Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama is currently hiding his anti-Israel views in order to get elected, according to a well-known anti-Israel activist. The activist, Ali Abunimah, claimed to know Obama well and to have met him on numerous occasions at pro-Palestinian events in Chicago.

In an article he penned for the anti-Israeli website Electronic Intifada, Abunimah wrote:

"The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

"As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, 'Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race.
'Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race.'
I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.' He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy [and said:] 'Keep up the good work!'"

Barack, Michelle, Edward and Mariam
Abunimah's report included a photo of Obama with his wife Michelle seated at a table with virulently anti-Israeli Professor Edward Said and his wife Mariam, in what Abunimah said was a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Said gave the keynote speech.

In an interview earlier this year for the leftist radio show "Democracy Now!," a daily TV and radio news program hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Abunimah said he knew Obama for many years as his state senator "when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time."

"I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank," he recounted. "And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation."

About face 'to get elected'
Abunimah's report included a photo of Obama with his wife Michelle seated at a table with virulently anti-Israeli Professor Edward Said and his wife Mariam.

The Arab-American activist went on to say: "In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

"Obama's about-face is not surprising," Abunimah wrote. "He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power."
 
When Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, the Chicago Jewish News interviewed him on his stance regarding Israel's security fence. He accused the Bush administration of neglecting the "Israeli-Palestinian" situation and criticized the security fence built by Israel to prevent terror attacks: "The creation of a wall dividing the two nations is yet another example of the neglect of this Administration in brokering peace," Obama was quoted as saying.

While Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas was sipping coffee and chatting with US Vice President Dick Cheney in Ramallah Sunday, one of his closest deputies was doing the same in Yemen with his Hamas counterpart.

Abbas has repeatedly promised not to resume relations with the rival Hamas terrorist organization, but top negotiators from both factions spent five days in Sana’a with Yemenite President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who brokered talks between the two sides.

Fatah at the Table with the US and Israel in Ramallah, Jerusalem
Jerusalem issued a warning Sunday that Israel would shut down its own talks with the PA if Abbas continues on the path to a rapprochement with Hamas.

The message, relayed to Abbas, reportedly explained that dialogue between Fatah and Hamas toward a termination of the Hamas terror reign in Gaza is a good thing. However, if Abbas returns to a unity government with Hamas, final status talks with Israel would end.

During US Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Ramallah, he warned Abbas that acts of terror and the incessant rocket fire aimed at Israel from Gaza “destroys the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”  Cheney added that “With hard work, an agreement between the PA and Israel can be reached,” but added the caveat, “Peace requires painful concessions.”

In addition to demands that Israel remove all its security measures designed to prevent terrorist attacks on its civilians, such as checkpoints, Gaza crossing closures and counterterror operations, Abbas has not backed down on a demand for Israel to hand over half of Jerusalem to become the capital of a new PA state.

A senior government minister told the Hebrew newspaper Maariv on Monday that ‘the agreement brokered by the Yemenites is one of two things – either it is an accord that will lead to the end of the Hamas regime, or it is a connection between Abu Mazen (Abbas) and Hamas, which we cannot abide.”

Fatah at the Table with Hamas in Yemen
Fatah’s Azzam al-Ahmed and Hamas’s Moussa Abu Marzouk met for direct talks for the first time on Sunday since the marathon negotiations began in an effort to determine how Hamas-controlled Gaza and Fatah-controlled Judea and Samaria would manage in an independent PA state.

The Reuters news agency reported Sunday that Abu Marzouk and al-Ahmed had signed a reconciliation deal at their meeting on Sunday. Associated Press later reported that the “deal” was actually an agreement to “accept the Yemen initiative as a framework for resuming dialogue.”

Marzouk told reporters that “no details were finalized” on the agreement to continue talks, particularly with regard to setting a timeline for the negotiations.

Abbas has received billions of dollars, and donations of thousands of new weapons including millions of rounds of ammunition from the US, Jordan, Israel and other nations. For at least a year, Fatah forces have also received advanced military training by US Army commanders. 

All the assistance was provided on the strength of vows by Abbas that his Fatah group would not renew ties with Hamas, which has vowed to destroy Israel. International funding and other assistance to the PA dried up two years ago after Hamas won government elections in a landslide victory. Funds were to be unfrozen only if Hamas agreed to recognize the State of Israel, disarm and renounce terrorism and  uphold previous PA government agreements, which to this day it refuses to do.

A civil war between the two factions ended in June 2006 with Hamas routing Fatah forces from Gaza – while confiscating all of Fatah’s new weaponry and ammunition generously provided by the US and other countries. Fatah has retained control of PA areas in Judea and Samaria.

A media monitoring organization and a British citizen forced the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to apologize for blatant anti-Israel news coverage. They caught the network “red-handed,” reporting falsely.

The BBC has frequently been accused of biased coverage slanted against Israel; Israeli government officials have summoned the BBC to explain itself in the past.

The "red-handed" false report in question was caught by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). CAMERA revealed that BBC used an old file photo to depict the alleged bulldozing of the home of the terrorist who slaughtered eight young yeshiva boys in Jerusalem this month.

“Hours after the attack, Israeli bulldozers destroyed his family home,” reported the BBC – but it was untrue. The home of Ala Abu Dheim continued to stand unharmed, as did the mourning tent in which his family greets people who come to console and congratulate them on his achievement and subsequent ”martyrdom.”

That, despite the fact that the Hashemite Kingdom refused to allow the Jordanian branch of the terrorist’s family to erect such a tent or otherwise hold public mourning events for the murderer in their village near Amman. Jordanian officials explained that public mourning in this case would encourage violence, which would in turn constitute a threat to national security

More Slanted, False Coverage
Another well-documented false and biased BBC report, detected by a Jewish resident of Manchester, England, quoted United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as condemning Israeli attacks on Gazan civilians..

The BBC used the quote several weeks later, out of context, to tie it to a specific IDF attack on Palestinian Authority terrorists in Gaza.

The news report in question stated that Israel had deliberately attacked Gaza civilians. In the report, BBC refrained from reporting the intensified attacks on Israeli civilians, in some weeks more than 100 rockets were fired at western Negev communities by terrorists hiding among women and children in Gaza.

Israel's counterterrorism operation “Warm Winter” in Gaza came after an eight-year-old Sderot boy lost his left leg in a Kassam attack that almost cost him his life, as well as that of his 19-year-old brother, who was also seriously wounded by the rocket.

The collateral damage to civilians in Gaza, noted Israel, was caused by the terrorists who chose to launch their attacks from playgrounds and areas between residential buildings in densely populated civilian areas.

The BBC did issue an official statement of apology for both incidents in which the organization had been caught.

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange closed Sunday with sharp gains in what is seen as a direct response to signs of a recovery in Wall Street Thursday.

 The Tel Aviv Index rose 3.44% to 1,027.38 points; the Tel Aviv 100 climbed 4.16% to 949.37 points; the Tel-Tech went up 5.25% to 238.25 points and the Real Estate Index leapt by 12.76% to 471.78 points.

Overall trade volume reached NIS 1.6 billion, in a day of trading that ended earlier than usual due to a partial strike by Stock Exchange employees.

Dollar up
The US dollar strengthened Sunday morning, with the shekel exchange rate reaching NIS 3.441 to the dollar.

The news comes in the wake of an announcement by the Bank of Israel last Thursday that it woul
The Real Estate Index leapt by 12.76% to 471.78 points.
d buy $25 million per day for the next two years, starting Monday. In total, the Bank will have bought $10 billion in two years' time.

The Tel Aviv indexes were reacting to a spike in Wall Street Thursday, before U.S. and European exchanged closed up for the Easter holiday. On Thursday, the Dow Jones index rose by 2.16% to a level of 12,361.32 points, with a rise of 1.9% for the whole week; the NASDAC rose 2.18% to 2,258.11 points, up 3% in the course of the week and the S&P 500 climbed 2.39% to 1,329.51 points, also gaining 3% from the beginning of the week.

In Israel, some local stocks also did well: Aloni-Hetz shot up 17.2% after its financial reports showed a 19% rise in income in 2007, but a 10% decline in net profits, which to
The US dollar strengthened Sunday morning, with the shekel exchange rate reaching NIS 3.441 to the dollar.
taled NIS 366.5 million. Discount Investments showed a 50% erosion in fourth-quarter profits but a doubling of the annual profit to NIS 1.5 billion. Its stock rose 2.3% Sunday.

Interest rate cut Monday
Another reason for optimism in Tel Aviv is the expectation that the Bank of Israel will announce a lowering of the interest rate in a news conference it will hold Monday afternoon. Most experts estimated that the interest rate, which is currently at 3.75%, will be cut by 0.25% but some expected the cut to reach 0.5%.

The move follows a sharp interest rate cut in the U.S. last week and the ongoing weakening of the dollar vis-à-vis the shekel. The Bank of Israel wants to enlarge economic activity and prevent a slowdown, but does not want to cut the interest rate too much, for fear of an inflationary outbreak.

The Manufacturers Association says the upcoming changeover to Daylight Saving Time (DST) will save the economy 120 million shekels ($35 million).  Others say that most of these savings will be canceled out in other ways, and that the twice-yearly change of clocks is a waste of effort.

The clocks will change this Friday morning, March 29, when 2:00 becomes 3:00.  The change will be in effect for 191 days, as stipulated by law in an interesting combination of the secular and Jewish calendars: from the Friday before April 2 until the Sunday before Yom Kippur.

Moshe Cohen, Chairman of the Energy Committee of the Manufacturers Association, claims that the extra hour of overlapping waking and sunlight time will result in a drop of electricity consumption by a daily average of 0.6%.  This drop, which translates into 73 million shekels, is due to decreased use of lighting and air conditioning.

In addition, Cohen says, nationwide production and sales will increase, and traffic accidents will decrease.

Others Say...
This is only one side of the story, however. As in most of the world, the introduction of Daylight Saving Time in Israel has not been without controversy.  Detractors say that though the increased daylight may render driving safer, it also increases the amount of driving, thus largely canceling out the gain in safety. Business interests have traditionally supported DST, as it increases shopping - and trips to the store.

In addition, the amount of energy saving in the United States has been estimated at only $3 per household, leaving many to wonder if it is worth the bother.

In Israel, however, the largest point of contention has concerned religious observance.  Daylight saving time during the late summer and autumn means that the Tisha B'Av and Yom Kippur fasts end later, and that the midnight penitential prayers (Selichot) recited before the High Holidays begin earlier.  More significantly, extra months of daylight saving time mean that often, worshipers cannot recite post-dawn morning prayers in a timely fashion before they have to go to work.

Up to the Interior Minister
The issue came to a head in the late 1990s, when the hareidi-religious Shas party ran the Interior Ministry; one year, then-Minister Eli Suissa made a unilateral decision to end DST a month early for the above reasons, bringing public secular wrath upon him.  Then-MK Yossi Sarid, head of the anti-religious Meretz party at the time, said, ''Minister Suissa thinks he is G-d. G-d says: 'Let there be light,' and there is light... It's not enough that [Suissa] represents G-d, he is G-d himself. He says: 'Let there be darkness' in the middle of the summer, and he wants us to live in darkness.''

In 2004, when the anti-religious Shinui party controlled the Interior Ministry, Minister Avraham Poraz got back at the religious public.  Just before his firing by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon [together with the other Shinui ministers, for voting against the budget] took effect, Poraz ordered the instatement of DST from March until the end of October, without regard for Jewish holidays.

The issue was finally resolved legally in 2005, when a law was passed determining the exact duration of DST, and removing the decision from the hands of the Interior Minister.

The Purim holiday is a time of great joy and celebration in the Jewish world. This year, it was celebrated on Thursday night and Friday in Jewish communities around the world and throughout Israel. In Jerusalem, the traditional Purim feast is being held Sunday, in accordance with the special Jewish laws of a Triple Purim which go into effect when the first day of Purim falls on a Friday.

In honor of Purim, Jews of all stripes and types broke out in spontaneous dancing together on Zion Square in downtown Jerusalem, Saturday night. Arutz Sheva's Dan Paley presents his photos of the unannounced event:

Mankind triumphed in a recent “competition” against nature when scientists succeeded in creating a new type of enzyme which brings about a reaction that no naturally occurring enzyme has done. This achievement opens the door to a variety of potential applications in medicine and industry, such as neutralizing poisons and developing medicines.

Enzymes are, without a doubt, a valuable model for understanding the intricate works of nature. These molecular machines –without which life would not exist – are responsible for initiating chemical reactions within the body. In order to create artificial enzymes, a comprehensive understanding of the structure of natural enzymes, their mode of action, as well as advanced protein engineering techniques is needed.

A team of scientists from the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, made a crucial breakthrough toward this endeavor. Their findings were recently published in the scientific journal Nature.

Enzymes are biological catalysts that are made from a string of amino acids, which fold into specific three-dimensional protein structures. The scientists’ aim was to create an enzyme for a specific chemical reaction for which no enzymes currently exist, but which would be beneficial in helping to speed up the reaction. During the first heat of the “competition,” the research team designed the “heart” of the enzymatic machine – the active site – where the chemical reactions take place.

The second heat of the competition was to design the backbone of the enzyme, i.e., to determine the sequence of the 200 amino acids that make up the structure of the protein. Prof. David Baker of the University of Washington, Seattle, used novel computational methodologies to scan tens of thousands of sequence possibilities, identifying about 60 computationally-designed enzymes that had the potential to carry out the intended activity. From the 60 sequences tested, Prof. Baker narrowed the possibilities down to 3 sequences, which proved to be the most active. Drs. Orly Dym and Shira Albeck of the Weizmann Institute’s Structural Biology Department solved the structure of one of the final contestants, and confirmed that the enzymes created were almost identical to the predicted computational design.

But the efficiency of the new enzymes could not compare to that of naturally-occurring enzymes. This is where “mankind” was on the verge of losing the competition to nature, until Prof. Dan Tawfik and research student Olga Khersonsky of the Weizmann Institute’s Biological Chemistry Department stepped in, whereby they developed a method allowing the synthetic enzymes to undergo “evolution in a test tube” that mimics natural evolution. Through rounds of mutation and screening, they were able to improve the enzymes’ efficiency 200-fold compared with the efficiency of the computer-designed template, resulting in a million-fold increase in reaction rates compared with those that take place in the absence of an enzyme.

“Reproducing the breathtaking performances of natural enzymes is a daunting task, but the combination of computational design and molecular in vitro evolution opens up new horizons in the creation of synthetic enzymes,” says Tawfik. “Thanks to this research, we have gained a better understanding of the structure of enzymes as well as their mode of action. This, in turn, will allow us to design and create enzymes that nature itself had not ‘thought’ of, which could be used in various processes, such as neutralizing poisons, developing medicines, as well as for many further potential applications.”

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