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Sunday, November 20, 2005
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Israeli Arab MK backs Arafat conspiracy theories
An Israeli Arab lawmaker accused Ariel Sharon of involvement in the death of Yasser Arafat.
“I am certain that Arafat’s death was not natural. There are many links leading to Sharon’s office,” Mohammed Barakeh was quoted as saying Saturday at a memorial service for the late Palestinian leader in the Israeli Arab town of Umm el-Fahm.
While Palestinians have long suggested Israeli foul play in the demise of Arafat in a French hospital on Nov. 11, 2004, Barakeh was the first official in the Jewish state to do so publicly. There was no immediate comment from the Prime Minister’s Office.
While the cause of Arafat’s death remains a mystery, French officials have said there is no evidence of poison.
Report: Europe allows anti-Semitic TV
European nations allow the broadcasting of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages over Arab satellite television stations, a report released by a Jewish group concluded.
Arab satellite TV in Europe broadcasts “racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist, jihadist, and sexist messages, and which often call for the destruction of the State of Israel,” said the report, released Nov. 17 by the Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute of the American Jewish Committee.
Commissioned by the Transatlantic Institute, the research was conducted by Proche-Orient.info, a France-based online magazine on Israel and the Middle East.
While the broadcasting of messages such as these are protected in the United States as free speech, Roberta Bonazzi, director of the European Foundation for Democracy, said that the legal situation in Europe is different: “There are laws against hate speech, and those are being broken.”
The report urges the European Commission to set up a European agency that could monitor hate speech on non-European television stations available in Europe via satellite, and that would have the power to deal with those stations if necessary.
Rabbi appeals for Pollard
A former Israeli chief rabbi asked President Bush to grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard.
In a letter he sent Bush ahead of the 20th anniversary this week of Pollard’s arrest for spying for Israel, Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu referred to the former U.S. Navy analyst as “an honorable man with noble sentiments that should be taken into consideration.”
Eliahu offered to put Pollard up in his Jerusalem home if he wins early release. Pollard received a life prison sentence in 1986.
http://jta.org/
posted by Somebody @ 10:00 PM Permanent Link
 
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