The IDF intercepted 6.5 tons of a bomb-making agent that was stored in sugar bags marked as humanitarian aid from the European Union.

It has been released for publication that 6.5 tons of Potassium Nitrate, a main ingredient in explosives manufacturing, was intercepted in a joint Shabak (General Security Service) and IDF operation last month.

A truck was caught at “one of the crossing points in Judea and Samaria carrying the Potassium Nitrate, which was disguised in sugar bags, and was intended for use by terrorists in Gaza,” according to IDF sources.

Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in Gaza, Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Kassam rockets.

It is assumed that the explosives ingredient was not dispatched by the European Union, but labeled as aid by terrorist groups to take advantage of Israel’s efforts to appease human rights groups by limiting scrutiny of foreign aid shipments to Gaza.

“The terror organizations disguised the Potassium Nitrate in sugar bags that were marked as being part of the humanitarian aid provided by the European Union,” the IDF source said. “This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in Gaza with Israel's approval.”

Former PA Prime Minister’s Body Guard Shoots at Soldiers
A Fatah terrorist opened fire at IDF soldiers who had come to arrest him Thursday night. The man was once the bodyguard of former PA Prime Minister and current chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei. The soldiers returned fire, killing the bodyguard, Moazzem Sherif. The incident took place in Bituniya, west of Ramallah.

Qurei condemned the IDF arrest operation. 

Other Security News
Two Arabs were arrested when they were found with knives at the Hawara Crossing near Shechem Saturday.

A roadside bomb was detonated near an IDF jeep along the Gaza security fence Saturday. No injuries were reported, but the jeep was badly damaged in the blast.

More than a dozen mortar shells were fired at the western Negev from Gaza over the Sabbath. No injuries or damage was reported.

The funerals of the two young men from Kiryat Arba who were murdered by terrorists on Friday was held Saturday night, accompanied by thousands.

The funeral procession of David Rubin and Achikam Amichai left their homes at 7:30 P.M, and made its way north to Jerusalem along the Gush Etzion Tunnels Highway.  The joint funeral at Mt. Herzl was held at 10 P.M.

Achikam was the son of Rabbi Yehuda Amichai, the head of the Torah and Land Institute, originally founded in Gush Katif, and the grandson of the late Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neria.  David and Achikam were murdered as they were hiking with a friend in Nahal Telem, west of Hevron.

The three hikers set out on a trail in the Telem riverbed, northwest of Hevron. They were approached by terrorists in an SUV who apparently had been tipped off as to their presence on the secluded trail.  In fact, just minutes before, one of the victims pointed at some Arab shepherds and joked, "They're probably going to tell some terrorists that we're here."

David Rubin

The terrorists said hello to their intended victims, and then, from the car's back window, three shots were fired.  One of them hit Amikam, but between the two young men, both of whom were on leave from their elite IDF units, they managed to return fire and kill one of the terrorists. Another one was wounded, and though the terrorists evacuated him from the scene, he later died of his wounds. IDF sources said the two soldiers "fought to their last drop of blood."

The 20-year-old girl who was with the two managed to run and hide, and called the emergency services. Bad cell phone reception delayed the process of locating the attack victims, though it was noted that she remained calm and in control throughout. She tried to guide the army and eme
The terrorists said hello to their intended victims, and at a certain point opened fire on them.
rgency crews to the scene, and even noted that she heard the sounds of Arabs taking a body into their car.  When the emergency crews finally arrived, they discovered a gruesome scene: The two dead Jews, and near them the body of one Arab terrorist. The terrorists took the assault rifles of the Jewish soldiers.

Fayad: We Are 'Pained' By Killing of Soldiers
Salam Fayad, Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Palestinian Authority in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, said Saturday evening that he shares the pain over the killing of the two Israeli soldiers near Hevron. "We feel pain over the death of the two soldiers. Every death is unnecessary," Fayad said at an economic conference being held at a hotel in Herzliya.

Fayad said the PA arrested suspects in the matter and asked to convey his condolences to the bereaved families. "These are not just words here, but also deeds," Fayad said. "We are working in cooperation with the Israeli security services and we will see this matter to its end."

Many in Israel do not view it that way.  They remember the murder just last month of Ido Zoldan by PA policemen, the incitement against Israel in PA media, and the refusal of the PA to act resolutely to end terrorism from within its midst.

'Only Force'
The Yesha Rabbis Council reacted to the murderous attack near Hevron saying: "Any intention and plan to give up parts of the Land of Israel is understood as weakness and surrender, and leads directly to the murder of Jews. The Arab enemy understands only force, power and resoluteness. A Jewish government needs to evict its enemies from within it and settle Jews in their stead."

The newly-formed Hatikva party responded to the murderous attack as follows: "The victims of Annapolis who were gunned down today in Har Hevron died as a direct result of the terrorists' daring, which increases the more Olmert and Livni court the chairman of the Palestinian Terror Authority, Abu Mazen."

The Almagor terror victims organization sent a message to the Israeli cabinet following the attack,
MK Ariel: the murders were "additional proof of how the Arab terror raises its head the moment it recognizes weakness."
asking to return the roadblocks it removed from Judea and Samaria's roads "instead of discussing relaxation of the criteria for releasing terrorists."

Besides the pressing need to replace the roadblocks, Almagor said, such a move "would convey a proper message to the terror groups in the wake of the murder."

MK Uri Ariel (NU/NRP) said the double murder was "additional proof of how the Arab terror raises its head the moment it recognizes weakness and willingness to compromise [on the Israeli side]. The Prime Minister's announcements about releasing terrorists, freezing construction and supervision of tenders in Jerusalem give terror a boost."

Click here to read an account of the funeral.

According to an article published in Haaretz the morning after the funeral of two Jewish hikers, David Rubin and Achikam Amichai, "Jewish terrorism" is the threat the IDF must contend with. 

The article, entitled "Nipping new W. Bank Jewish terror group in the bud," posits that the creation of a new Jewish terrorist group is prevented only by the IDF's speedy nabbing of the killers of Jews living in Judea and Samaria. “The effort by the security forces to capture those who carried out the shooting attack where two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed west of Hebron on Friday is…designed to nip in the bud the creation of a new Jewish terror organization in the West Bank,” the article by senior Haaretz journalists Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff begins.

No evidence for the existence of such a group is offered.

The article goes on to explain that its premise that the murder of Jews brings about Jewish terrorism is based on historical analyses. “An analysis of incidents in the past few decades in which Jews struck at Palestinians shows that right-wing terror groups grew amid Jewish settlers' increasing fears for their safety and progress in the peace talks that would lead to the evacuation of settlements,” the article continues.

The article goes on to speculate that the Arab murderers were in the midst of an arms deal: “Israeli hikers do not frequent the Telem stream, where Friday's attack took place, so it is unlikely that terrorists ambushed the three Israelis. (A woman hiking with the soldiers escaped uninjured.) The stream is also relatively far from the nearest Palestinian village, so it is unlikely that the terrorists were alerted by other Palestinians to the presence of the Israelis. Members of the Palestinian preventive security forces suggested yesterday that the Israelis might have accidentally interrupted a meeting of arms dealers, who subsequently decided to shoot them.”

Khaled Abu Toameh, a Jerusalem Post journalist with sources throughout Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, reported otherwise.

“Some of the gunmen who participated in Friday's shooting attack near Hebron belong to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, Fatah activists…confirmed over the weekend,” Toameh reported. “They said the attack was carried out jointly by Fatah and Islamic Jihad members.”

Toameh says that many Fatah terrorists have declined to join the PA security forces and are operating under various names such as the “Yasser Arafat Group and the Martyr Ayman Judeh Group, which took credit for Friday's attack.”

In fact, one of the terrorists killed in the attack was Basel al-Natsheh, a known Fatah terrorist whose father, Nabil, is a Hamas member imprisoned in Israel. Al-Natsheh is not an arms dealer.

Israel's Media Watch Responds

"This, it appears, is a classic case of the red line of news-views being crossed, a most serious journalism ethics concern," responded Yisrael Medad, Vice-Chairman of Israel's Media Watch. "If it turns out that this is complete fiction, which I assume, I would champion a lawyer pursuing an incitement charge based on paragraph 136 of Israel's Penal Code which prohibits causing unrest among different elements of the populace which this reportage clearly seeks to accomplish."

A new audio cassette, the fifth one issued by the Al-Qaeda international terrorist organization this year, tells the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza that they need not be concerned.  "I have not forgotten your struggle," the reviled terrorist chieftain Osama Bin-Laden is heard saying, "and we plan to expand our Jihad [holy war] to Palestine as well.  We intend to liberate all of Palestine, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea."

Previous messages by Bin-Laden have not mentioned Israel directly.

Just last week, Al-Qaeda carried out the murder of Pakistani Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a Shia Moslem.  Though it later denied its involvement, at least one recording has surfaced of Al-Qaeda leaders congratulating each other on the successful operation. 

In the most recent tape, Bin-Laden speaks for nearly an hour about Iraq, the United States - and Israel.  Promising to carry out attacks against Israel, he says, "Blood for blood, destruction for destruction."
 
"Unlike other Moslem leaders," Bin-Laden said, "we don't recognize even one centimeter of Palestinian land [sic] as belonging to the Jews."  Even Hizbullah is too moderate, Bin-Laden feels, for having agreed to the stationing in southern Lebanon of an international peacekeeping force "to protect the Jews."

It was reported on Sunday that Egyptian security forces recently thwarted an Al-Qaeda attempt to establish a terrorist cell in Egypt.  Fourteen Al-Qaeda suspects were arrested, according to a report in the London-based Al Hayat newspaper.

A key public square in Jerusalem will be renamed in honor of imprisoned American Jew and Israeli citizen Jonathan Pollard – just in time for the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush.

The Jerusalem City Council has chosen Monday, Jan. 7, 2008, as the date for a ceremony renaming Paris Square (Kikar Paris) - a public square situated midway between the American Consulate and the prime minister's residence - in honor of Jonathan Pollard.

The name change to Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square anticipates the arrival of Bush in Israel two days later, on Jan. 9, and marks the start of Pollard's 23rd year in prison. The Jerusalem City Council declared that the name change will take effect immediately and remain in effect until Pollard is released and returned to Israel.

Members of the Jerusalem City Council, Pollard's wife Esther and other public figures will be in attendance at the ceremony. The event is being arranged in coordination with the Jerusalem-based Committee to Bring Jonathan Pollard Home (HaVaad) and Justice4JP. The public is invited and encouraged to attend.

Click here for more information on Jonathan Pollard, published by Arutz-7 to mark 8,000 days of his captivity.

David Shamah contributed to this report

Rabbi Dov Lior, the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba, said at the Saturay night funeral procession of terror victims David Rubin and Achikam Amichai that the way the two returned fire despite being wounded "is encouragement for heroic deeds by Jews who fight for their lives."

Rabbi Lior sharply criticized the Olmert government for its decision to narrow the definition of terrorists "with blood on their hands" so as to enable the return of Cpl. Gilad Shalit who was abducted by Hamas. "They free terrorists with blood… but the fact that a terrorist tried to murder and failed, and because of this they then free him, that is madness."

'The government is weak'
Rabbi Lior continued: "Who said that the weapon with which they murdered the two heroes is not a weapon our government provided them with? The government surrenders and the government is weak."

Rabbi Lior said that things have reached a state in which a Jew can no longer walk freely in his own country. "We cower behind walls," he said, "but the youth will continue to redeem our land and from this shall come peace, true peace, unlike the one they are trying to drug us with."

Rabbi Lior added a prayer: "May G-d avenge His servants and cause the government to be replaced." The current government supposedly cares about security but releases hundreds of murderers. They want to uproot Jews from their land, and this encourages terror."

'For me you are a journey'
Benaya Sarel, who was a friend of both of the terror victims, told the mourners about Achikam, who had nine brothers and sisters, and who was "incapable of fear." "There is no spring you failed to dip in, you stepped in every stream and for me you are a trip, a journey, a walk, sometimes with no objective."
"You never broke and you always led the way forward," a friend of Rubin's grieved.

Sarel said his slain friends belonged to a kind of heroes that is becoming extinct. David Rubin, eldest of seven siblings, never cried once. "You never broke and you always led the way forward," he grieved.

Sarel vowed that he and his friends would not be deterred from continuing to hike all over the Land of Israel, including the "dangerous" zones. "We followed you with our eyes closed, and we will continue to leave no rock unturned, he said, "only this time we will have no one to ask where to go.

Nearly 2,300 Arabs from Gaza, among them Hamas terrorists who wish to avoid Israeli arrest, will be allowed to enter Gaza via Egypt - in direct opposition to an Israeli request.

The Arabs, returning from a religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, spent the weekend aboard two luxury ferries at a port in the Red Sea between Egypt's Sinai Desert and Saudi Arabia.  The Arabs refused to return to Gaza via Israel, and demanded to pass through Egyptian-controlled Rafiah instead.

In the past, Egypt had allowed Arabs of Gaza to return via Rafiah, sparking an Israeli protest that wanted Hamas terrorists were thus saved from Israeli security forces.  Defense Minister Ehud Barak officially requested of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, during their meeting in Cairo last week, that Egypt route the Arabs through Israel.  Barak said that allowing the Arabs to enter via Rafiah was a diplomatic coup for Hamas, in showing that it has ties with an important country.  Mubarak agreed to Barak's request.

In fact, Egypt seemed poised to fulfill Israel's request this weekend - but Al-Jazeera reported Sunday morning that Egypt had caved in to Hamas and now plans to allow the terrorists to evade Israeli hands by routing them via Rafiah.

Other reports stated that Egypt has not yet decided what to do, and that the Arabs are being bused across the Sinai to temporary camps not far from Rafiah until a decision is made.

Arutz-7's request for a response from the Defense Ministry had not been met by press time.

Israel is interested in apprehending leading Hamas terrorists, as well as ensuring that they do not bring in massive amounts of cash to the Hamas government of Gaza. 

Israel has long complained that Egypt is not fulfilling its post-Disengagement obligations to effectively monitor the Rafiah crossing into Gaza.  The massive Hamas terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, which has been compared to that of an army, has been almost exclusively built up with weapons and materials smuggled through Rafiah and in tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor.

Both Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni and Transportation Minister Sha'ul Mofaz have sharply criticized Egypt's peformance in this regard.  A top advisor to Mubarak responded over the weekend by saying, "It is not Egypt's job to protect Israel's borders."

Arutz Sheva Israel National TV and The Ohr Olam Center for Biblical Zionism are jointly launching a Jerusalem-based Jewish TV show celebrating the wonders of Israel, the beauty of Judaism, and the experience of life in Jerusalem. "Tuesday Night Live" will premier on Tuesday, January 1, 2008, with a live studio audience and be available for internet viewing by Thursday evening.

Tuesday Night Live Co-hosts Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel

Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel, an IDF soldier and commander, respectively, in the reserves, are co-hosting the show, which will take place live every other Tuesday at a large downtown Jerusalem auditorium in the Heichal Shlomo building. The show will feature guests, live Jewish music, and talk.

The two young dynamic Jewish leaders currently host a radio show on IsraelNationalRadio.com, and frequently visit the US on speaking tours. Gimpel explained the initiative: "With the world focused on Middle East violence, Israel is often defined by the terror, corruption, and despair portrayed by international media. Tuesday Night Live will create a new perception of Israel in the eyes of the world and reveal the joyful heart of a nation who has triumphed against all odds."

Doors open at 7:00 p.m. on January 1, and the show starts at 8:00 p.m. The Heichal Shlomo auditorium is located on 58 King George St. in Jerusalem, across from the Plaza Hotel. Entrance is free.

Seats may be reserved by email at Rachel@thelandofisrael.com, and the remainder will be distributed Tuesday night on a first-come, first-served basis.

Author David Raab, who survived one of history’s most audacious terrorist acts, spoke with Israel National Radio’s Eve Harrow about his new book, “Terror in Black September.”

Raab spoke about his decision, years later, to compile archived documents and testimony surrounding the three-week drama of being held as a hostage by PLO terrorists in Jordan in 1970. He also revealed a result of the hijackings the terrorists never intended: Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel).

“The situation in Jordan then was very similar to what was going on in Gaza just a few months ago, with the Palestinian Authority nominally in charge but in fact Hamas running rampant through the streets, running its own checkpoints and basically a state within a state,” Raab explains of the political environment surrounding the episode. “In 1970, Yasser Arafat and the PLO were playing [the Hamas] role and King Hussein was at his wits end.”

On Sunday, September 6, 1970, 17-year-old Raab, his mother and his four younger siblings boarded a plane in Tel Aviv after spending the summer in Israel. TWA flight 741 was heading back to the US when it had to make a stop in Germany. “In those days planes couldn’t make it all the way across the pond so we landed at Frankfurt to refuel and pick up more passengers,” Raab recalls. “A few minutes out of Frankfurt we heard a scream from the back and a man and a woman, the woman carrying two hand grenades, ran down the aisle. We had been hijacked and the plane was turned around.”

The teenage Raab – he preserves his original memories recorded immediately after the saga by using italics in his book – first recalled a spate of hijackings to Cuba. “My first reaction was that we would be heading for Cuba and would be back on our way to the US after a few cigars,” he said. “The female hijacker got on the PA system and said this was the work of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). We knew then that this was not going to be fun.”

Raab’s book is unique in that it uses the methods of the so-called New Historians in Israel – accessing declassified archives of various governments and officials to piece together the complex nature of the behind-the-scenes tapestry of events - while conveying his perceptions as a victim at the epicenter as well.

“There were a couple of US Defense Department officials sitting nearby who began cutting out sections of classified documents and eating them,” Raab recalls, speaking with hindsight of what seemed a bizarre response to the terrorists’ announcement at the time. “They were returning from a series of meetings in the Middle East with very classified material.”

Raab and the rest of the passengers on the flight began circling over the Jordanian desert, where the terrorists forced the crew to land without a real runway. “We landed on salt flats in the desert,” he said. “The pilot was very worried and thought we would crash on landing.”

Thus began what Raab terms “a three-week nightmare.” The PLO terrorists turned off all the lights on the plane, collected the passengers’ passports and asked them to fill out forms with their names, addresses and religions.

“At the time just being in Jordan alone was terrifying to a Jewish person, let alone being held by Palestinians,” Raab said. “This was three years after the Six Day War and Jordan was still at war with Israel.”

A second plane, this one Swissair, had also been hijacked over Europe on its way to the US and was brought in right behind the first. “It nearly hit us, stopping only 75 feet short of our plane,” Raab said.

Two more planes had been successfully hijacked that day in addition to a failed attempt to take an El Al flight - a record that held until the attacks on September 11, 2001. “They hijacked a Pan Am 747 also out of Europe, took it to Cairo and wired it with explosives, lit the fuse while the plane was still in the air, and the plane blew up only seconds after the last passengers had exited,” Raab recalls.

The terrorists demanded that Israel release hundreds of convicted terrorists from Israeli jails. “Things don’t seem to change very much,” Raab mused. “They wanted Britain, Germany and Switzerland to also release a number of terrorists [from] their jails. They wired our planes with explosives and said that if their demands weren’t met in 72 hours they would blow up the planes with us on them.”

The PLO was an umbrella organization of which PFLP was a part. Yasser Arafat applauded the PFLP for the “spectacular hijack.” King Hussein was furious with Arafat. “This was the last straw as it was a real slap in the face to Hussein,” Raab said. “These terror groups had now brought hundreds of innocent civilians to his country and he was powerless to do anything about it because we were hostage to these terror organizations.”

After a week filled with tension and sheer terror for the passengers – which can only be understood by reading Raab’s detailed account -  the planes were blown up and most of the women and children were sent home. The PFLP held on to 54 people, including 38 Americans. Raab was one of them.

“I was 17, Jewish and they claimed that I was an Israeli soldier,” he said. The book recounts his family agonizing over how to get rid of a costume IDF uniform they had purchased and photos they had taken with real soldiers.

“They took people off in groups at first. I was taken as part of a group of seven people they claimed were Israeli soldiers, even though we were all Americans. We were all Jewish (except one) and between the ages of 17 and 35. There were only two adult males who were Israeli – and they were dual Israeli-US citizens. One of the miracles of this whole episode were that there were not more, first of all, and that there were no pure adult male Israeli citizens.

“The Palestinians at first thought that it was a bluff. They claimed that there were about 50 Israelis on board. In those days they didn’t have automated reservation systems and it took quite a few days until the world realized there were no Israeli citizens on board and they were really all Americans. The US kind of felt flustered because there were no demands placed on it, but its citizens were involved. In other words, its citizens were going to be freed only if Israel did something. Actually, at one point Henry Kissinger wrote a memo to President Nixon saying that the release of our citizens depends on the action of a third country.

“The United States got it, but the European countries became very upset, because they also were kind of dependent on Israel to do something to help get their citizens out, too. So they, during the course of three weeks, became quite upset at Israel at different times – surprise, surprise. But the US was actually pretty stalwart in its support of Israel during the entire three weeks.”

Harrow: So how was it resolved?

“Well, I survived,” Raab laughed. “How I survived is very interesting, but you’ll have to read the book.

“For the last ten days we actually sat in the middle of a civil war. After the PLO and PFLP had blown up the planes and held onto the 54, King Hussein decided the time had come to crack down on the PLO. And this was encouraged by the US, even though it had its citizens sitting there – I guess we were deemed expendable.

“By Wednesday, September 16, we were 32 Americans in a three-room apartment in Amman. We were in a Palestinian enclave. We awoke the next day to the sound of artillery and machine-gun fire. We sat under shelling with no water or electricity for ten days. They brought us some food – I lost 15 pounds in three weeks. At one point I didn’t know when the next meal would come and it was very distressing. It was very miraculous that we came out alive. We could have died by mistake.”

Harrow: How did all this affect you, a 17-year-old?

“It affected me in a lot of ways, in terms of priorities in life. I became obsessed with Israel,” Raab, who now lives in Raanana, admits. “There were 78 American Jews who boarded the plane in Tel Aviv that morning. About 20 percent of them now live in Israel – which is a huge percentage if you think about it. These people left with a feeling that they were a part of Israeli history and their response the Palestinians was to make Israel their home.

For more information or to purchase the book, visit terrorinblackseptember.com

Click here to listen to Eve Harrow's interview with David Raab on Israel National Radio