The State of Israel is under attack from Syria, Lebanon and Gaza according to the practice exercise starting Sunday.

The IDF Home Front Command, in cooperation with "Rachel" (the newly established National Emergency Authority), local authorities, different governmental offices, security and rescue teams and the educational system will participate in a comprehensive national training exercise which will take place across the country beginning Sunday.

Israelis awoke to radio announcers describing the scenario being practiced for: It is the fourth day of the war. Israel is under missile attack from the Hizbullah in Lebanon and from Syria. Kassam rockets and Grad-type Katyusha missiles are being launched at Netivot and Ashkelon from Gaza.

The IDF dispatched a statement assuring citizens that the drill has been planned "as part of the IDF 2008 work plan," and emphasizing: The exercise was not planned in relation to any current events.

Syria and Lebanon are reportedly on high alert, nonetheless. Army Radio reported that while the practice exercizes are being held, Hizbullah terrorists and Syria will be deployed and readied for an all-out confrontation - something Syria is claiming is a result of the fear that Israel will launch an attack.

The National Emergency Authority
This will be the first exercise led by the recently-established National Emergency Authority, called "Rachel" for its Hebrew acronym.

"The aim of the exercise is to prepare the different services and institutes operating in the civilian environment for various emergency situations," the IDF said. "The exercise will incorporate operations at a staff and field level, and will be operated by the National Emergency Authority and the Home Front Command." 

Citizens to be Involved Tuesday
As part of the exercise, a minute and a half long siren will be heard on Tuesday, April 8th, at 10 a.m. across the country. Every town will be included except for "Sderot and the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip," according to the IDF - ostensibly because terrorists would use a practice drill as an oppurtunity to launch real rockets. It is unclear whether Ashkelon will be included.

The government has hired veteran news anchor Gadi Sukenik to broadcast emergency instructions Tuesday - and to do the same in the event of a real emergency. Channel 33 will feature instructions from 10 to 11 a.m., broadcast from the Home Front Command's new studio. During the broadcast Sukenik will speak on behalf of GOC Home Front Command (H.F.C.), Maj. Gen. Yair Golan. H.F.C. will broadcast guidance and tutorial videos on how to choose a protected space and how to behave during an alert.

At the same time, an exercise led by the national educational institutions will take place in which schools and kindergartens will practice entering protected spaces. During the sounding of the siren, Home Front Command bases as well as Governmental Offices and Public Institutions will also practice entering protected spaces. A national exercise will also take place with the participation of local and other authorities and with the participation of the Home Front's liaison units who were especially recruited for the exercises.

On Tuesday- Thursday, April 8-10th, 2008, a field exercise that will simulate various potential scenarios will take place. Among the scenarios to be practiced: conventional and non-conventional rockets hitting Israel, chemical-biological incidents, an exercise in "HaEmek" hospital in Afula and different search and rescue drills.

A notice regarding the location and possible hours for covering the exercise will be sent separately to the media. For further information: Home Front Information Center- *1207, or online: www.oref.org.il.

The Jerusalem Magistrate's court ruled Friday that the Jewish Temple movement may, under state law, slaughter a sheep on Sunday as a “general rehearsal” for the renewal of the Pesach (Passover) sacrifice. The judge even called the effort "proper," but organizers have been summoned to appear at 1 PM in the District Court after an animal rights groups filed another last-minute suit.

The slaughter is planned as part of a conference dedicated to studying and restoring the Jewish observance of the Korban Pesach, as it was called since it was first observed in Egypt. At the time of the Exodus, Jews slaughtered a sheep per family group, despite its status as a deity to the Egyptian oppressors. The blood was then applied to the doorposts of the Jewish homes.

[audio:123177]
Click here for an interview with Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute on 'Temple rites vs. animal rights'

Animal rights group "Tnoo Lachayot Lichyot" ("Let the Animals Live") had argued that the planned slaughter constituted illegal cruelty to an animal.

Although the slaughter will be identical to any correctly-performed kosher slaughter, and the animal consumed in a manner resembling the popular Israeli pastime - the mangal (barbecue) - the animal rights group compared it to dog-fighting and other spectator events performed at the expense of animals' pain.

In her ruling, judge Hagit Mac-Kalmanovich said, “I was not convinced by the argument that the given event would cause the animal more pain and suffering than the accepted methods of slaughter in slaughterhouses.” 

She rejected the group’s comparison of the planned slaughter to illegal fights between animals, pointing out that only one animal was involved, and that it would not be harmed in any way prior to the actual slaughter.  The event must be allowed under laws protecting freedom of religion, she concluded.

The conference is taking place from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Yeshivat HaKotel, in the Old City of Jerusalem, overlooking the Temple Mount.

Organizers Summoned Once Conference Underway
A Tnoo Lachayot Lichyot official by the name of Yonatan arrived at Yeshivat HaKotel at around 10:15, once the conference was underway. He was accompanied by a police officer and Border Police soldier with his weapon drawn.

A summons was delivered to the organizers to appear for a 1 PM hearing on whether the slaughter will be permitted.

Arutz-7 asked Yonatan whether the suit was aimed at thwarting the planned educational program. "The main thing is that this circus not take place. They have no business having people gather around and watch as this barbaric act is perpetrated."

Asked how the event differed from any slaughter of animals by individual shochets (kosher slaughter experts), eside from the fact that the meat is going to feed the hungry, the animal rights group representative said, "I'm not interested in explaining right now, come to the court at 1 PM and see."

Maayana Miskin contributed to this report

MK Aryeh Eldad calls him an enemy. Other MKs call him a traitor. Dr. Ahmed Tibi is currently the most prominent figure among the political leadership of the Arab population within pre-1967 Israel, and may well be one of the key figures in the Arab world's war against the Jewish state. He knows Israel as well as, if not better than, most Jewish Israelis do, and is an expert on the strengths and weaknesses of its society and culture. He is a favorite interviewee among Israel's mainstream media channels, despite his open support for terrorists and repeated incitement to violence.

Tibi is able to carry out actions which have every hallmark of serious sedition, treason and collaboration with the enemy – yet leave his image of a cultured citizen who is somehow "one of us" intact among Israel's intelligentsia. He is the Deputy Speaker of Israel's Knesset but has an oversized poster of Yasser Arafat against the backdrop of a PLO flag on his bureau's wall, facing the door. As chairman of plenum sessions, he has been known to correct Jewish Knesset members' Hebrew and cite sources for Hebrew idioms.

Policeman's son
Tibi's surname (Al-Tibi, in its full version) denotes his place of birth: the Arab city of Taibe in central Israel. He was born in 1958, when Taibe – along with the other Arab concentrations in Israel – was still under military rule, in the aftermath of the 1948 war in which the Arab population fought viciously alongside Arab armies against the Jews, with the intent of annihilating them. His father was a policeman, and some people explain his extreme anti-Israeli views as a reaction to his father's status as a "collaborator" with the Israeli state.

Tibi studied medicine in Jerusalem's Hebrew University. "I studied medicine and finished with hon
His father was a policeman, and some people explain his extreme anti-Israeli views as a reaction to his father's status as a "collaborator" with the Israeli state.
ors in '83, and was ranked first in my class," he told an Israeli news site in 2004. "I began an internship in gynecology at Hadassah Har Hatzofim in Jerusalem in 1984. That year, I met Yasser Arafat in Tunis for the first time." At the time, just two years after PLO leader Arafat was expelled from Lebanon following the Israeli incursion in the first Lebanon War, meeting with Arafat was a crime under Israeli law.

Kicked out of Hadassah
Tibi never completed his internship: he was kicked out of Hadassah after a violent incident in which he swung his briefcase at a Jewish security guard who asked him to open it for a security inspection. The briefcase hit the guard on the back of the head and knocked him to the floor. The hospital administration dismissed Tibi during a closed-door hearing later that day.

Over the next decade, Tibi became increasingly involved in politics, and was a key figure in organizing contacts between the Israeli left wing and the PLO. These contacts eventually led to the Oslo accords. "In '93, after the signing of the Oslo accord, Arafat appointed me a special advisor for the peace process and Israeli matters," Tibi said in an interview. "In that year I coordinated the first meeting between Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat," he added. Tibi represented the PLO vis-à-vis Israel as Arafat entered Gaza and insisted that the rest of the PLO leadership be let into Gaza as well.

In 1995 Tibi formed the Arab party Ta'al and in 1999 he was elected to the Knesset.

Close friendship with Galon
Reif''s bloodied face was featured all over the news and a beaming Ahmed Tibi was seen climbing back on the bus with the parents of the dead Arab rioters.

Although Arab MKs had been known for hostile and provocative speech ever since the mid-1980s, Tibi's entry into Israeli politics, along with Dr. Azmi Bishara, signaled a rise in Arab MK's temerity. Speeches by Israeli ministers were routinely interrupted by the Arab MKs, who made a habit of shouting "murderer" and other epithets at the ministers. Tibi was among the Arab Knesset members who tagged along behind then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon as he strolled on the Temple Mount in September of 2000, inciting the Muslim crowd to violence. The terror war which the Arabs dubbed "The Al-Aqsa Intifada" began the next day, and subsequent investigations found that it had been planned in advance by Arafat. MK Tibi – ever a welcome guest in Israeli radio and TV studios – called the war, which has killed 1,500 Jewish men, women and children, a "peace intifada."

Tibi was aided in his parliamentary and media campaigns by MK Zehava Galon of Meretz, who is a close personal friend of his, according to a source who is well acquainted with both Knesset members. Under pressure from Tibi and other Arab and leftist MKs, the government appointed a committee, headed by retired judge Theodore Orr, to investigate the police's reaction to the unprecedented and extremely violent Israeli-Arab riots which accompanied the outbreak of the terror war. Tibi succeeded in portraying the police as the criminals: it was they who opened fire on Arabs because of racism, he said.

Policeman bloodied
On March 23, 2003, Tibi accompanied the parents of Arabs killed by police in the 2000 riots to an Orr commission session, in a bus that was hired for the occasion. During the testimony of former Galilee police station commander Guy Reif, the father of one of the Arabs who were killed rose from the audience and punched Reif, breaking his nose. Reif''s bloodied face was featured all over the news and a beaming Ahmed Tibi was seen climbing back on the bus with the parents of the dead Arab rioters. Reif eventually lost his job. The Arab who struck him received a sentence of two months' community service.

Two years after Arafat's death, Tibi made a public speech asking that his remains be transferred t
Tibi called upon Fatah's terrorists to continue their struggle against Israel, "until all of the Palestinian land is freed."
o the Temple Mount.

In 2002, the Knesset passed a law making it illegal for Knesset members to visit enemy countries without special permission from the government. Despite this law, Tibi and other Knesset members have made a regular habit of visiting enemy Arab countries. Another vocal Arab MK, Dr. Azmi Bishara, fled Israel last year after the police questioned him on suspicion of giving Hizbullah information regarding preferred sites for missile attacks during the Second Lebanon War. Tibi, however, has been careful not to be caught in such flagrantly seditious action.

'Lebanon loves you'
In 2005, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz instructed police to launch a criminal investigation against Tibi after he traveled to Lebanon without a permit in May of 2004. In January of 2005, representatives of PLO and Lebanese factions, as well as Lebanese parliament members, held a special rally in Beirut to show their support for Tibi, who is a highly esteemed figure in the Arab world.

“Lebanon loves you and everything you represent. They will never manage to cut the cord linking the Arabs of 1949 to their brothers in Lebanon," one representative said during the rally, which was broadcast live on Arab television network Al-Jazeera.

Tibi addressed the conference over the phone, saying, “Lebanon is a beloved country and the Leban
When the security detail asked him to open the trunk of his car for a security inspection, he refused, citing his status as a Knesset member.
ese nation is great,” he said. “The connection between us will not be severed despite the investigations and courts. I bow my head once again to all those who died in Sabra and Shatila because they were Palestinian.”

The investigation against Tibi came to naught.

'Israel wants to eliminate Arab children'
On January 11, 2007, Tibi participated in a large gathering marking 42 years since the founding of Fatah, in Ramallah. He called upon Fatah's terrorists to continue their struggle against Israel, "until all of the Palestinian land is freed." He accused Israel of murdering Arab babies. "They want to eliminate the Palestinian children, the women and the elderly, en route to the elimination of the ideas of Palestinian freedom and liberty," he told the crowd.

On August 15, 2007, Tibi arrived at the Prime Minister's Office to meet PMO Secretary Ovad Yechezkel. When the security detail asked him to open the trunk of his car for a security inspection, he refused, citing his status as a Knesset member. The security men did not back down and said that since Tibi had come from his home in East Jerusalem and not from the Knesset, his car had to be inspected. After involving the Knesset's legal advisor, Tibi eventually cancelled the meeting and drove away.

Tibi's political clout, the fear he arouses in some parts of the Israeli populace and his apparent popularity in others, make him a formidable adversary. The right-wing Jewish MKs have yet to show that they are able to deal with him in ways other than calling him names and filing complaints to the police which end up being ignored.

The enemy in Gaza fired two rockets at the coastal city of Ashkelon Saturday night, causing the emergency sirens in the city to be sounded and sending tens of thousands of people into shelters and "protected spaces." No one was hurt in the attack. One of the rockets exploded near a factory in Ashkelon's southern industrial area. IDF Radio said the rockets were of the "Grad" type.

The last time terrorist rockets exploded within Ashkelon was on March 3, just over a month ago. On that date, Gaza terrorists fired two medium-range "Grad" rockets at the city. One hit a seven story building, lightly injuring one person, and the other exploded in a playground. 16 people were treated for emotional shock.

For a week, Ashkelon was on elevated alert, public shelters were opened and the municipality staffed a 24 hour situation room.

'We have no way of preventing it'
A few days after the attack, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited the city and told residents that they had better get used to the presence of rockets in their lives. "We have no way of preventing these things from happening again," he said in a meeting with the Ashkelon town council. "Do not expect this to be one-time experience," he added. "This is the Israeli reality for 60 years. It requires strength and restraint," he added.

When local residents told his they would not agree to become "another Sderot," Olmert brushed the criticism aside, saying: "There is no point in comparing [the situation] to Sderot and other places. Sderot's residents have been dealing with this for years. It's true a Grad is heavier than a Kassam but we have no way of preventing these things from happening again. We have to deal with them."

Grad rockets came from Iran
At the time, Ashkelon mayor Ronny Mahatzri accused Olmert angrily of shirking responsibility for the situation. "The government is telling 250,000 residents of the south – 'from now on this is your life,'" he said.

On the day before the March 3 attack, rockets fired on Ashkelon narrowly missed a nursery for children under the age of 3. The nursery teacher told Voice of Israel government radio that the children were in the middle of eating breakfast when she heard the Color Red alert. The children's teachers managed to take them to a bomb shelter. No one was injured, but they had to calm down the children. A day earlier, four people were injured – two moderately and two lightly – in another rocket attack. One of the rockets exploded in close proximity to the home of Public Security Minister Avi Dichter.

Security officials later told the Security Cabinet that the Grad rockets used to attack Ashkelon came from Iran. They estimated that Hamas and other terrorists have smuggled approximately 20 Grad rockets into Gaza but added that the Air Force has bombed out the largest explosives laboratory in the Gaza region.

Arab affairs correspondent Avi Yissacharov, who works for several media agencies including Army Radio, published an interview with the veteran commander of Fatah’s Al-Aksa Brigades terrorist group.

Writing in Haaretz, Yissacharov describes a downtrodden demoralized Zakariya Zubeidi – once the brazen chief of Yasser Arafat’s terrorist arm. He confirms that under Arafat, despite the Oslo Accords, he was receiving clear instructions from the terror chief.

"Everything that was done in the Intifada was done according to Arafat's instructions, but he didn't need to tell us the things explicitly. We understood his message,” Zubeidi reminisced. “Back in [Arafat’s] day, we had a plan, there was a strategy, and we would carry his orders."

Zubeidi is portrayed as having given up terrorism. Yissacharov paints a picture of a late-sleeping unemployed ex-terror chief with no gun and disillusioned with the future of the “struggle for Palestine”:

Zubeidi: "Today I can say explicitly: We failed entirely in the Intifada. We haven't seen any benefit or positive result from it. We achieved nothing. It's a crushing failure. We failed at the political level - we didn't succeed in translating the military actions into political achievements. The current leadership does not want armed actions, and since the death of [Arafat] there's no one who is capable of using our actions to bring about such achievements. When [Arafat] died, the armed Intifada died with him."

Yissacharov: "What happened? Why did it die?"

Zubeidi: "Why? Because our politicians are whores. Our leadership is garbage. Look at Ruhi Fatouh, who was president of the PA for 60 days as Arafat's replacement. He smuggled mobile phones [last week]. Do you understand? We have been defeated. The political splits and schisms have destroyed us not only politically - they have destroyed our national identity. Today there is no Palestinian identity. Go up to anyone in the street and ask him, 'Who are you?' He'll answer you, 'I'm a Fatah activist,' 'I'm a Hamas activist,' or an activist of some other organization, but he won't say to you, 'I am a Palestinian.' Every organization flies its own flag, but no one is raising the flag of Palestine."

Asked if he was not, as a leader of the terror offensive against Israel, admitting defeat, Zubeidi answered: "Even Gamal Abdel Nasser admitted his defeat, so why not me?...We are marching in the direction of nowhere, toward total ruin. The Palestinian people is finished. Done for. Hamas comes on the air on its television station and says 'Fatah is a traitor.' That is to say, 40 percent of the nation are traitors. And then Fatah does the same thing and you already have 80 percent traitors."

Asked why he retired from terrorist, Zubeidi answered: "I got tired. When you lose, what can you do? We, the activists, paid the heavy price. We've had family members killed, friends. They demolished our homes and we have no way of earning a living. And what is the result? Zero. Simply zero. And when that's the result, you don't want to be a part of it any more. Lots of other people, as a result of the frustration, and because Fatah doesn't have a military wing any more, have joined the Islamic Jihad. Those activists are still willing to pay the price.

The terrorist’s assessment of the situation is that the US is running the show in Judea and Samaria, using Fatah as a proxy: “Today the president of the Palestinian people is General Dayton [the US general tasked with training Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas’s forces –ed.]. They're all working for him, he is the boss. A PA no longer exists."

Zubeidi says that when 2008 comes to an end without a Palestinian state, a war will be launched against the Fatah-run PA itself. “I'm telling you that if by the end of 2008 a Palestinian state isn't established, there is going to be a war here,” he said. “Not against Israel, or between Hamas and Fatah, but against the PA. The citizens are going to throw the PA out of here. Today the PA is doing what Dayton and Israel are telling it to do, but at the end of the year, when Israel doesn't give the Palestinians a state, the PA is going to be thrown out. There's going to be an all-out war here, for control of the West Bank."

For the first time in history, a representative of an Arab country will address an international conference on the Holocaust in Jerusalem.

On April 28, Ahmed el-Abassi, Tunisia’s representative to the "Palestinian Authority," will speak at the opening of a three-day conference at Jerusalem's Yad Ben Zvi Institute that will focus on the fate of the Jews of North Africa during WWII.

Israel and Tunisia do not have diplomatic relations.
 
'Solidarity with the subject'
"For the first time, an official Arab-Muslim representative is being recruited to spread awareness of the issue in the Arab world of the Middle East," a spokesman for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, said. "His presence expresses solidarity with the subject and recognition of the trouble and hardships of the Tunisian Jewish community under the German occupation,” the spokesman added. 
Some 85,000 Jews lived in Tunisia on the eve of the war. 2,000 remain today.

 
21 researchers from Israel, Europe and the United States will take part in the conference.
 
Some 85,000 Jews lived in Tunisia on the eve of the war. After France surrendered to the Nazis, the province was run by the Vichy regime, which implemented only some of the so-called Statut des Juifs (Jewish laws). The Germans took over the country with Italian troops in November 1942, and were much harsher. The Jews were saved from annihilation when the Allies entered the capital, Tunis, on May 7, 1943 and quickly vanquished the Germans.
 
Today only 2,000 Jews live in Tunisia, mainly in Djerba and in Tunis.

Congress recognizes Jewish refugees
The United States Congress voted Tuesday to recognize Jewish refugees who were forced to flee their homes in Arab countries following the establishment of the state of Israel. Congressmen called on US diplomats to mention Jewish refugees from Arab lands whenever they reference Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence.

Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) explained that he supported the resolution because Jews forced to flee their homes “must not be omitted from public discussion on the peace process.”  Representative Mike Ferguson (R-NJ), who co-sponsored the bill, said one of his goals was to pressure the United Nations to recognize Jewish refugees.

Tunisian 'Righteous Gentile' honored
Las year, a Tunisian became the first Arab to be honored as a "Righteous among the Nations", a title given to non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews from the Nazi extermination.

According to the testimony of Anny Boukris, who lived in Tunisia during World War 2 and settled in Los Angeles after the war, Khaled Abdel al-Wahab, a well-to-do farmer at the time, rescued her and 24 of her relatives from their hiding place and hid them on his farm until the German occupation of Tunisia ended.

Earlier this year, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum launched its Arabic-language website in a bid to promote awareness in the Arab world of the extermination of Jews by the Nazis and to combat Holocaust denial. Jordan’s Prince Hassan recorded a video address for the inauguration of the website.

With hundreds of Israelis in the ailing textile industry out of work, the IDF lands another blow: ordering 850,000 shirts and undershirts from China.

The news was announced not by the IDF, but by Dr. Michal Segal, Chairperson of the Blue and White Task Force in the Manufacturers Association.  She is also a part-owner of SHL-Alubin, the largest aluminum profile manufacturer in Israel.

Segal said that acquiring the shirts in Israel would have given 120 Israeli workers employment for a full year.  The deal is worth about 4.25 million shekels, or $1.78 million.

Calls on Defense Minister and Chief of Staff
Segal called upon Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moti Ashkenazi to order the army to cease and desist from purchasing abroad, and to use its public funding to help the country's citizens.

In response to Arutz-7's request for a response, the IDF Spokesman's Office stated that questions regarding the purchase have been raised, no response was yet available, and that they would inform Arutz-7 as soon as one was ready.

The Blue and White Task Force, also known as "Made in Israel," is one of the public committees of the Manufacturers Association. It was established in 1994 for the purpose of promoting Israeli-made goods in government institutions, public bodies and elsewhere.  It works in several spheres, including public relations, education, legislation, and more.

Figures published in a housing report this week show that housing prices decreased by 3 percent nationwide in January and February, due to the international capital market crisis and slowdown in growth.  Yet prices in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem increased, with Tel Aviv residential real estate values growing by 7 percent and Jerusalem homes increasing in value by 3 percent.  The communities of Beitar Illit, Givat Ze'ev, and Tsur Hadassah, all in the vicinity of Jerusalem, saw value increases of over 10 percent. Prices in Ramat Gan, Azur, Caesarea, Petah Tikva, Givatayim, Kfar Yona, Modiin and Shoham increased by 10-13 percent.

Areas which saw particular decrease were Haifa and regions in the south.

In the first three months of 2008, the average price for an apartment was $198,915 (based on an exchange rate of $3.68), according to a report conducted by the Geocartography Knowledge group.