Now on Arutz Sheva: Fitna, the controversial and censored movie by Geert Wilders that aims to energize the West into fighting back against its mortal enemy.

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The movie, which shows the Western world some of the aims and means of its latest mortal enemy, extremist Islam, was banned first by the internet registrar Network Solutions and LiveLeak. The full version can now be seen in full on Arutz Sheva.  Arutz Sheva provides this service in order educate the Western world as to the dangers facing non-Muslims and Western democracies all around the world.

The movie ends with a call for Europe to defeat Islamic ideology, just as it defeated the threats of Nazism and Communism in the past.

Condemnation
The movie has drawn condemnation from Arab countries around the world, as well as from Australia, Holland, the European Union and the United Nations.  Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, for example, rejected the film's premise of equating Islam with acts of terror and violence and said it is an attempt to incite racial hatred. Even the Netherlands' Central Jewish Board called the film's focus on anti-Jewish preaching by Muslims "counterproductive" and "generalizing."

Content
The movie screens explicit texts from the Koran, as well as Moslem clerics calling for murder and violence towards all non-believers.

One frenzied Moslem cleric is seen calling for the murder of Jews; he unsheathes a sword and cries out, "By Allah, we shall cut off the Jew's head!  Allah is great! Allah is great! Jihad for the sake of Allah!"  The audience, in a similar frenzy, cheers him on. 

One of the Koranic verses quoted in the movie reads, "Those who have disbelieved our signs, we shall roast them in fire. Whenever their skins are cooked to a turn, we shall substitute new skins for them, that they may feel the punishment. Verily, Allah is sublime and wise."  This is followed by scenes of enemies of Islam being dragged through the streets, a bombed-out bus in London, an imam calling for death to all Jews, and signs at Moslem rallies reading, "Be prepared for the real Holocaust," "God bless Hitler," and "Islam will dominate the world."

Another quoted verse: "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks, and when ye have caused a bloodbath among them, bind a bond firmly on them."  Another Moslem preacher is then seen saying calmly, "Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered - this is the path to victory." 

Imams and Moslem leaders are shown preaching, "Islam is a religion that wants to rule the world. It has done so before, and eventually will rule it again... By Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again!  The day will come when we will rule America!  The day will come when we will rule Britain! ... You will take over the USA! You will defeat them all! You will get victory!" 

US Media Interest
The United States media has been relatively quiet on the story, compared to the amount of attention the movie continues to receive in the European press. The New York Times, for instance, last reported it on Thursday. 

The Washington Post has an Associated Press story concentrating on the reactions to the movie, with nothing about its content; the report relates to the film as an "insult" to Islam, with quotes by many Islamic political leaders to this effect and comparing it to the Danish cartoons about Muhammed.  An earlier Reuters story in the Washington Post followed the same line, though it included one and a half sentences describing the film's actual content.

Senior Fatah officials in the Palestinian Authority health system systematically stole valuable medications and replaced them with worthless placebo pills.

The placebos, which lab tests show had no medical value, were passed along to clinics and hospitals, where they were given to patients suffering from serious and often life-threatening diseases.

The real medications were taken to massive warehouses in Ramallah and Shechem, and were sold for high prices on the black market.  PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said over the weekend that the allegations would be investigated.

The PA has been hit by other scandals in recent weeks.  PA negotiator Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) was recently accused of embezzling millions of dollars in PA funds, as was former Arafat advisor Khaled Salam.  A third senior official was recently caught attempting to smuggle cellular telephones.

PA Considers Investigating Top Arafat Aide
PA officials said Saturday that they are considering an investigation of Khaled Salam, also known as Mohammed Rashid, a former senior advisor to deceased PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.  PA General Prosecutor Ahmed al-Mughni said Salam is planning a $600 million investment in a Jordanian project, and that the money may have come from funds meant for the PA.

Rashid was involved in several financial partnerships with Israelis on ventures such as the Jericho casino.

Israeli officials are planning additional “gestures” to ease restrictions on Palestinian Authority Arabs, according to Army Radio.  Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will discuss the plans with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday. 

The US Secretary of State arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport Saturday evening in another attempt to push the pace on talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Rice said Saturday that one of her goals in her current trip to the region was to convince Israel to ease travel for PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

Security officials said Israel will remove dozens of roadblocks in Judea and Samaria and will remove one or two checkpoints as well. PA Arabs will be granted free access to the Dead Sea, as the checkpoint between Jericho and the sea, in place since 2000, is removed. Senior PA businessmen will be granted reduced travel restrictions, and thousands more PA Arabs will be granted permits allowing them to work for Israeli employers.

PA police stations will also be established in mid-sized villages in Area B, under Israeli security control and PA administrative control.

Rice met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday night over dinner to discuss the main issues on which she plans to focus this time around.

She has plans to discuss ways to keep other Arab nations involved in the Israel-PA negotiating process, according to a statement by the US State Department.

Contrary to her usual modus operandi, Rice will meet together in a three-way parlay with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and then do the same with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (Israel’s chief negotiator) and chief PA negotiator Ahmed Qureia.

Rice will also eschew the traditional visit to PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah this time around due to her greeting by an angry mob during her last visit. Sources said Rice will meet elsewhere with Abbas at an undisclosed location.

Following her meetings with Israeli and PA officials Rice will travel to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II, where according to a statement by the US Department of State, she will also be discussing “the political situation in Lebanon, stability in Iraq and other regional developments.”

Arutz Sheva blogger Michael Freund, a former official in the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, criticizes the US for focusing on hammering out an unrealistic political deal between Israel and the PA instead of focusing on the upcoming Middle East arms race. "There is something obsessive about the manner in which the Bush Administration is devoting so much time and resources to trying to create a Palestinian state," Freund writes. "A direct result of this mindset is that other, far more important issues, such as Iran's drive toward nuclear weapons and the nuclearization of the Middle East, are not getting the attention that they deserve... This is a dangerous development, and warrants a major 're-think' in Washington's entire approach to the region."

Ezra HaLevi and Maayana Miskin contributed to this report

According to senior researcher Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, the left-wing group B’Tselem appears to justify the murder of Israeli soldiers. 

In an article published over the weekend, Dahoah-Halevi, a researcher with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, points out that while B’Tselem condemns attacks on Israeli civilians, it has yet to condemn an attack on Israeli soldiers.

B’Tselem fails to condemn attacks on soldiers even when the soldiers in question are within pre-1967 Israel and are not involved in combat, Dahoah-Halevi said, such as the attack on an IDF patrol in 2006 in which soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. 

It appears that B’Tselem sees nothing wrong with terrorists’ attacks on military targets, he said, “and perhaps even more seriously, sees the terrorist groups as having the ‘right’ to kill Israeli soldiers indiscriminately in Israeli territory, this even after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.”

B’Tselem did not reply to requests to clarify its position regarding terror groups’ attacks on soldiers.

IDF soldiers from the Givati Brigade killed one terrorist in an attempted attack near the Jewish town of Netiv HaAsarah, located barely 100 meters from the security barrier with Gaza, in southern Israel.

The terrorist managed to hurl a grenade at the soldiers before he was hit by IDF gunfire. None of the soldiers were injured in the exchange, which took place on the Gaza side of the barrier.

Netiv HaAsarah became a de facto border community during the 2005 Disengagement in which 21 flourishing Jewish towns in the Gush Katif region of Gaza were destroyed by the Sharon government and their residents expelled from their homes to hotels and temporary housing.

Residents of Netiv HaAsarah were able to see their neighbors’ homes in the town of Nissanit, until the community was destroyed.

The founding families of the small Jewish town are also no strangers to pioneer life, nor are they unfamiliar with being uprooted from their homes.  Netiv HaAsarah was built for them in 1982 after they were expelled from their homes in the Sinai as part of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian treaty signed by the Begin government.

According to doctors at a Gaza hospital, IDF soldiers also killed two other terrorists as well on Saturday. 

The two were eliminated as they tried to plant a bomb along the northern security barrier near the town of Beit Hanoun, which is located less than a mile away from the western Negev community of Sderot in southern Israel. Both were members of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah organization's Al Aksa Martyr's Brigades.

The IDF Spokesperson's Office declined to comment.

IAF Air Strike Near Jabaliya
Israeli Air Force pilots struck a rocket launching cell near the town of Jabaliya in northern Gaza Saturday night.

According to local sources, four terrorists were hit. Initial reports said two were lightly wounded but information on the other two terrorists was not available.

At least two of the wounded operatives belong to the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, which works hand-in-hand with the Hamas terror group which rules Gaza.

IDF sources confirmed the air strike targeted a terror cell responsible for firing rockets and mortars at Jewish communities in southern Israel.

Gaza-based terrorists fired three Kassam rockets and three mortar shells at the western Negev earlier Saturday.

Two rockets exploded within the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council area. No one was injured and no damage was reported. A third rocket missed the mark altogether and landed on the Gaza side of the security barrier.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni once again confirmed that the barrier being constructed in Israel is a border fence intended to partition the land and establish the state of Palestine.

Responding to questions at a press conference with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Sunday morning, Livni confirmed that Jews living on the “other” side of the so-called security fence should be the subject of legislation compensating them in return for leaving their homes.

She said that a bill mirroring the one that enabled the eviction and compensation of the Jews of Gaza must be drawn up “as early as possible” for the Jews living on the east side of the Partition Wall. Livni said that the actual communities that will be eligible depend on the outcome of the final status negotiations in which she is engaging, which will also determine the path of the border wall. "This must be done as the process proceeds, when the borders are defined," she said.

"I think that someone who has settled in a certain place should be helped by the government to leave it in accordance with its priorities. In principle, as one who went through the disengagement, I think that it is proper to work on this as early as possible."
 
Livni said that advanced negotiations are taking place with Fatah negotiator Ahmed Qurei (Abu Alla) “out of the public eye.”

Left-Wing Backers of Bill Spring to Action
An evacuation-compensation bill must be passed immediately, Knesset Members Colette Avital (Labor) and Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) said Sunday, following Livni's statement. The two called on the government to pass the bill, saying it would "give hope to the residents of Judea and Samaria who want to 'relocate back to Israel.'"

Rice has in the past met with both Avital and Vilan about the bill, as well as with Vice Premier Chaim Ramon and Minister-Without-Portfolio Ami Ayalon (Labor) about the plan to pay Jewish residents to leave Judea and Samaria.

The MKs behind the legislation are the same ones who founded the One Home movement, which seeks the same aims and attempts to garner support among residents of Judea and Samaria for the idea.

Arutz Sheva covered a recent visit of One Home to the Samaria town of Shavei Shomron. The town simultaneously hosted a conference for new residents, which attracted a dozen new families to the community.

Traffic jams began Sunday morning in central Israel as the police announced a search for one or more terrorists just south of Tel Aviv. By 10:30 a.m., the police announced the arrest of four Arabs and the removal of the high alert.

The story began at 9:30 Sunday morning when the police announced that, in light of intelligence warnings of a likely terrorist infiltration, they were searching for one or more terrorists just south of Tel Aviv.  They instated surprise checkpoints in central Israel and in the Sharon area, with the searches concentrating in the cities of Holon and Bat Yam. Traffic jams and congestion quickly developed on the main Ayalon Highway in the Tel Aviv region.

An hour later, the high alert was removed, following the arrest of four Arabs from Palestinian Authority-controlled areas who were reported to be in Israel illegally. 

A similar police search in Hadera last week turned out to be a false alarm.  It was based not on intelligence information, but rather on bystanders who reported seeing a suspicious woman dressed as a terrorist and carrying a bag. 

Police on Alert
The police have been on high alert for the past few days in light of Hizbullah warnings that it would avenge the killing of its number-2 man, Imad Mughniyeh.  The arch-terrorist, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and Israelis, was assassinated in his car in Damascus several weeks ago. 

Hizbullah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel last week that it would avenge the killing, and boasted that the Israelis were scared.  He released the taped speech from his bunker, in which he has been hiding for weeks in fear that Israel would kill him next. 

Israel has denied involvement in the killing of Mughniyeh.

Bat Yam, A Year Ago
In February 2007, a massive Bat Yam manhunt for a suspected terrorist ended with the arrest of a PA resident hiding in an apartment - and with the killing by Israeli forces the next day of the Islamic Jihad mastermind of the plot to bomb the Tel Aviv bus station.

The Justice Ministry has ruled that the Ariel College in Judea and Samaria must not call itself a University Center.

Though the institute "was upgraded to its present status as a University Center after undergoing the proper administrative and academic procedures," in the words of Ariel's Chairman of the Board Yigal Cohen-Orgad, the Justice Ministry found a technicality that appears to void the entire process.

The Ariel University Center is located in the heartland of Samaria, and its upgrading is a matter of controversy between those who support a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, and those against. 

The Ministry explained that Ariel must revert to calling itself a college, as it did until last year, because the sovereign entity in Judea and Samaria is the IDF and Civil Administration - which were not consulted and did not give their approval for the change. "Because this approval was not given, the name change is not approved," the Justice Ministry stated, accepting the stance of the Council for Higher Education.

Cohen-Orgad responds that just like colleges in mainland Israel do not require government approval for a name change, so too Ariel does not require the approval of the IDF/Civil Administration. 

Nevertheless, the Justice Ministry warns that "if the college does not change its name [back to Ariel College], a suit to the Court for Procedural Matters will be considered, in accordance with the authority legally granted to the Attorney-General."

The Ariel College boasts the largest student body of all colleges in Israel, and the Council for Higher Education orginally had approved upgrading its status to a university.

Scientists' Council Approve University Status
Back in 2006, a council of six top scientists - including four Israel Prize winners and three members of the Israeli Academy for Science - analyzed the research and teaching activity in Ariel, and determined that it was already functioning almost totally like a university.  The council, which had been appointed by then-Education Minister Limor Livnat, decided that the College should receive temporary recognition as a university for three years.

To finalize the new status, Ariel was charged with fulfilling certain tasks, such as increasing the number of different degrees it granted to four.  This was accomplished in July 2007, Cohen-Orgad said.

Growth of School
Located in the city of Ariel, a bustling town of 17,000 people in the Samarian hills, the 26-year-old University Center continues to grow and diversify to "meet the new challenges of a burgeoning society with rapidly changing needs," its website states.  It currently boasts 8,500 students from all over the country, including 70% coming from the greater Tel Aviv area and central Israel. 

As a demonstratively Zionist institution, the University Center has two key requirements: every student must study one course per semester on some aspect of Judaism, Jewish heritage or Land of Israel studies, and the Israeli flag must be displayed in every classroom, laboratory and auditorium on campus.

The University Center offers undergraduate studies in a wide variety of subjects: Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Electronics, Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Industrial Engineering & Management, Mechanical Engineering, Architecture, Physiotherapy, Health Management, Nutrition, Medical Physics, Social Work, Behavioral Sciences, Economics & Business Management, Mass Communications, Israel & Middle Eastern Studies, Israel Heritage, General Studies (Humanities), Applied Physics, Molecular Biology, Biological Chemistry and Mathematics & Computer Science.

In the near future, Ariel University Center of Samaria will open additional undergraduate courses in Education, Communication Disabilities and Material Science.

Though Lag BaOmer holiday (May 23) was to have marked the start of broadcasts for RadiYosh - a regional radio station for Judea and Samaria - a suit brought by the ultra-left-wing Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) has placed the future of the station in grave doubt.

Ever since October 2003, when Arutz Sheva Radio was closed down (though it never stopped broadcasting over the internet), residents of Judea and Samaria and their supporters have not had a voice on the Israel airwaves.  This situation was to be reversed within two months, following the selection by the Second Channel Authority of a group to run a new regional radio station.  The station was to be called RadiYosh; Yosh is a Hebrew acronym for Judea and Samaria.
Second Channel Authority: Gush Shalom has no interest other than to hurt others with whom it disagrees politically.
 Some broadcasters from Arutz Sheva radio are a part of the new initiative.

However, Gush Shalom, seeking to prevent any improvement to Jewish quality of life in Judea and Samaria, appears to have found the way to stop the new radio station.  It brought a suit to the Supreme Court claiming that Judea and Samaria, still under the control of the Civil Administration, is not in the purview of the Second Channel Authority.  Therefore, Gush Shalom claims, the station is illegal and may not broadcast.

The State has not responded to the claim, the case is limping along slowly - a court case scheduled for last week was canceled - and the bottom line is that there is no regional radio station for Judea and Samaria.

The Second Channel Authority maintains that the court suit is simply a "political ploy by a group that wishes to end Israeli control over Judea and Samaria... Gush Shalom [has no concern] for the some 300,000 Israeli citizens who live there, and therefore worked very hard to find technicalities on which to disqualify the approval procedure.  Gush Shalom has no interest other than to hurt others with whom it disagrees politically."