The fund’s lawyers claim it supported humanitarian efforts in PA-controlled areas and did not know it was aiding Hamas. Five of the fund’s top officials are being accused of funneling $36 million to individuals and groups tied to Hamas.

The Olmert government's assault on Zionism
THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 24, 2007

Jewish history throughout the ages has proven incontrovertibly that Zionism, the assertion of Jewish rights and control over the Land of Israel and the affirmation of Jewish national identity, is the solution to most of the problems that have beset the Jews since the time of Abraham. In the Land of Israel, as a nation of free men and women willing and able to assert and defend ourselves, the Jewish people flourish on every level.

Disturbingly, with each passing day it becomes more and more obvious that the Olmert government does not believe that Zionism is important. To the contrary, both in its domestic and foreign policies, the Olmert government consistently advances anti-Zionist, or post-Zionist policies, that unsurprisingly increase the dangers to the Jewish State and to the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

Zionism is built on four foundations: education, aliya, the Land of Israel, and national defense. As we saw in the war last summer and in the government's abject failure to contend with any of our enemies since, the Olmert government's policies directly undercut Israel's national security.

To read more go to:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184766045636&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Olmert government's assault on Zionism
THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 24, 2007

Jewish history throughout the ages has proven incontrovertibly that Zionism, the assertion of Jewish rights and control over the Land of Israel and the affirmation of Jewish national identity, is the solution to most of the problems that have beset the Jews since the time of Abraham. In the Land of Israel, as a nation of free men and women willing and able to assert and defend ourselves, the Jewish people flourish on every level.

Disturbingly, with each passing day it becomes more and more obvious that the Olmert government does not believe that Zionism is important. To the contrary, both in its domestic and foreign policies, the Olmert government consistently advances anti-Zionist, or post-Zionist policies, that unsurprisingly increase the dangers to the Jewish State and to the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

Zionism is built on four foundations: education, aliya, the Land of Israel, and national defense. As we saw in the war last summer and in the government's abject failure to contend with any of our enemies since, the Olmert government's policies directly undercut Israel's national security.

To read more go to:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184766045636&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Olmert government's assault on Zionism
THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 24, 2007

Jewish history throughout the ages has proven incontrovertibly that Zionism, the assertion of Jewish rights and control over the Land of Israel and the affirmation of Jewish national identity, is the solution to most of the problems that have beset the Jews since the time of Abraham. In the Land of Israel, as a nation of free men and women willing and able to assert and defend ourselves, the Jewish people flourish on every level.

Disturbingly, with each passing day it becomes more and more obvious that the Olmert government does not believe that Zionism is important. To the contrary, both in its domestic and foreign policies, the Olmert government consistently advances anti-Zionist, or post-Zionist policies, that unsurprisingly increase the dangers to the Jewish State and to the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

Zionism is built on four foundations: education, aliya, the Land of Israel, and national defense. As we saw in the war last summer and in the government's abject failure to contend with any of our enemies since, the Olmert government's policies directly undercut Israel's national security.

To read more go to:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184766045636&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

War Moves in Syria
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 24, 2007

From the questionable counsel of the Iraq Study Group, to Nancy Pelosi's rogue diplomacy, to the agitation of top senators for outreach to Syria, the notion persists that the dictatorship of Bashar Assad has undergone an important ideological shift -- its own road-to-Damascus moment -- and is now firmly on a course of concord and compromise. Comforting though it may be, it is a notion demands a willful blindness to some troubling facts on the ground.

Start at the Syrian border with Lebanon. Against the popular view that Syria has made peace with its unceremonious expulsion, after a 29-year military presence, from Lebanon, there are multiple reasons to think that the Baathist regime is mounting a new bid to reassert its dominion over its erstwhile subject state. Not the least trivial of them concerns reports last month in the Lebanese press that Syrian troops, in the active company of bulldozers, were digging themselves into position along the Lebanese border. Of all the ways to interpret the scores of newly constructed trenches and bunkers, the least plausible is that Syria has finally forsworn its designs on Lebanon.

Nor can one reasonably conclude that Syria means only to safeguard its frontiers. Indeed, securing its borders is one thing that the Syrian regime has resolutely refused to do, and with good reason: a porous border helps Syria to undermine the sovereignty of its Lebanese neighbor while arming anti-Israel jhadists. So overwhelming is the evidence of Syrian malfeasance on this score that even the United Nations -- not distinguished by its skepticism about Syrian motives -- recently published a report faulting Syria for failing to assert control over its borders and for shirking its responsibility to curb arms smuggling to its client Hezbollah. For its part, Hezbollah, clearly emboldened by the lack of a strong international outcry, has in recent weeks boasted of its intentions to destabilize Lebanon�s democratically elected government by erecting a �second government� to execute the Islamists� will. Should Hezbollah make good on the threat, it will have Syria to thank for its success.

Coinciding with the campaign to sabotage Lebanese domestic affairs is a growing Syrian belligerence. Although the Syrian army, with its rusting Soviet-era tanks, has long been regarded as a laughingstock, the image of Syria as militarily feeble may be due for a revision. According to the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Syria has already deployed Iranian-purchased and Chinese-made C-802 cruise missiles. The paper further reports that Syria has approached Russia seeking the Iskander missile, a high-precision missile that would enable Damascus to launch targeted attacks anywhere on Israeli territory. From this perspective, even if there is no truth to the latest reports of a Syrian-Iranian pact, wherein Iran would provide Syria $1 billion for high-tech weaponry and nuclear development in exchange for Syrian refusal to negotiate with Israel, Syria's military expansion offers ample cause for alarm.

To be sure, one need not think a Syrian military offensive against Israel likely, or even possible, to recognize the regional threat that the country poses. Just look at the destructive role that Syria has played in Iraq, where some 80 fighters are estimated to cross the Syrian border monthly to sow carnage among the Iraqi civilian population and kill American troops. To judge by a report in the New York Sun, Syria has a similar scenario in mind for Israel. The paper quoted Baath Party officials warning that if Israel does not withdraw from all of the Golan Heights -- a non-starter for both security and strategic reasons, as Syrian negotiators well know -- then Syrian "guerillas" would begin "resistance operations" against resident Jewish communities in the territory come August or September. One of these groups, a Syrian imitator of Hezbollah calling itself the Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights, is reported to have undergone military training to attack civilians. Here as elsewhere, all signs point back to Damascus.

In a saner world, such details would inspire doubt about Syria's supposedly peaceful intentions. Instead, the opposite seems to have happened. On the Democratic side, presidential candidates like Barack Obama -- he of the cool indifference to genocide in Iraq -- have made negotiations with Syria a main theme of their foreign policy. The Republican side has its own reality-challenged denizens. Indiana's Richard Lugar, basking in his sudden role as the "most respected Republican voice on foreign affairs in Congress" (as the left-liberal New York Review of Books recently swooned), has repeatedly called for U.S. engagement of Syria and Iran, as though the two leading enemies of American foreign policy in the Middle East were actually critical to its success.

To such enthusiasm Syria has offered a telling response. As the number of Syria's well-wishers in Washington grows, the Syrian government has urged its citizens to leave Lebanese territory in anticipation of an unspecified "eruption" in the country. Nice to know that Syria, at least, is taking its own threats seriously.

The real 'nakba'

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, THE JERUSALEM POST

Jul. 23, 2007

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The flap over new third-grade textbooks for Israeli Arab schools has produced a divide along predictable political lines. Education Minister Yuli Tamir, from Labor, is defending a mention of the term "nakba" (catastrophe) as the Arab description of the War of Independence. Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu and others have accused the government of teaching Israeli Arab children to reject the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

If what these critics were saying were true, it would be very disturbing. Fortunately, it is not.

The Hebrew version of the textbook, called Living Together in Israel: Textbook for [the study of] Homeland, Society and Citizenship, is already in use in some schools that have decided to include it in their curriculum. As befits an elementary school text, the Hebrew version does not include an Arab perspective on the history of the land and the conflict; the Arabic version does.

Unit 3 of the Arabic version is titled "This Land is our Homeland." Sticking carefully to basic facts, this chapter weaves together the Jewish and Arab perspectives on the Zionist enterprise. It explains why the Jews came to this land, why they wanted a state, how the Arabs reacted, and how the War of Independence started with the refusal of Arab side to accept the UN partition plan and with the invasion of five Arab armies.

The controversial line reads: "The Arabs call the war 'nakba,' a war of disaster and loss, while the Jews call it 'The War of Independence.'"

Contrary to the impression given by the headline in The New York Times ("In Arabic Textbook, Israel Calls '48 War Catastrophe for Arabs") and by some of the critics, the textbook does not itself endorse or justify the use of the term "nakba." Anyone reading the chapter would conclude that Jews and Arabs suffered greatly from a war that the Arab side chose and started.

Indeed, the text seems to be written to help persuade an Israeli Arab third-grader who was being told by much of his surroundings that the Jews are interlopers who stole his land that there is another way of looking at things. Far from presenting the Arab "narrative," the text seems to be designed to open minds to the Jewish narrative, while including accurate points of reference, such as the costs of the war, that might help reconcile the distortions these students receive from their environment with the facts.

It should not be surprising that the book has such a Zionist didactic purpose, given that the head of the Education Ministry committee that drafted the curriculum behind this text was Prof. Ya'acov Katz, a professor of education at Bar-Ilan University, former adviser to Netanyahu, and resident of Gush Etzion. That curriculum, produced in 2002, stipulated that the text include references to the Arab description of events, such as the term "nakba."

Though there are certainly legitimate pedagogical questions over how best to educate Arabs and Jews toward living together, that goal is certainly a worthy one. In particular, it is important that Israeli Arab children learn real historical facts, not just propaganda designed to foster hatred and rejection of the state in which they live. The way to do this, we would suggest, is not necessarily to reject all use of the term "nakba," but to define it more accurately.

The Arab catastrophe was not the fact of Israel's creation, but the Arab rejection of it. If the Arab world had accepted the UN partition plan and decided to live in peace with Israel, both Israel and Palestine would be celebrating their 60th anniversaries next year. All the wars and the refugee problem would not exist, and the unfathomable price imposed in blood and treasure for the failed Arab attempt to destroy Israel would have been saved.

Nor is this "merely" history; it is the present. Even today, the Arab world, including the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, face a choice between continuing to try to destroy Israel or living in peace with Israel. It is the same choice they faced in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000 and 2005. The costs of the catastrophic course the Arab world has chosen until now cannot be recouped, but the costs of continuing the conflict can still be spared.

The textbook's chapter ends thus: "The Arab residents who stayed in the land became citizens of Israel, and the State of Israel called on them to keep the peace and join in building the country as citizens with equal rights... [As stated] in the Declaration of Independence: The state will uphold equality for all its residents, safeguard all the holy places, and strive for peace with its neighbors."
Any takers?

Italy police raid 'terror school'

Police in central Italy say they have uncovered a bomb school for Islamist militants after raiding a mosque in Perugia and making three arrests.

The Ponte Felcino mosque is located in a suburb of Perugia

Italian police put a laptop seized in the raid on display

Evidence of training in explosives and poisons, and instructions on flying a Boeing 747 were reportedly found.

Police said the suspected cell had links to a group associated with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

They seized the imam and two other men, all Moroccans, and have a warrant for a fourth man believed to be abroad.

We have discovered and neutralised a real 'terror school' Carlo De Stefano anti-terrorism police head

The three detainees refused to reply to questions when they were brought before a local magistrate.

Twenty foreign students were also arrested in a related dawn raid and police said that those without residence permits would be deported.

Perugia, a popular tourist destination because of its medieval and Renaissance palaces, is home to Italy's University for Foreigners, where hundreds of students from the Middle East are enrolled in university courses in Italian and other subjects.

The discovery of the alleged terrorist training centre is a matter for serious concern to the Italian authorities, the BBC's David Willey reports from Rome.

Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said it was now necessary to pay close attention to mosques being used for activities unrelated to religion.

Chemicals

The suspects were running an "in-depth operation of instruction and training in the use of weapons and combat techniques suitable for terrorist acts", police said.

Chemicals - including acids and cyanide - were found in the mosque's cellar and equipment for remote detonation of explosives was also discovered, they added.

"The investigation has shown that... there was a continued training for terrorist activity," anti-terrorism police head Carlo De Stefano said.

"We have discovered and neutralised a real 'terror school,' which was part of a widespread terrorism system made up of small cells that act on their own."

According to the police, the Perugia cell had contacts with two members of the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group arrested around two years ago in Belgium.

The group is believed to have ties to al-Qaeda and has been linked to the 2004 Madrid bombings and 2003 attacks in Casablanca.

The detained men were named as imam Korchi el Moustapha, 41, Mohamed el Jari, 47, and Driss Safika, 46.

'Quiet community'

Officers are reported to have spent two years investigating activities at the mosque.

Between daily prayers, the small mosque at Ponte Felcino doubled as a training camp, a police statement said.

The imam allegedly held courses, showed propaganda messages and made fiery sermons inciting a small group of disciples, some of them children, to join a Holy War.

The director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community, Sheikh Abdul Adid Palazzi, told BBC News that he was not surprised to hear of the arrests.

"It is the top of the iceberg in our country - like in the rest of Western Europe. Most mosques are controlled by extremist pro-terror organisations - 90% of mosques," he said.

"And I think the percentage is more or less the same in Italy, Britain, France and Germany."

However the imam at the central mosque in Perugia, which has a 10,000-strong Muslim community, said the Ponte Felcino group had not appeared dangerous.

"Generally it's a quiet community," Abdel Qader told Italian news agency Ansa.

"A few made some noise over the international situation but those were just words. We trust justice... and if any [of the suspects] has made a mistake, he will have to pay."

Last Updated: Saturday, 21 July 2007, 23:03 GMT 00:03 UK

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6909961.stm

Hizbullah: We can strike all of Israel

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Jpost.com staff and AP, THE JERUSALEM POST

Jul. 22, 2007

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Hizbullah has the ability to launch rockets against any point in Israel, the organization's leader, Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday.

He told Al Jazeera that Hizbullah had the capability to strike every part of Israel during last summer's war, and retains that capability.
"Even in the months of July and August 2006 there was not one place in occupied Palestine that we could not reach, every point and every corner," Nasrallah was quoted as saying. "I stress that we can do this today as well."

The full interview is due to be broadcast by the Qatari-based satellite television on Monday.
Meanwhile, Hizbullah guerrillas have moved most of their rockets in south Lebanon among civilians in villages, an apparent attempt to avoid detection by Israel and UN troops, Israeli military officials said Sunday.

The new moves are part of Hizbullah's reorganization after last summer's Second Lebanon War, the officials said. During that 34-day conflict, Hizbullah fired almost 4,000 rockets at Israeli population centers, and Israeli land and air assaults caused heavy damage to Lebanese towns and neighborhoods.

Lebanon criticized Israel for targeting civilian areas, while Israel said Hizbullah was to blame for operating among civilians and putting them at risk.

Last summer, many of Hizbullah's rocket batteries were located in unpopulated rural areas, where the guerrillas dug networks of tunnels and fortifications, the officials said. But the army's new intelligence indicates that those positions have now largely been abandoned in favor of populated villages, which provide better cover for the group's activities.

The UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the war expanded UNIFIL, the international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, to 13,000 troops, entrusting it with ensuring that Hizbullah is not rearming near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Yasmina Bouziane, a UNIFIL spokeswoman in Lebanon, refused to comment on the Israeli charges.

A Hizbullah official in Beirut also refused to comment on the allegations. The official said only that in the past, Hizbullah guerrillas fired rockets at Israel from valleys and mountainous areas and not from inside villages.

The Israeli officials said Hizbullah's postwar efforts also included the construction of new fortifications north of the Litani River, farther from the Israeli border and out of UNIFIL's jurisdiction.

Last summer's conflict began when Hizbullah men attacked an Israeli border patrol killing three soldiers and capturing two. The fighting left 159 Israelis dead, including 119 soldiers, while in Lebanon more than 1,000 people died, most of them civilians, according to counts by human rights groups, the Lebanese government and The Associated Press.

HAMAS BUILDS ARMY WHILE PALESTINIANS STARVE

By Charles Johnson

After voting the Hamas terrorist group into office, Palestinians in the new Islamic State of Gaza are screaming out for more aid from the United Nations: Palestinians in Gaza appeal for more aid.

GAZA (Reuters) - Children raced to help parents collect food from U.N. aid distribution centers in the Gaza Strip as women sat in the shade near trucks, waiting for their names to be called to receive their food rations.

The enclave's isolation has deepened since the Islamist Hamas group routed their Western-backed rivals to seize control last month. Israel, effectively at war with Hamas, has sealed off key border crossings, stifling trade and forcing thousands of Palestinians to seek handouts from U.N. aid bodies.

The U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees says that up to 825,000 of Gaza�s 1.5 million inhabitants, classed as refugees, currently receive food rations, and the U.N. World Food Program aids a further 200,000 people.

"We now have only God and then UNRWA," said Ahmed al-Jammal, a father of five, inside an aid centre in Gaza City. "We have no other source of income," he said as he received sacks of flour and rice and bottles of cooking oil.

Hamas, meanwhile, has no problem with letting people like Ahmed starve, while they spend huge amounts of money on plotting terrorism and murder.

Claiming that Hamas has jumped light years since Israel's disengagement from Gaza, a high-ranking IDF officer said that there was currently a limited window of opportunity for Israel to confront the Hamas threat in the Gaza Strip.

There is an opportunity today since the world has not yet become accustomed to the new Hamas entity, and Hamas has not yet fully completed strengthening its military capabilities, the officer said, adding that Israel was on a "collision course" with the Islamist group. ...

Hamas, the officer went on to say, had established a full-fledged army, consisting of four brigades, corresponding to the different sections of the Gaza Strip. The brigades were made up of a number of battalions and platoons. In addition, Hamas had smuggled in the past two months over the twenty tons of explosives via the Philidelphi Corridor from the Sinai into the Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, the officer claimed that the group had obtained anti-tank missiles, as well as an unknown number of anti-aircraft missiles. Hamas also reportedly possessed old models of Katyusha rockets, and they were working to improve the range of their cache of Kassam rockets, he said.

"They have an organized military," the officer said, adding that the total number of infantry had reached some 13,000 recruits. "They have the manpower, they have the training, they have the motivation; the principle is creating a balance of deterrence against Israel," he said.

The officer also noted that over the past two years since the disengagement, several hundred Palestinians had traveled from Gaza to Iran to receive training. In one case, the officer said, a Palestinian who trained in Iran was responsible for training 400 Palestinians upon his return to Gaza.