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Saturday, September 16, 2006
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Committee blocks Lebanon funds
Staff for a senior U.S. Congressman blocked reconstruction funds for Lebanon, citing its porous border with Syria.
The funds were blocked in a letter this week from staff for Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee, to the U.S. State Department. The approximately $22 million includes money for rebuilding schools and infrastructure, as well as military training for Lebanese troops who are to man the border with Syria to prevent renewed arms smuggling to Hezbollah. The letter writers say the money won’t be released until the border is secured. JTA calls to committee staffers were not returned.
The letter comes as the Bush administration, Israel and the international community say that getting funds to Lebanon is critical to prevent Hezbollah from using Iranian money to buy the goodwill of the Shi’ite militia’s constituents, who were ravaged by the war Hezbollah started with Israel in July. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni advocated for the funds in Washington this week, as did Efraim Sneh, a legislator in Israel’s ruling coalition.
Israeli minister regrets Pollard
An Israeli Cabinet minister said that using Jonathan Pollard to spy against the United States was a mistake.
Senior Affairs Minister Rafi Eitan, who was the U.S. naval analyst’s handler in the mid-1980s, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel should have tried through legal means to obtain the information that Pollard passed along. Pollard is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina jail for espionage. “It is likely that Israel could have gotten the same information without him,” Eitan told the Post.
In response, Pollard’s wife, Esther, blamed Eitan for her husband’s imprisonment. “For 21 years, Rafi Eitan has singlehandedly deflected all responsibility for the Pollard affair away from the Israeli government and from the political and military echelon by falsely claiming” that Pollard acted alone, she told the Post. “The Americans have always known that this is a lie and continue to take their revenge for this deceit on the only target at hand, Jonathan.”
Official equates Israel, Iran, Sudan
A top U.N. human rights official advised advocates to protect individuals from states such as Sudan, Iran, Israel and the United States.
“Stop taking the position of one state against another or about groups of people — we have to take the perspective of victims and people,” Craig Mokhiber, deputy to Louise Arbour, the U.N. High commissioner for human rights, told a U.N. forum Thursday in New York on “The United Nations and the Response to Genocide,” according to people who attended. Individuals should be protected from crimes carried out by states, Mokhiber said, “whether being committed by the government of Sudan or the government of Iran or the government of Israel or the government of the United States.”
Mokhiber earlier had rejected American Jewish Committee appeals to raise Iran’s Holocaust denial at the forum, saying the commissioner “does not take sides with one government or state against another” or “one group against another.” Calls seeking comment from Arbour’s office were not returned.
http://www.jta.org/
posted by Somebody @ 9:20 AM Permanent Link
 
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