US Pushes for War with Iran: Brasscheck TV
Police ‘in Jerusalem holy site’: BBC
The compound contains sites holy to both Jews and Muslims
Israeli police say they have entered a compound in Jerusalem containing the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites.
Police said they entered the compound to disperse at least 20 Palestinians who were throwing stones at visitors.
The site also contains the Western Wall, a sacred site for Jews.
Tensions have been high in recent days following clashes in the West Bank town of Hebron over Israel listing two disputed shrines as heritage sites.
Contested site
A Palestinian official said the group of youths had spent the night in the al-Aqsa mosque to prevent what they believed to be Jewish extremists from praying at the sensitive site.
An Israeli police spokesman said calm had been restored to the compound and visits resumed.
The spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said Muslim men under the age of 50 had been barred from the site, while older men, women of all ages and children had been permitted to enter.
The Jerusalem complex, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, has long been contested.
Clashes erupted at the site last September after Muslims threw stones at people they believed to be Jewish extremists trying to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque.
A visit to the compound in 2000 by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon, later prime minister, led to clashes that escalated into years of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The compound containing the mosque lies in Jerusalem’s Old City, which has been controlled by Israel since they captured it in the 1967 war.
Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from the spot in the complex marked by the Dome of the Rock.
The site is holy to Jews because it is where the First and Second Temples were built according to the Old Testament, with the Western Wall still remaining.
GAZA: Avatar on Earth: YouTube
Four policemen wounded at Temple Mount clashes: Haaretz
Four Israeli policemen were wounded by Palestinian stone hurlers on Sunday, as clashes continued after Muslim worshippers barricaded themselves in a mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound.
So far, 7 Palestinians have been arrested in the violent riots.
Israel police broke into the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, after Palestinian worshippers hurled stones at non-Muslim visitors of the holy site.
Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police entered the compound when about 20 Palestinians threw stones, but that the protesters had quickly taken cover inside the mosque.
The incident was over quickly, but the area remained tense. In the past, violence at the site – known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary – has erupted into deadly battles.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police dispersed the 20 masked protesters, saying “calm was quickly restored,” and that “about a thousand tourists have since visited the site.”
However, small groups of masked Palestinians continued to clash with police elsewhere in Jerusalem’s Old City and in a nearby neighborhood just outside the walled area.
Police overnight restricted the entrance to the Mosque to a minimum age of 50, and holders of blue (Israeli) identity certificates as a precaution.
Israeli police do not usually enter the area, other than in response to incidents. Police did not enter the mosque.
One protester was arrested as the rock-throwing protests spread to the alleyways of the old walled city, Ben-Ruby added.
Adnan al-Husseini, a Palestinian official in charge of Jerusalem, said Palestinian youths had spent the night at the mosque saying Jewish hardliners had threatened to enter the site.
The holy site has been a frequent flashpoint of violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Tensions have been on the rise in Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory over stalled peace talks which haven’t convened since before a Gaza war in December 2008.
The incident comes after more than 300 Palestinians in Hebron clashed with Israeli security forces on Thursday, while commemorating the 29 Muslims killed in an attack by Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein at the Ibrahimi Mosque 16-years ago.
Hadash chairman Mohammed Barakeh who joined the Palestinian protestors alongside some 30 more Israelis, criticized Israel Defense Forces soldiers for attacking the peaceful demonstrators, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his recent move to add the Tomb of the Patriarchs to the list of National Heritage sites.
“Netanyahu is an expert at lighting fires, and is turning the wheel backwards by repeating his mistakes from his first cadency as Prime Minister,” Barakeh said following the demonstration.
“The Netanyahu-Barak government is pushing towards a regional explosion in order to damage any chance of progress,” he added.
IDF soldiers attempted to disband the protest by hurling smoke grenades. Barakeh said that they all suffered from smoke inhalation.
Following an outburst of violence in Hebron, where the tomb is located, Khaled Esseleh, the mayor of Hebron, said: “I’m hoping there won’t be more clashes but this is a very sensitive religious issue, and Netanyahu just lit the fire.”
Earlier, the Obama administration criticized Israel for designating two shrines in the West Bank as Israeli national heritage sites.
The criticism came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she hopes long-stalled peace talks between Israelis and the Palestinians will resume.
Clinton told a congressional committee that groundwork is being laid to restart the talks with the help of U.S. envoy George Mitchell.
She did not say exactly when the negotiations might resume, but her remarks come amid a flurry of U.S. diplomatic activity in the region
Gaza 2009: We Will Not Forget
EDITOR: Egypt’s ugly face
After years of aggression towards the Gaza residents, in order to make the Israeli illegal blockade mosre efficient, and building the steel wall, to stop the importation of food and fuel into the starved strip with more than 1.5 million inhabitants, so punished for exercising their democratic right to vote, now Egypt is to assist Israel crucially by exporting gas to it, rather than deny Israel this crucial resource which it denies the gazans. How depressing.
Egypt lifts ban on gas to Israel: BBC
The supreme court in Egypt has overturned an earlier ruling by a lower court that banned gas sales to Israel.
The new ruling requires that the government should make clear the quantity of gas it exports to Israel and how much it charges.
Lawyers had argued that the gas was being sold at preferential rates.
Egypt’s gas trade with Israel is controversial, as many Egyptians are opposed to links between the two countries – despite a 1979 peace deal.
Some opposition figures in Egypt are against the sale of gas to Israel because they disagree with its policies towards the Palestinians.
This ruling ends a legal battle which stirred up public controversy.
Over a year ago, lawyers had successfully argued for a ban on natural gas exports to Israel, claiming the price was below the international market level.
The supreme administrative court has said that the lower court which made that ruling has no jurisdiction in cases of this kind because they involved state sovereignty.
Pipeline flow
It did add, however, that Egypt should take steps to monitor the price and quantity of its exports ensuring domestic needs are met before selling gas abroad.
Gas started flowing to Israel from Egypt through a pipeline in 2008, under an agreement contracted to last for 20 years.
In reality, supplies were never cut off when there was a court ruling banning sales.
It was ignored by the government, pending a review.
The final legal decision is unlikely to enjoy wide support in Egypt.
Although the country has had a peace treaty with Israel since 1979, Israeli policies in the Palestinians territories make it unpopular with many Egyptians.
During the conflict in Gaza, there were increased calls to stop gas exports.
Gaza: The Killing Zone: YouTube
Dubai: Hamas man was drugged and suffocated: Haaretz
The assassins of Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month in Dubai drugged and then suffocated him, Dubai police is quoted by CNN as saying on Sunday.
Toxicilogy testes on the Hamas leader found, CNN said, significant amounts of a type of muscle relaxer, also known to be used as an anesthetic.
“The assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural,” the Dubai police’s Major Genenral Al Mazeina told reporters.
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The report also added that al-Mabhouh’s autopsy had also indicated that the Hamas man had resisted his assailants as they suffocated him.
Dubai authorities had also claimed that the suspected killers left some of al-Mabhouh’s medicine next to his bed, in what they saw was an attempt to disguise his cause of death.
On Saturday, Dubai’s chief of police called on Mossad director Meir Dagan to “be a man” and admit that Israel’s espionage agency was behind the January 20 assassination.
In an interview with the Dubai-based Khaleej Times newspaper, the police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, reaffirmed that his office holds a DNA sample from one of the assailants and fingerprints from several others.
“Most of the suspects in the assassination of Mabhouh are now in Israel,” Tamim said.
He added that an international investigative team should be set up comprising representatives of the five nations whose passports were allegedly fraudulently used in the operation.
“If it emerges that the Mossad carried out this assassination, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad chief Dagan will be at the top of the most wanted list,” Tamim said. He said Dubai’s cooperation with the five Western states on the matter is “serious and comprehensive.”
UNRWA – Gaza Jan 2009: YouTube
Report: Mossad used Australian passports before Dubai row: Haaretz
Australia’s counter-intelligence and security agency is investigating suspicions that three Australian-Israeli dual citizens spied for Israel in recent years by using their Australian passports, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has been conducting the inquiry for six months, the newspaper reported, and the probe is unrelated to the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month. Three Australian passports were used in that operation, which Dubai authorities attributed to Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Australian intelligence sources told the Herald that the three men under investigation all emigrated to Israel within the last decade. Each has visited Australia at different times to legally change their names and
The individuals had changed their names from those that could be identified as European-Jewish to ones more typically identified as Anglo-Australian. One of the men changed his last name three times, the paper reported, and the other two twice each. The names were changed from those that could be identified as European-Jewish to those typical of Anglo-Australians.
The new passports were used to gain entry to a number of countries hostile to Israel, including Iran, Syria and Lebanon. None recognize Israel, and all forbid Israelis from entering by law. Israel also prohibits its citizens from traveling to these countries, citing security reasons.
The Herald reported that the three Australians are involved with a European communications company that has a subsidiary in the Middle East. In 2004, one of the individuals in question sought assistance at the Australian embassy in Tehran.
Two of the men contacted by the paper emphatically denied they were involved in any kind of espionage. “This is a complete fantasy,” said one. “I have changed my name for personal reasons.”
“I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to,” said the other. “I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.”
The man is also believed to hold British citizenship, and to have come under the surveillance of British intelligence after he changed his name.
The company’s chief executive strongly denied the man was ever employed by his firm, the paper reported, and adamantly rejected the idea that his company was being used to gather intelligence for Israel.
Australian intelligence declined comment.
Canberra said yesterday it is not satisfied with the Israeli ambassador’s explanation about the alleged fraudulent use of Australian passports in the Dubai operation, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said, according to the Herald. Rudd said his government had to “proceed very carefully” in the investigation because of its complex security nature.
Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem, was summoned on Thursday for an urgent meeting with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.
Israel Accused of Stealing Identities & Passports in Killing of Hamas Commander in Dubai 1 of 2: YouTube
Israeli Police Quell Rioters at Holy Site: NY Times
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police forces stormed the most contentious holy site in Jerusalem on Sunday to disperse masked Palestinian protesters hurling objects at visiting foreign tourists.
The incident was over quickly, but the area remained tense afterward. In the past, violence at the site — known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — has erupted into deadly battles.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police dispersed some 20 masked protesters who had holed up overnight in Al-Aqsa mosque building inside the hilltop compound. The protesters pelted tourists with objects early Sunday, and threw rocks at the police when they responded to the incident, he said.
Calm was quickly restored, he said, and about a thousand tourists have since visited the area.
However, small groups of masked Palestinians continued to clash with police elsewhere in Jerusalem’s Old City and in a nearby neighborhood just outside the walled area.
Rosenfeld said police dispersed the protesters without having to use force, but two officers were lightly wounded and seven Palestinian rioters were arrested. By midday, the clashes had ended, but about 15 Palestinians remained holed up inside the complex.
Tensions have been high in recent days following the Israeli government’s announcement that two West Bank shrines would be added to Israel’s list of national heritage sites. Palestinians denounced the move as a provocation, and President Mahmoud Abbas has warned the incident could spark a ”religious war.”
Rosenfeld said it was unclear what sparked Sunday’s violence, but said the decision on the West Bank shrines was clearly in the ”background.”
Conflicting claims to the hilltop site of Sunday’s violence lie at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Jews revere it as the site of the two biblical Temples, while Muslims regard the Al-Aqsa compound, home to the gold-capped Dome of the Rock, as Islam’s third-holiest site, where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
The compound has been a frequent flashpoint for conflicts before. A visit to the site in 2000 by Ariel Sharon, then an Israeli opposition leader and later prime minister, helped ignite deadly clashes that escalated into violence that engulfed Israel and the Palestinian territories for several years.
Israel has controlled the compound since capturing east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and insists it will retain it forever, though it has left day-to-day administration to a Muslim clerical body.
That body, the Waqf, said young men rushed to the compound after hearing a rumor that hardline religious Jews intended to storm the area.
”The police were provoking people. Maybe the youths threw shoes, but they were not hurling rocks,” said Abdul Azim Samhadana, the head of the council.
He said he was not aware of Palestinian youths harming tourists.
Palestinians see east Jerusalem, including the Old City where the sacred complex lies, as the capital of a future state.
Hamas’ minister of religious affairs, Taleb Abu Shaar, called on Palestinians to rise up violently against Israel and ”protect our Islamic holy places from the risk of Judaization.”
He called on the United Nations to impose sanctions on Israel ”because of its crimes.”
BBC Interview: “One Million Jews Help Mossad”: YouTube
A heritage covered up: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
The vilified chief scientist at the Education Ministry, Dr. Gavriel Avital, is apparently more open and enlightened than the esteemed cabinet secretary, Zvi Hauser. While Avital, who was immediately the object of widespread ridicule, simply sought alternative theories (and beliefs) in addition to evolution and global warming, Hauser, inspired by his boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sought to bequeath us a single, unitary historical narrative.
Avital was considered backward even though he wasn’t calling for Darwinism to be ignored, yet Netanyahu and Hauser in their enlightenment insist on ignoring most of history.
NIS 400 million, 150 “heritage sites,” and one big, old lie: A people without a land came to a land without a people. After more than 100 years of Zionism and over 60 years since the state was declared, Israel still needs to conceal, deny, cover-up and obfuscate to justify its existence.
There is no greater proof of its lack of self-confidence in such justification. “This is not a holiday for post-Zionism,” Hauser said when the national heritage program was approved by the cabinet, which is true. It’s a holiday for the propagandists.
Let’s leave aside riots in Bethlehem and Hebron. Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs were added to the program as a last-minute provocation due to pressure from Shas, and the disturbances will probably subside.
One must also accept the approach which says that a country and a people are allowed to immortalize their past and their heritage. But a country that covered 416 abandoned Arab villages with Jewish National Fund forests and isn’t leaving behind a monument to them – as in the words of the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko about Babi Yar – must finally bestow the entire history upon its citizens, and not just selected and misleading chapters of it.
Israel is a well-established and strong regional power, whose right to exist, contrary to its baseless arguments, is not put in doubt by many around the world, and the Netanyahu-Hauser government should have had the courage to propose a true heritage plan, presenting the whole truth.
They should not be erasing entire chapters of history and squeezing out the heritage of about a fifth of the country’s citizens, Arab citizens, whose presence here is longer and more rooted than that of most of its Jewish citizens. Prime minister David Ben-Gurion’s modest house in Kibbutz Sde Boker? Of course include it. But what about the neglected and inaccessible Arab cemetery of the village of Sheikh Munis, now part of Ramat Aviv? When Hauser speaks of “our sites,” he can’t refer just to the Jews of the country.
In the center of Moshav Zekharia in the Judean Hills, which was established on the ruins of Palestinian Zakariyya, there is an abandoned mosque. Go there some time and see the fence surrounding it. What’s written on the fence? “Caution. Dangerous structure.”
Is there a more apt metaphor than this? The true and authentic Palestinian narrative, which is no less worthy than our own, is still thought of as a dangerous structure. Why, really? If everything was so just in 1948, why hide it, and neglect it, surrounded by a fence and a warning sign? Why not restore it as part of the heritage program and tell the residents of Zekharia the truth about the land on which they are living.
Why is it considered offensive “post-Zionism” to say that there was a village there that existed from Roman and Byzantine times, where in the 16th century 259 people lived and where in 1948 its 181 houses were home to 1,180 Arab inhabitants?
One can also speak about the last days of the village, how in March of 1949, after the establishment of the state and the end of the War of Independence, when the village was still inhabited, the district representative from the Interior Ministry wrote that “there are many good homes in the village, and it will be possible to house several hundred new immigrants in them.”
One can tell about how Prime Minister Ben-Gurion met while on vacation in Tiberias with Moshe Sharett and a group of government functionaries and decided to expel the village’s residents, and how during the summer of 1950 they were permanently expelled. It’s not pleasant, but people have to know. That, too, is part of our history.
Not only this chapter is skipped, of course, in the Netanyahu heritage plan. It skips over hundreds of years of non-Jewish presence in the Land of Israel.
Is it so we won’t know? Can a propagandistic heritage change the face of history? And if the past is so problematic, maybe we will put it aside until Hauser has the courage to tell it in full.
In the meantime, maybe it would be better for Netanyahu to deal with the future. Maybe he should think about the heritage that he wishes to leave behind him. What will he leave to his descendents? More cemeteries? More wars? Or perhaps something else for a change.
Riz Khan – Murder in Dubai: Al Jazeera TV
Protest in Hebron, 25th February, 2010
This afternoon about 300 Palestinian, Israeli, and International activists met at the Hebron municipality where they made posters, distributed t-shirts and hats, and spoke with media personnel before they began the march towards Shuhada Street in Hebron. The protesters marched in the rain waving flags, linking arms, and chanting slogans in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. The protesters remained true to their commitment to nonviolence, yet they were met by a very heavy army presence which was quick to deploy harsh crowd dispersal techniques that included a heavy amount of tear gas and stunt grenades. The tear gas canisters were fired from all directions, often coming very close to hitting people. A few elderly protesters fainted and were evacuated by ambulance. Protestors scattered and ran to avoid the tear gas, but the army appeared to be surrounding the protest and shooting from all angles. The army continually tried to push the protesters further back by creating a human wall and physically pushing the protesters who, in response, formed their own wall to withstand the pressure. Three Israelis were picked out the crowd at random, taken away by the police and detained temporarily. One international activist was arrested and then released several hours later. The clashes between the military, police, protesters, and a few notorious settlers continued for about an hour and 45 minutes until a final barrage of tear gas caused everyone to retreat.
Here is a short video clip of the event.
Protest in Hebron February 25, 2010 from Open Shuhada Street on Vimeo.
Dubai killing: agents head to Israel to interview British nationals: The Guardian
Serious Organised Crime Agency to interview dual British-Israeli nationals whose passport identities were used by assassins of Hamas operative
British police will travel to Israel to interview six British nationals whose identities were used in the Dubai assassination of a senior Hamas official, as new information emerge that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was drugged before being killed.
The intervention by officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) follows the identification of a further 15 suspects wanted over Mabhouh’s murder, including another six who used British passports. A spokesman for Soca said it would also speak to the second set of passport holders, but stressed none of the 12 would be interviewed as suspects.
The move comes as forensic tests showed today that Mabhouh was drugged with a fast-acting muscle relaxant before being suffocated with a pillow, possibly in an attempt to make it look like he had died a natural death.
“The assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural as there were no signs of resistance shown by the victim,” deputy police chief Major General Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina told Gulf News.
Dubai police said succinylcholine, frequently used by doctors to administer a breathing tube or anaesthetic, was found in the Hamas leader’s bloodstream. Mazeina said the drug can “cause immediate and temporary paralysis”, adding that the forensic report confirmed Mabhouh died of suffocation “using a pillow”.
The genuine British passport holders, who are all British-Israeli nationals, will be interviewed by Soca agents in Tel Aviv.
They are being treated as witnesses to a crime, a Soca spokesman said, adding that agents would speak to the first six within the next few days. Israeli authorities have been informed, Soca said, and had “no issue” with the move.
Dubai police are “99% certain” that Mossad agents were behind the murder but Israeli officials have so far rejected the claims, without specifically denying any role. The Israeli government has kept to a policy of “ambiguity” over Mossad operations, although today the country’s trade minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said the killing shows Hamas that “none of their people are untouchable, they can all be reached”.
Ben-Eliezer, a former defence minister, also claimed the Israeli government was aware that the leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement which fights Israel and is banned as a terrorist organisation by the US, had recently taken a trip to Syria disguised in a wig.
“He understands that eyes are watching him and that is what is important,” Ben-Eliezer said.
Releasing the results of the forensic report into Mabhouh’s death, Dubai police also revealed they had added another name to the list of suspects, while Mazeina said a third Palestinian man had been arrested – whose “100% involvement in the assassination will make the total to 28”.
Mabhouh, a Hamas operative who founded the organisation’s military wing, was killed in a Dubai hotel room on 20 January.
It is thought he was trailed to the room by members of the hit squad who wore fake beards, wigs and other disguises.
‘Australia did not back Israel in UN due to passport affair’: Ynet
Canberra official tells Sydney Morning Herald Australia’s decision to abstain from UN vote on Goldstone report linked to use of forged Australian passports by Mabhouh killers. ‘Debacle helped to make up the government’s mind to abstain,’ he says, adding that UK’s decision to back resolution also influenced by Dubai hit
Amid the uproar surrounding the use of forged Australian passports by the killers of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, Australian media are giving extensive coverage to Canberra’s decision to abstain from voting in the UN on an Arab League proposal by which Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will report on progress made by both Israel and the Palestinians in independent investigations of Operation Cast Lead.
The resolution was passed by a vast majority, with 98 countries in favor, 31 abstaining, and seven opposed. It asks Ban to file his progress report in five months.
Three months ago, Australia voted against a similar resolution which sought to endorse the Goldstone report – a UN-sponsored report which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes.
On Thursday Canberra summoned Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem and warned that friendly ties were at risk if Israel was found to have sponsored or condoned the tampering of three Australian passports, linked to the al-Mabhouh assassination. A few days later Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said his center-left government had an “absolutely hard line” on defending the integrity of its passport system and took seriously allegations that suspected Mossad assassins had stolen Australian identities.
“That is why the foreign minister has called in the Israeli ambassador and asked for an explanation,” Rudd told reporters.
“Thus far we are not satisfied with that explanation,” he said.
EDITOR: Spanish Children and Irish Councilmen care
This item is of great interest – the Israeli press presented it as proof that the education sytem in Spain is anti-semitic… Of course. To ask Israel not to kill Palestinian children is obviously anti-semitic. Instead, they should have written to the ambassador to congratulate him on the murders. No doubt those reports about public reactions to Israel are not isolated, and may represent a beginning of a new reckoning, at least in Europe.
Spanish children urge Israeli envoy to ‘stop murdering Palestinians’: Ynet
Israeli Embassy in Madrid receives hundreds of letters of protest from local pupils. ‘Why does Israel murder Palestinians?’ one letter notes. Foreign Ministry protests phenomenon
The Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Director of European Affairs Naor Gilon protested via telephone to Spanish Ambassador to Israel Alvaro Iranzo the delivery of letters written by Spanish school children to Israel’s Ambassador in Madrid, Rafael Shotz.
Israel’s Embassy in Madrid has recently been receiving children’s letters expressing protest of Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians. The Foreign Ministry is concerned that the students who wrote the letters were being instigated by their teachers. One letter directed at the ambassador noted, “How many Palestinians have you murdered today?”
Another read, “Mr. Ambassador you should think about not killing the Palestinian children and elderly. I don’t know if it doesn’t bother you, having to murder people. You should leave Palestine.”
During Gilon’s conversation with the Spanish envoy the latter stressed that the Spanish education system was not responsible for the phenomenon and that no instruction to write such letters had been issued. Gilon, nevertheless, expressed Israel’s wish that the practice be halted immediately.
Since Operation Cast Lead, Europe has seen a growing number of attacks on Israel, its officials and institutions. This also includes what is referred to locally as “the new anti-Semitism,” which in essence culminates in anti-Zionist and anti-Israel attitudes.
European Jews have also faced an increasing number of attacks. Israel’s PR outlay is trying to fight the phenomenon, but with little success.
The embassy in Madrid also received letters from human rights organization Amnesty International urging Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and address such issues as the water shortage suffered by Gazans.
Irish councilmen snub Israeli ambassador: Ynet
Irish newspaper reports town councilmen voted to rip out page of town’s visitor’s book signed by Israel’s Ambassador Zion Evrony
Israel’s Ambassador to Ireland Zion Evrony is at the heart of a diplomatic spat after local councilmen voted to rip out the page of a town’s visitors’ book, which he had signed during a visit last month, the Independent reported Sunday.
According to the paper, town councilmen in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, voted on Friday to remove the page, which was signed by Evrony during a visit to the town’s civic offices.
The incident comes at a time of growing tensions between Ireland and Israel following the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai which prompted allegations that Mossad agents used fake Irish passports.
The Independent reported that Evrony was in the region on a tour of Ireland, aimed at countering misconceptions about Israel.
According to the paper, he contacted the town council hoping to meet local officials, however his visit sparked a protest attended by some 30 demonstrators and arranged by Sinn Fein.
It was reported that one of the protesters told the ambassador he wasn’t welcome and asked him to leave.
The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs said this weekend it did not approve of the conduct towards the ambassador.