A Hamas-run children's TV program aired recently encouraging hatred of Denmark, the West and Israel. The show's star, a rabbit named Assud, threatens to "bite and eat" the Danish if they republish cartoons of Islam's founder, Mohammed.

"If they repeat it we will kill them," Assud explains to the young viewers. "I will bite them and eat them!"
 
The program focuses on the call to boycott Danish and Israeli products. "Denmark and the West are targeted because of the Mohammad cartoons in a Danish newspaper," Palestinian Media Watch Director Itamar Marcus points out in a recent dispatch. "Israel is targeted because it exists."

Saraa, the young TV hostess of the program, describes the publication of the Muhammad cartoons as "the West's attack against [Mohammed]." The program then features children phoning into the program to condemn the "cowardly infidels" and vow to fight them.

"The children's show, Tomorrow's Pioneers, has used its previous animal character co-hosts, the Mickey Mouse lookalike Farfur and the bee Nahul, to champion violence, promote hatred of Israel  and preach about world Islamic supremacy," Marcus said. "To further reinforce its anti-Israel message, Hamas  has killed off both characters and blamed Israel."
 

 
The following is PMW's transcript of the broadcast of Feb. 22, 2008 on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV:
 
Saraa: Did you see the West's attack against the Messenger [Muhammed]?
              What do you have to say about this?
Amaani, 10 year old girl by phone: I say to the cowardly infidels...
Assud: Criminals.
Amaani: Criminals.
Assud:  Do you boycott Israeli and Danish products?
Amaani: Yes
Assud: You don't eat them at all?
Amaan: I don't eat them at all.
Assud:  Great! Keep it up!
Saraa:  We will all boycott Danish products, and Israeli products first.
 
* * * * * *

Saraa:  What can we do for the Messenger?
Inaas, 10 year old girl by phone:  We can fight them because
         they cursed  Allah's Messenger.
Saraa: 'Tomorrow's  Pioneers' army will redeem the Messenger,
        with their possessions and their blood, Assud,
        and will not let them repeat this attack.
Assud: If they repeat it we will kill them, by Allah.
Saraa: In His will.
Assud:  I will bite them and eat them!

At least five Hamas terrorists were killed, and several were wounded, in an Israel Air Force counter-terrorism attack in Gaza this morning (Wedneday).  The Israelis apparently tracked the bus in which they were traveling from the moment it set out from Jebalya in northern Gaza. 

The bus was rocketed when it neared a naval outpost on the coastal road west of Khan Yunis, in close proximity to the ruins of the former Gush Katif towns of N'vei Dekalim and Shirat HaYam.

The dead and wounded terrorists were reported to be member of the Hamas Iz A-Din El-Kassam brigades.

In another incident later this morning, two Fatah terrorists were shot and killed in a battle with IDF troops in Shechem (Nablus).  At least one of them had been included in the amnesty arrangement with Israel, according to which he promised to abandon terrorism.

IDF forces arrested 17 wanted Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria overnight and transferred them to the General Security Service (Shabak) for interrogation.  Northwest of Hevron, one wanted terrorist was found hiding in a house in which 20 Molotov cocktail firebombs were discovered.  Four terrorists were taken in Jenin, three near Bethlehem, and individual terrorists in Hizme, Silwad, Ramallah and other locations.

Ten-year-old Yossi Haimov, who suffered serious injuries in a recent rocket attack on Sderot, remains in serious condition in Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, doctors reported Wednesday.  Haimov is currently in isolation due to fear of infection, they said.

Doctors managed to save Haimov’s badly injured arm in a complex surgery earlier in the week.  However, they said Wednesday, Haimov will have to undergo more operations when his condition allows.  Even with the operations, Haimov will remain disabled in one hand, they said.

Sderot Merchants Block Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Road
Business owners from Sderot are blocking traffic in an impromptu demonstration on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road at this hour. Dozens of merchants and their supporters are on their way to a rally to be held Tuesday evening across from the home of Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On.

The protest is a continuation of a series of rolling demonstrations designed to force the government to fortify homes in the Gaza Belt area as well as finding other, immediate ways to protect the residents in the area.

Constant rocket attacks continue to batter the region; a 10-year-old boy, a one-year-old baby boy and his mother were all wounded in a Kassam rocket barrage in Sderot Monday.  Several other people were treated for shock.
 
Sderot-Based Group Rejects Knesset Prize
Members of the "Gvanim" nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to finding jobs for disabled residents in Sderot and other western Negev communities, rejected the Knesset Speaker's Prize for Quality of Life on Tuesday.

"We cannot accept a prize for quality of life in a place when lives are not protected," said the group's chairman, who led the organization's members wearing shirts bearing the slogan, "We want life in Sderot," during the ceremony.

Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik nonetheless complimented the group for at least attending the ceremony and conducting themselves "in a civil manner." She acknowledged the group's reasons for turning down the award.

Gaza Belt Families Sue Defense Minister
Seventy families from Sderot and other Gaza Belt communities petitioned the Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday to force Defense Minister Ehud Barak to allow the IDF to implement a laser cannon system in the western Negev. The system, called the Nautilus, is capable of intercepting short-range missiles, and thus might be used to block Kassam rocket attacks on the besieged communities.

The families contended in their suit against the Defense Minister that the Nautilus could be put into action in six months, as opposed to the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, which is not scheduled to be put into place for another two years. They also said the Iron Dome system is less effective because it only begins to shoot down missiles at a specific range, which may not protect their communities when Kassam rockets and mortar shells are fired from close range.  Sderot is located less than a mile away from the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, a favorite site used by terrorists to launch attacks on Israel.

The Knesset Audit Committee held a session on Monday regarding the unauthorized Jewish neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria, and voted not to request a State Comptroller review of the situation.  Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan protested the vote.

MK Vilan, aided by former senior State Prosecution attorney Talia Sasson, demanded to know why the government was not fulfilling its own decisions to evacuate and destroy Jewish outposts (new development communities) on Judea and Samaria hilltops.  Vice Prime Minister Chaim Ramon, who heads a ministerial committee on the outposts, said that during the period of the Disengagement, in the years 2004-5, "the government decided not to open up two fronts, and therefore nothing was done to remove the outposts."
 
Sasson, who authored a detailed anti-outpost report for the Sharon government three years ago, strongly condemned the Justice Ministry's plan to allow some construction in and around some of the outposts.

MK Demands Approval for Jewish Towns
MK Nissan Slomiansky (National Religious Party), however, took the opposite approach, saying the Jews of Yesha should not be discriminated against: "If the Bedouin, who clearly took over lands that were not theirs, and who certainly did not have any government help in doing so, are now about to have their communities regulated and legalized, then all the more so - and the very comparison is demeaning - we should also have a government authority for the purpose of regulating and legalizing the communities in Judea and Samaria."

"Instead of talking about evacuating and destroying these communities," Slomiansky said, " - I don't even want to call them outposts - we should be expanding them."

"The Jews in Judea and Samaria have rights, and these must be respected," Slomiansky said.  "Just like all other towns in Israel, they must be recognized and approved, period, so that people can live normal lives. Afterwards, if Olmert want to negotiate with the PA and make agreements and concessions, we can have our big argument [over this] then."

"All Towns in Israel Were Built This Way"
Another participant, Gush Etzion Regional Council Chief Sha'ul Goldstein, told Arutz-7's Hizky Baruch after the session that the Jewish towns in Yesha must be treated no differently than all the others in Israel: "We did a study of 200 towns in Israel, out of 1,000, and we found that every single one of them was first built, and only years later received final approval. Every single one!  And this was true for towns built not only before the State was established, but even for towns built in the 1980's."

"To accuse us of building illegally, when a host of government offices helped us, and when this is how the entire State of Israel was built, is simply to lie and deceive," Goldstein said. 

Ramon's Position
Ramon, an outspoken proponent of withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, said that not a single unauthorized outpost has been established in Yesha since 2005.  "No monies are transferred to the existing outposts without the approval of a committee headed by the Deputy Attorney General," he boasted. 

Ramon lamented that caravans had been added to some of the outposts, and claimed as fact that "the construction in Judea and Samaria is not the result of a lack of housing, but from a desire to create political facts on the ground that will make it hard for Israeli governments to [give up the land]."

He admitted that adding a classroom or building another floor onto an existing building in Yesha need not require governmental approval, but "to add 20-30 homes to a community of 100 families has political significance and therefore requires government approval."

A Third Can be Legalized
Ramon said that out of 100 outposts that he checked, "a third of them can be easily legalized, a third cannot, and regarding the rest, there is what to talk about."  He said that he would be happy to reach an agreement with "the settlers" on all the outposts in order to avoid violence, but said, "If there is no choice, I believe that in the end, the government must fulfill its legal and political obligation."

Ramon further said that 26 outposts were built after March 2001, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised the Americans that he would not allow new Yesha neighborhoods.  "This is a promise that will be very hard to violate," Ramon said.

Committee Chairman Zevulun Orlev said that Sharon made this promise without informing his coalition partners - of which he was one at the time. 

Migron in Danger
Eitan Baroshi, the Defense Minister's Assistant for Settlement Affairs, said that in any event, "the outposts cannot be removed immediately... We are in contact with the Yesha Council," noting that Migron - 43 families in a strategic spot in Binyamin, north of Jerusalem, is a good example of an outpost whose future fate can be negotiated, "since it is built [partially - ed.] on privately-owned land... No one wants to have another Amona [where heavy violence accompanied an expulsion two years ago - ed.].  In the coming months, we have a Supreme Court decision coming up on this issue, and the Yesha heads know that we have to reach an agreement."

Vilan's Complaint
The session was originally initiated by MK Vilan of Meretz for the purpose of investigating why the government's decisions to remove unauthorized Jewish neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria have not been implemented.  His objective was to have the committee vote to have State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss investigate the matter.  However, he later withdrew his proposal in order to wait for a report being prepared by the ministerial committee on outposts.

Later in the session, Committee Chairman Zevulun Orlev (National Religious Party) submitted an opposite proposal, namely that the committee vote not to ask Lindenstrauss to investigate the matter.  The Committee voted to approve this notion - and MK Vilan said he would complain to the Knesset Legal Counsel over Orlev's behavior.

Welfare Minister Yitzchak Herzog (Labor), under heavy pressure from his party and other left-wing groups, has withdrawn his sponsorship of a bill to broaden rabbinical courts' authorities. 

Despite this, Shas still has no immediate plans to quit the government.

The proposed legislation has already been approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, meaning that the government coalition is to support it when it comes up for a vote.  However, in light of the great opposition the bill has aroused, this support is now in jeopardy.

The legislation, which is also sponsored by Minister Ruchama Avraham-Belilah of Kadima, states that rabbinical courts may deal with monetary matters, if both sides agree.  Until now, the courts have been restricted to matters of marriage and divorce.

The new bill would also specifically allow rabbinical courts to deal with post-divorce monetary disputes.

"I am not ignoring the fears of a collapse in the status of the legal system," Herzog has now announced, "and in coordination with party chairman Ehud Barak and the ministers and MKs of Labor, I support a freeze on the amendment."

Ben-Dahan: Coalition Agreement Demands This Change
Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Dahan, Director of the Rabbinical Courts, told Arutz-7's Hebrew newsmagazine on Sunday that the proposed bill means - or would have meant - a return to the legal status quo that existed until two years ago. "At that time," Ben-Dahan said, "Supreme Court Judge Ayala Procaccia ruled that the rabbinical courts could no longer decide monetary cases. In the negotiation over the coalition agreement with Kadima, Shas demanded that the ruling be reversed through legislation, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to this."

Passage of the law is therefore part of the coalition agreement with Shas.  For Shas, which is weighing quitting the government because of the ongoing negotiations over the division of Jerusalem, the freezing of the proposed legislation should provide a further impetus to quit.

Shas MK Chaim Amsalem told Arutz-7, "I believe that the pressures exerted upon Herzog to change his mind were wrongly placed, as the proposed bill is a worthy one."  Asked if this would increase the chances of Shas quitting the government, he said, "Yes, this will certainly be taken into account when we next consider this issue."  He did not say when this would be, however.  He further denied that negotiations over Jerusalem were taking place.

A report by the popular Hebrew news site Ynet omits any mention of right-wing participants at a Knesset committee session on outposts in Judea and Samaria (Yesha). Ynet is owned by Israel's largest daily, Yediot Acharonot.

The Ynet report on the Knesset session quoted only three participants at the session.  Two of them are clearly identified with the left-wing, anti-Yesha end of the spectrum: Cabinet Minister Chaim Ramon and former senior State Prosecution Attorney Talia Sasson.  The third figure cited was a neutral party, the head of the Civil Administration.

The report carried extensive excerpts by Sasson, whose report in 2005 against the fledgling Jewish neighborhoods continues to serve as the government's basis for its plans to destroy them.  It also quotes at length Minister Ramon, whose position can be summed up in this quote: "I would be happy if we could come to an agreement without having to resort to violence, but in the end, the government will have to fulfill its obligation [to destroy many of the neighborhoods]."

Committee Chairman MK Zevulun Orlev of the NRP was neither quoted nor mentioned, despite the fact that he proposed, and passed, a Committee resolution not to ask the State Comptroller to investigate the outposts issue.

Nor were other pro-outpost members of the committee cited. This, despite a news-making call by MK Nissan Slomiansky (National Religious Party) for the establishment of a governmental authority to regulate and approve Jewish communities in Yesha, rather than destroy them.

Ynet had one other report on the session: A news flash reporting that left-wing MK Avshalom Vilan was protesting Chairman Orlev's decision to vote on the proposal not to ask for State Comptroller intervention.

In comparison, Arutz-7's Hebrew news site featured several excerpts from Ramon's remarks, in addition to quoting Vilan, Slomiansky (in a video), Orlev, and the Defense Ministry's Eitan Baroshi.

Major-General Dan Shomron, the 13th Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, passed away Tuesday morning in Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital. Two weeks ago, he was hospitalized following a massive stroke. Shomron, 70, leaves behind a wife and two children.

Maj.-Gen. Shomron, resident of Kibbutz Ashdot, served as IDF Chief of Staff from 1987 to 1991, capping a lengthy and decorated
During Gen. Shomron's four-year term as Chief of Staff, the IDF implemented an aggressive counter-terrorism policy.
military service. In the 1967 Six-Day War, he commanded a unit on the Egyptian front and was the first paratrooper to reach the Suez Canal, earning a Medal of Distinguished Service. In 1976, as commander of the IDF infantry, Shomron led Operation Thunderbolt, in which IDF forces flew into Uganda and rescued hostages held in Entebbe by Arab and German terrorists.

Maj.-Gen. Shomron was the commander of the forces that oversaw the dismantling of Israeli communities and army bases in the Sinai Peninsula, under orders personally handed down by then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in 1981. Israel relinquished the Sinai to Egypt in the framework of the 1978 Camp David Accords.

As IDF Chief of Staff, Shomron faced the Arab insurgency in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, also called the "first Intifada," which began in 1987. The limited confrontation lasted for several years and involved stabbings, stonings, shootings and other forms of violence against Israeli soldiers and civilians. In 1991, Saddam Hussein's Iraq launched 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the First Gulf War (America's Operation Desert Storm) and the Shamir government opted not to respond militarily.

During Gen. Shomron's four-year term as Chief of Staff, the IDF implemented an aggressive counter-terrorism policy that included strikes deep into territories used by Arab terrorists for planning and organization. Some of the boldest operations in this period, carried out by land, sea and air, remain classified.

After retiring from the military, Shomron was appointed Chairman of Israel Military Industries in 1991. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu invited Shomron to take part in the negotiations with the PLO ahead of the 1997 Hevron Accord.

In 2006, Shomron was appointed by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to assess the IDF performance during the Second Lebanon War. In his January 2007 report, the former IDF Chief of Staff said that the retaliatory war against Hizbullah was fought without any clear objective. He noted that the government issued a general directive to stop Katyusha rocket attacks, but that it was not clear under what terms the IDF was to execute the order.

On the political front, Dan Shomron founded the Third Way party in 1995 along with Avigdor Kahalani, but left the party before the Knesset elections. He was also a supporter of the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount alongside author A. B. Yehoshua, Hebrew University Jewish philosophy professor Avi Ravitsky, and senior archaeologists such as Gabriel Barkai, Eilat Mazar, Ehud Netzer, Ronny Reich and Ephraim Stern.

In 2003, in a Jerusalem Post article on the events of the second Intifada, entitled "Back on the Oslo Track," Shomron wrote, "It is possible that our use of force has not been enough to accomplish a full strategic upheaval in the Palestinian consciousness. If not, we will have to take military action once again. The defense forces have to be prepared for this, as I'm certain they are."

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon turned 80 on Tuesday, more than two years after he was rendered comatose by a stroke.

Attorney Dov Weisglass, formerly Sharon's closest adviser, said there had been little change in his condition over the past year. He is breathing without the help of machines and his vital signs are good, so his current state could continue for some time. Sharon has undergone a series of subsequent surgeries related to his comatose state.

Regarding the possibility that Sharon will eventually emerge from his coma, Weisglass said, "I understand that the doctors are not optimistic."

Medical staff at Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv regularly move Sharon to maintain circulation and avoid bed sores. His eyes often open involuntarily, and family members spend time at his side.

Sharon sniffing an etrog.

Omri doing time
Sharon's son, Omri, will enter jail Wednesday morning, and begin serving a seven month sentence for charges of falsification of corporate documents and illegal campaign financing. He visited his father's bedside Tuesday and spoke with his friends.

Sharon is to turn himself in for jail time at the Tel Aviv magistrates' court, and will be placed in the court lockup cell together with other prisoners. The prisoners will then be transported to jail. Sharon will be spared the two-day processing stage in Ramle's Nitzan jail – which are considered to be nightmarish – and be sent directly to the relatively comfortable Ma'asiyahu jail, also in Ramle.

Life to date
Ariel Sharon was born Ariel Scheinerman on February 27, 1928, in Kfar Malal, to Lithuanian Jews Shmuel and Dvora Sheinerman. The family arrived in Israel before World War 1. They supported the dominant socialist party Mapai but refused to participate in Bolshevik-style public revilement rallies against the Revisionists following the murder of Labor politician Chaim Arlozorov. According to Sharon, his parents were then expelled from the local health clinic and the village synagogue. The farmers' cooperative truck wouldn't make deliveries to their farm nor collect produce.

In 1942 at the age of 14, Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, and later the Haganah, the underground paramilitary force and the Jewish military precursor to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Sharon in Yom Kippur War.

War hero
As a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade, Sharon was severely wounded in the groin by the Jordanian Arab Legion in the Second Battle of Latrun in the 1948 War of Independence.

In the early 1950s he formed and led Unit 101, Israel's first Special Forces unit, which carried out a series of military raids against Arab targets that helped bolster Israel's morale and fortify its deterrent image. A few months after its founding, Unit 101 was merged into the 202nd Paratroopers

In the 1956 Suez War Sharon commanded the 202nd Brigade, and carried out an attack on the Mitla Pass in which 38 Israeli soldiers were killed. He was later criticized for recklessness in provoking an unnecessary battle.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, Sharon commanded the most powerful armored division on the Sinai front which made a breakthrough in the Kusseima-Abu-Ageila fortified area.

Demonstration against Sharon in Washington D.C., 2002.

He retired from the army and was instrumental in establishing the Likud party in July 1973. However, he was called back to the IDF at the start of the Yom Kippur War and assigned to command a reserve armored division. Sharon helped locate a breach between the Egyptian forces and thrust through it toward the Suez Canal. He violated orders from the head of Southern Command by exploiting this success to cut the supply lines of the Egyptian Third Army, bridging the Suez Canal and advancing to within 101 kilometers of Cairo, encircling the Egyptian Third Army. This move was regarded by many Israelis as the turning point of the war in the Sinai front.

Pro-Yesha politician
Before the 1977 elections Sharon formed his own list, Shlomtzion, which won two Knesset seats and merged with the Likud after the elections. Sharon became Minister of Agriculture.

During this time, Sharon supported the Gush Emunim movement and was viewed as the patron of the settlers' movement. He used his position to encourage the establishment of a network of Israeli settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza ("Yesha"), doubling the number of Jewish settlements in those regions during his tenure.

Many years later, Sharon told political activists: "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Judean) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

Sharon as Prime Minister with President George W. Bush

Sabra and Shatila
After the 1981 elections, Prime Minister Menachem Begin appointed him Minister of Defense.

During the 1982 Lebanon War, while Sharon was Defense minister, the Sabra and Shatila massacre took place. A judicial committee of inquiry in Israel found the IDF indirectly responsible for the massacre and charged Sharon with "personal responsibility." Sharon had to forfeit the post of defense minister but stayed in the cabinet as minister without portfolio.

After Binyamin Netanyahu lost the 1999 elections to Labor head Ehud Barak, Sharon became leader of the Likud.

Prime Minister
On September 28, 2000, Sharon and an escort of over 1,000 Israeli police officers visited the Temple Mount complex. Arabs responded used the event as an excuse to begin a campaign of murderous rioting on a massive scale, which had been planned in advance. Barak's government collapsed and Sharon was elected Prime Minister in February 2001. He launched Operation Defensive Shield against terrorists in Judea and Samaria and began planning and construction of the "security fence" in Judea and Samaria.

Sharon was allegedly involved in a corrupt deal known as the "Greek island affair" involving the purchase of an island near the coast of Athens for building a multimillion-dollar resort complex. The charges against Sharon were dropped in 2004.

Expulsion, 2005: 'Hamas terrorists will live here happily'

U-turn and Disengagement
In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace put forth by the United States, European Union, and Russia, and announced his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state. According to journalistic investigations, Sharon's sudden change from hawk to extreme dove occurred as part of a deal between him and leftist elements in the judicial system and media, involving the dropping of corruption charges against him.

In January 2005 Sharon formed a national unity government that included representatives of Labor. Between August 16-30 2005, Sharon expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four communities in northern Samaria. Israeli soldiers bulldozed every settlement structure except for several former synagogues, which were later looted and burned by Arabs. The IDF then left Gaza. The retreat and expulsion were euphemistically referred to as "the Disengagement." 

On November 21, 2005, Sharon resigned as head of Likud, and dissolved parliament to form a new party called Kadima ("Forward"). He suffered a massive stroke on January 4, 2006, and entered state of a permanent coma.

Following Sharon's incapacitation, Ehud Olmert replaced him as Kadima's leader.