Channel 2: The Fatah terrorists who planned to assassinate Olmert had actually been assigned by Abbas to protect his motorcade.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he will not cancel his participation in the Annapolis conference with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) despite the latter's handling of an Arab attempt to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister.

Abbas freed from prison the Arab terrorists implicated in the assassination attempt, several weeks after his forces arrested them.

The Shabak (General Security Service) announced Sunday that Fatah terrorists employed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) had planned to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he was on his way to Jericho for an August 6 meeting with Abbas.

Israeli intelligence provided the PA with information on the planned assassination and the PA arrested the terrorists. However, a few weeks later, two of the five plotters were nabbed at an Israeli checkpoint, after they had been released from jail by Abbas.

Referring to the release of the terrorists suspected of assassinating him, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the PA's conduct was "a source of discomfort."

"Israel will find the manner in which to express its discomfort on the issue," Olmert said Sunday before leaving Israel for France. "However, [Israel] has no intention of halting negotiations with the Palestinians."

Israeli Channel 2 TV news reported Sunday night that the Fatah terrorists who planned to assassinate Olmert had actually been assigned by Abbas to protect Olmert's motorcade.

PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Sunday afternoon that the would-be assassins were re-arrested and are back in jail. They were released several weeks ago, he said, allegedly for lack of evidence against them.

However, a spokesman for the Fatah terror group, Ahmed Abdel Rachman, continued to deny that any plot to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had existed. "This is a false story designed to damage the attempts by the Fatah movement and President Abbas to achieve a just peace between the Israelis and Palestinians," he said Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Knesset members from several factions called upon Olmert to cancel his participation in the planned diplomatic summit at Annapolis, Maryland, following the news of the assassination plot and the way it was handled by Abbas.

MK Tzvi Hendel (NU/NRP) suggested Sunday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seek professional help. "A prime minister who is willing to negotiate with Abu Mazen, who set free terrorists who tried to murder him, needs to be examined by the best professionals, because this really is not politics but sheer insanity.”

MK Effie Eitam (NU/NRP) said that "Olmert needs to wake up from the dream of a moderate partner in the form of Abu Mazen," and described Mahmoud Abbas as "a puppet with no control over his people and a shameless man who could release the terrorists who planned to murder his peace partner."

MK Ze'ev Elkin (Kadima) said that Abbas has been exposed as a terror enabler and deserves no goodwill gestures. MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima) said that Abbas's release of the would-be assassins was "a sin added upon a crime" – a phrase which originally appears in the Biblical Book of Job, and means roughly the same as "to add insult to injury."

MK Zevulun Orlev (NU/NRP) said that "The security forces need to capture the terrorists who were released and Olmert must immediately cease contact with Abu Mazen and announce the cancellation of the Annapolis summit, as long as Abu Mazen sponsors terrorists."

MK Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP) said that both Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) need to thank G-d. "Olmert should say HaGomel [the blessing said after surviving a dangerous situation – ed.]" for being saved from an assassination attempt by Fatah.”

Mahmoud Abbas, Eldad added, should thank G-d for the fact that his partner is Olmert. "Any other prime minister would have long ago cut off negotiations with the head of an organization that was trying to kill him.”

Dichter: Olmert was not in Danger
The plot by Fatah operatives to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert never posed a real threat to Olmert's life, Minister of Public Security Avi Dichter said Sunday afternoon.

While he admitted that the people involved were not complete amateurs and knew how to use their guns, Dichter said "the most they would have done was to open fire on the motorcade.” Dichter did not relate to the Channel 2 TV report that the PA terrorists/policemen were assigned to protect the Israeli Prime Minister and would have been very close to him.

The prestigious German weekly Der Spiegel reports, in an incidental manner, that the two IDF soldiers who have been held captive by Hizbullah for 16 months are dead.  The article is a feature essay on the unnamed German mediator in the talks between Israel and Hizbullah for the release of the two soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

The paper says that Israeli officials also believe that Regev and Goldwasser were killed.

Unlike Gilad Shalit - an IDF soldier who was kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza two weeks before Regev and Goldwasser - not a single sign of life has been heard from the latter two since the day they were captured.  The Red Cross has not been permitted to visit them, nor have any letters been received from them.

The kidnappers of Shalit, on the other hand, released an audio tape of the voice of their captive this past June, marking the first anniversary of his capture.  Shalit's parents and a high-ranking defense official confirmed that the tape was authentic.

Another sign that the two are not alive is that rumors of prisoner exchanges have always specified "hundreds" of imprisoned terrorists in exchange for Shalit, but a much smaller price for Regev and Goldwasser.  The official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported a "handful of Lebanese prisoners" as the price in August 2006. This number has rarely climbed to more than the nearly 30 Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.  More recent reports state that the price was to be an Iranian murderer imprisoned in Germany.

The talks between Israel and Hizbullah currently focus, Der Spiegel reports, on Hizbullah's demand that Israel release Lebanese murderer Samir Kuntar.  In 1979, Kuntar brutally murdered Danny Haran in front of his four-year-old daughter, and then killed her by smashing her head with his rifle butt. Another daughter, aged 2, died when her mother covered her mouth to prevent her from crying out and revealing their hiding place. An Israeli policeman was also killed in the attack.

Hizbullah terrorist chieftain Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to attain the release of Kuntar, while for Israel, Kuntar is the epitome of a terrorist with "blood on his hands" that Israel has pledged never to release.

Also on the table in exchange for the two IDF captives are four Hizbullah fighters currently held by Israel.

Israel still demands information on the fate of felled Israeli navigator Ron Arad, who was captured in Lebanon in 1986 and from whom very little has ever been heard.  Last week, Hizbullah provided to Israel a letter written by Ron to his wife Tami shortly after his capture.  Tami later confirmed that the letter was genuine, based on his handwriting and the family nicknames he used.

The Arab driver who brought two suicide bombers to Netanya's Sharon mall in December, 2005 has been indicted as an accomplice in the murders of six people.

Adham Mahmad Yunis will be tried on 18 charges in connection with the attack which left six people dead and scores wounded, including several in critical condition.

The 25-year-old resident of the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Tulkarm, located a few kilometers east of Netanya, was arrested three months ago by security forces operating in Jenin.

He and the two terrorist bombers were members of the Islamic Jihad gang, whose leaders had met with PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in Syria just a few days prior to the deadly attack.

Yunis was also involved in planning a failed suicide bombing in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam in February, 2005.

The Damascus-based Islamic Jihad terrorist organization operates from its strongholds in Jenin and Hevron. The group reportedly receives funding from Hizbullah in southern Lebanon as well as from Syria and Iran.

The unauthorized dig of a trench this past summer by the Moslem Waqf on the Temple Mount had a thin silver lining: Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) personnel monitoring the trench-digging have, for the first time, found traces of the First Temple. 

It was assumed that precious findings were destroyed,

The IAA studied an archaeological level dating to the First Temple Period, exposed in the area close to the south-eastern corner of the raised platform surrounding the Dome of the Rock.

Jerusalem District Archaeologist Yuval Baruch uncovered fragments of ceramic table wares, animal bones, and more. The finds date from the 8th to 6th centuries BCE; the First Temple existed between the 9th and 5th centuries BCE, having been built by King Solomon in 832 and destroyed in 422 BCE.

The archaeological team - Baruch of the IAA, Prof. Sy Gitin, Director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University and Prof. Ronny Reich of Haifa University - reached the conclusion, after examining the finds, that their characteristics and location may aid scholars in reconstructing the dimensions and boundaries of the Temple Mount during the First Temple Period.

The finds include fragments of bowl rims, bases and body sherds, the base of a juglet used for the ladling of oil, the handle of a small juglet, and the rim of a storage jar. The bowl sherds were decorated with wheel burnishing lines characteristic of the First Temple Period. 

The IAA announced that it will hold an archaeological seminar concerning these finds and their archaeological interpretation at a later date.

Muslim and Jewish Claims
Muslim scholars and leaders often deny any Jewish claim to the Temple Mount. It is often charged that Arab landworks there are employed for throwing out truckloads of artifacts that would prove otherwise. 

Moslem claims to the Temple Mount, on the other hand, have been debunked even by other Moslems.  A commentator for the official Egyptian government weekly, of all places, has written that the entire Moslem claim on Jerusalem and the El-Aksa mosque is based on a mistaken reading of one chapter of the Quran.  Ahmed Mahmad Oufa wrote that the verse that mentions a night journey by Muhammed to a mosque has nothing to do with Jerusalem, as is generally claimed, but with a mosque near the holy Moslem city of Medina.

Prof. Moshe Sharon, Middle Eastern expert in the Hebrew University, expressed great surprise at the fact that such an article would be published in Arabic and in an Arabic-speaking country.  He told Arutz-7 at the time, 
 "All in all, this is not a new claim. We must remember that Jerusalem is not mentioned at all in the Quran [though it is mentioned hundreds of time in the Bible - ed. note].  The verse in question is in Sura [chapter] 17, which states that Muhammad was brought at night from one mosque to a 'more distant' - aktsa, in Arabic - mosque.  The first Moslem commentators did not explain this as referring to Jerusalem at all, but rather as a miraculous night journey or vision.  In the beginning of the 8th century, however, they began associating this with Jerusalem, because they had a need to start giving sanctity to Jerusalem, and so they started connecting this verse with Jerusalem...  Originally, however, the Moslems recognized the area of the Dome of the Rock as holy because of the Jewish Temple of King Solomon."

"This is an immoral decision, motivated by ignorance and based on post-Zionist and racist considerations."  So says Michael Freund, chairman of Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization working to bring long-lost Jews home to Israel from India.

He was referring to a government decision of last week that appears to be tailor-made to preventing the Bnei Menashe tribe from moving to Israel.  The government ruled that the Interior Minister could issue entry permits to groups of people for the purpose of conversion and citizenship only with full Cabinet approval. 

Until now, the Interior Minister - currently Meir Sheetrit of Kadima - was able to issue such permits on his own authorization.  It appears, however, that Sheetrit, who initiated the new ruling, no longer wishes to issue such permits, and has therefore transferred the onus to the full Cabinet.  It can be assumed that the government will not rush to deal with such matters. Therefore, groups of ten or more Bnei Menashe who wish to revive their long-lost Jewishness and immigrate to Israel will, for all intents and purposes, no longer be able to do so.

Some 1,200 Bnei Menashe - members of Indian tribes who are widely believed to have descended from Jews exiled from the Holy Land 2,500 years ago - are now full-fledged Jews in Israel, and another 7,000 of their family members and neighbors are waiting in India to join them.

"The Chief Rabbinate is willing to convert them," Freund told Arutz-7, "but the government is essentially intervening and saying it does not wish to allow these people to be candidates for conversion.  This is an unconscionable act, and we will fight in the Knesset, in the public arena and wherever else necessary to make sure it is rescinded."

"Requiring full cabinet approval every time a group of 100 or 200 people wish to move here and undergo conversion," writes Freund,  "is a recipe for bureaucratic inertia, as there is little chance of getting such an item onto the busy agenda of the entire government. Hence, by creating a virtually insurmountable obstacle to approval, [Sheetrit] hopes to bury the issue once and for all."

Conversion in India, which was once the practice under the auspices of Israel's Chief Rabbinate, is no longer an option, in accordance with a new decision by the Indian government.

"Why, you might be wondering, would Sheetrit and his cabinet colleagues do such a thing?" Freund writes. "The answer is really quite simple. It is post-Zionism of the ugliest sort, tinged by prejudice and sheer ignorance."

Freund told Arutz-7 that the decision could have other repercussions as well.  "Let's say there is a non-Jewish family - two parents and eight children - living abroad that has become close to a Jewish community and wishes to convert to Judaism and move to Israel," he said. "With this decision, the family would be able to do so only if the entire Israeli Cabinet votes to allow it...  It's quite obvious that the intention is to create a bureaucratic obstacle that cannot be overcome."

Tzvi Khaute, of Kiryat Arba, a Bnei Menashe member who immigrated to Israel in 2000, has parents and five siblings anxiously awaiting to join him here. "But because of this purely racist decision," he now says, "they may have to wait years - or even more."

Khaute, 33, is married, and two of his three children were born here.  Many of his friends are soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces - yet their families may now not be able to join them here for years to come. 

"When I came to Israel," Tzvi said, "there was a quota of only 24 Bnei Menashe - out of more than 7,000! - who were allowed to come that year.  With G-d's help, my family was able to choose one representative.  They chose me, hoping that I would prepare the ground for them to come and join me at a later date.  I am very happy that I was able to come here and reconnect to our people, and our Torah, here in the Holy Land - but it is always tinged with sadness in that my family, and thousands of others, are not able to be here as well."

Shas MK Chaim Amsalem wishes to plug up holes in the supervision of Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) in Israel.  His bill, addressing problems warned about by various bodies including the State Comptroller and the now-defunct Religious Affairs Ministry, passed its preliminary Knesset reading last week.

Amsalem's legislation proposes to gather together many recommendations made over the years to improve Kashrut monitoring practices and turn them into law.  For instance, there is no regulation governing how many hours a Kashrut supervisor must spend at the restaurant or establishment at which he is employed, nor is there any mechanism governing whether he has been there at all. The Chief Rabbinate, which issues most of the country's Kashrut certifications, is currently responsible for the actions of the Kashrut monitors. 

Kashrut refers to Jewish dietary laws; food is considered kosher - permitted for consumption - only if it does not include ingredients from non-kosher animals, as determined by the Torah, or from animals not slaughtered according to Jewish Law, or meat-milk mixtures, and the like.  In addition, detailed laws govern the utensils used for cooking and eating.  As opposed to common misconception, Kashrut does not require that food be "blessed" by a rabbi.

Details of the Bill
The proposed legislation, which Amsalem emphasizes "has no elements of religious coercion," will enable "anyone who wants to eat Kosher food to be able to do so."  Amsalem told Arutz-7 he hopes that it will pass its first reading within two months, after which it will have to pass either the Knesset Law Comittee or the Interior Committee; "we haven't yet decided which one."

The bill also proposes to encourage yeshiva students to enter the profession of Kashrut supervision, and train Kashrut monitors with courses of study and tests, as in other professions.  The Rabbinate has taken some steps towards this, but the courses are not yet in place.

Amsalem's bill also wishes to formulate appropriate regulations for the various establishments whose Kashrut needs to be supervised.  "The needs of a large food processing plant are different than those of a falafel stand," Amsalem states, "and both of these are different than a wedding hall, a restaurant, a butcher store, and so on."

No More Conflict of Interest
The most fundamental problem in Kashrut supervision is likely the very fact that the supervisor is generally employed by the owner of the establishment - leading to an obvious conflict of interest.  The new bill stipulates that the supervisors be hired by outside, nation-wide firms that will be chosen by the Chief Rabbinate.

"This bill is designed to implement the various recommendations that have been made," Amsalem concludes, "but which have not yet been manifested.  The current situation is harmful to both the status of the Chief Rabbinate's Kashrut authorizations around the country, and to the Chief Rabbinate itself.  This bill comes to remedy that."

"This legislation will not cost the State additional expenses," the bill's rough copy states. "The costs for courses and salaries will be paid by outside bodies that will then charge the businesses, and yeshivot and Torah institutions will be able to generate revenue and jobs by training Kashrut supervisors."

A left-wing group labeling those opposed to a PLO state “extremists” cancelled its events in Jericho and Tel Aviv after other leftist and Arab groups deemed it not radical enough.

Israel’s increasingly anti-Zionist left-wing, together with the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group, brought about the cancellation of concerts organized by the One Voice group, which seeks the establishment of a PA state and the destruction of Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.

A coalition of groups complained that One Voice does not sufficiently condemn Israeli “war crimes” and “violations of international law” and leaves out the “right of return” in its amorphous platform.

One Voice seeks, through celebrity endorsements and high-profile concerts and events, to collect the signatures of one million Israeli and PA Arab “moderates,” paving the way to a permanent status agreement it hoped would be reached at the upcoming Annapolis Conference. The group defines anybody who wishes to see “two states for two peoples” in the Land of Israel as a moderate. “Ending the conflict can only be achieved through a two-state-solution, according to all Palestinian and Israeli scholars and officials who have sought to truly negotiate and achieve an agreement,” its web site states. All others are labeled “extremists.”

The group itself claims to be a “mainstream nationalist grassroots movement with over 584,000 (as of 10/13/2007) Israeli and Palestinian members.” The definition of membership is filling out a ten-second online form endorsing the two-state formulation and renouncing “extremism.” Filling out the form was a requirement in advance of the free concerts offered by the group.

The group planned to gain signatures for its initiative through high-profile simultaneous concerts in Jericho and Tel Aiv. Concertgoers were to be allowed entry only after signing the group's petition.

A campaign by leftists groups and PFLP terrorists, however, forced them to cancel the concerts, according to the group. The organizations founder told the Associated Press that One Voice received threats that their Judea/Samaria office would be blown up if the concert went on as planned.

The Campaign Against One Voice
Ben White, a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian, explained why he opposed One Voice: “Strikingly, the Tel Aviv concert was scheduled to take place in HaYarkon Park - the same location where, almost 60 years ago, the Palestinian village of Jarisha was wiped off the map by Jewish armed forces.”

There is increasing friction between left-wing groups that call for Israeli withdrawals up to the pre-1967 borders and those who deny the legitimacy of a Jewish State. The latter groups consider Tel Aviv to be “occupied territory” and demand to allow the entry of millions of descendents of Arabs that fled the region during the 1948 War of Independence.

ISM Founder Campaigns Against ‘One Voice’
Neta Golan, one of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement, spearheaded the effort to induce One Voice to take an even more anti-Israel stance. Golan volunteered herself as a human shield to protect Yasser Arafat and has repeatedly interfered with IDF counter-terror operations. She herself documented an attempt to act as a human shield for the killers of Tourism Minister Rechavam Ze’evi during an IDF operation to apprehend them from a Jericho jail.

An email sent by Golan to Israeli groups read: “One Voice is an organization who's [sic] platform among other things that supports: the annexation of the settlement blocs and the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Jewish ‘areas’(meaning settlements) in Jerusalem. Declaring a ‘Palestinian state’ on the isolated cantons that are left of the west bank after this annexation and allowing hte [sic] refugees to return to these cantons. Thus relinquishing their rights and declaring and end of occupation. in other words official apartheid. Please withdraw your support!”
 
Another group, calling itself the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) dispatched a statement about the events under the heading “Celebrating Peace or Camouflaging Apartheid?”

“According to the widely accepted boycott criteria advocated by the PACBI, the [One Voice concerts] fall under the category of normalization projects and violates the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)…Participants are required to join the One Voice Movement and sign a mandate…which assumes equal responsibility of ‘both sides’ for the "conflict”…and denial of Palestinian refugee rights (particularly the right of return).”

A few days later, the PACBI reported that pressure tactics had begun to pay off. “Most of the Arab artists have withdrawn their participation from the concert, including DAM Rap, Reem Talhami, Jamil Al Sayeh, and Al Asayel Group. In addition, many individuals and organizations that have been listed as endorsers, including Bishop Atallah Hanna, have pulled out…Furthermore, we have learned that several alleged endorsers, including President Mahmoud Abbas, were listed without their prior knowledge or consent. As for collecting signatures, the concert in effect serves as a bribe to the public, as concertgoers would be required to sign OneVoice’s mandate prior to entry.”

Concerts Cancelled
Just days before the event, and after One Voice had collected all the online signatures of those wishing to attend, the group announced the cancellation of the Jericho concert and then its Tel Aviv show as well.

“Fringe groups waged a slanderous campaign to incite threats against OneVoice staff and supporters,” the group lamented. Although the concerts were cancelled, the number of signatories to the group’s site – considered “members” rose significantly as locals sought entry to the free concert, which featured Israeli and PA music stars respectively. Still, despite the “over 600,000 members” the group’s online forum has garnered only ten posts at press time.

Khulood Badawi, a radical Israeli-Arab activist with the Marxist Hadash Party, dispatched an email gushing about the success of the pressure applied by leftist groups: “Wow...all our efforts have paid off.  ‘Security concerns’ my a** (they're just hiding behind excuses). And ‘extremist ideologies’ means people who strive for a just peace that does not include carving up the West Bank into cantons, separating Gaza [and] ignoring our precious refugees' right of return.”

One Voice reportedly wrote on its Arabic-language site that the event was postponed for “technical reasons.”
 
The PACBI also issued a release heralding the cancellation. “The cancellation of the Jericho-Tel Aviv event, planned by One Voice…[is] a substantial accomplishment for the Palestinian boycott movement. A solid partnership between diverse civil society organizations [i.e. leftist groups and terror groups like the PFLP –ed.]…has succeeded in thwarting the event’s organizers’ attempt to mislead public opinion and to use deceptive slogans to market a political program that concedes some fundamental Palestinian rights.”
 
Also of note is a claim by the PACBI that One Voice attempted to pass off more radical PA Arabs as “moderates” by modifying the message of its Arabic web site to convey a much harder line. “The discrepancy in the political language used by the organizers in their Arabic web page and the main English page was only an indicator of a deeper deception,” a PACBI statement read.

The PACBI also echoed a complaint voiced by Israel’s Ashkenzi Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger that his name appeared endorsing the event without his being informed what its message was. “They falsely claimed, for instance, that the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, was the event’s main patron, a claim that was categorically dismissed in an official statement issued by the President’s office on 11 October; they also included names of well-known national figures as members of various committees of their organization without those individuals’ consent or even knowledge, as was later disclosed.”
 
The radical PACBI hailed the cancellation as proof of the intransigence of PA public opinion. “This achievement is further proof that a clear majority in Palestinian society continues to insist on the full realization of the inalienable rights of the people of Palestine, paramount among which is the right to self-determination and the right of return for the refugees, as guaranteed by international law.”
 
Veteran left-wing activist Gila Svirsky, one of the heads of B’Tzelem and former director of the New Israel Fund in Israel, criticized those who sought to have the events cancelled. “Canceling a concert for peace is not something to be proud of. If you did not want to attend, that is your privilege. But to promote a boycott of a peace concert? The only thing this concert was about was demanding a 2-state solution. I know that some of you prefer a one-state solution. But you should not get in the way of those who are trying to reach a 2-state solution. There was nothing in the declaration about refugees, Jerusalem, the border, etc.  Just a general call for a 2-state solution, and that the leaders negotiate until it was achieved.”

A Jewish columnist for The Guardian, Seth Freedman, however, managed to blame “extremists on both sides” for the cancellation, citing Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger’s report that he was deceived into lending his support to the initiative.

A7 Radio's "The Tovia Singer Show"

Aaron Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for WorldNetDaily.com and author of an eye-opening new book, “Schmoozing with the Terrorists”, reveals that key Jerusalem neighborhoods slated for possible evacuation are owned by the Jewish National Fund, or JNF.  Klein reports that over the years the JNF has allowed tens of thousands of Arabs to illegally squat on its land, resulting in the current Arab majority in these areas of Jerusalem. The JNF purchased the land using Jewish donor funds for the specific purpose of Jewish settlement.

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