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Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Olmert does Congress
Israel’s prime minister met with incoming and outgoing congressional leaders.
Ehud Olmert made his stops in Congress Monday afternoon after meeting with President Bush.
He met with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is set to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who is set to become majority leader in the Senate, after Democrats won both houses in elections last week.
Olmert’s first words to Pelosi, who just become a grandmother for the sixth time, were “Mazal tov! I have six too!”
Olmert also met with the outgoing leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), and with the Jewish caucuses in both houses.
E.U. commissioner slams Iran
The European commissioner for external relations sharply condemned Iran.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner made the remarks Sunday in Paris to the governing board of the World Jewish Congress.
A former Austrian foreign minister, Ferrero-Waldner focused on the European Union’s role in the Middle East and said Iran left the international community “with no alternative” to sanctions regarding its nuclear program.
“The repeated statements from” Iran’s president and others questioning the Holocaust and Israel’s right to exist are totally unacceptable,” she said.
Sneh: Rules on Palestinian Americans to be modified
Israel’s deputy defense minister pledged to reform rules currently keeping Palestinian Americans from staying in the West Bank.
Ephraim Sneh met Monday with Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine, and discussed visa restrictions on Palestinians who hold American citizenship who travel to and from Palestinian areas.
The restrictions are partly a result of Israel’s refusal to communicate with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
According to the task force, Sneh told Asali that the government would announce guidelines soon dealing with the travel restrictions, “in particular allowing Palestinian Americans to renew their visas without having to leave the occupied territories.”
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged to the task force last month to bring about such a change.
The task force promotes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jewish leaders ask Chirac to use influence
Jewish officials asked France’s president to put pressure on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah to stop endangering Israeli civilians.
Leaders from the World Jewish Congress and European Jewish Congress officials met for more than an hour with Jacques Chirac in Paris on Monday.
“We asked the president to continue to use the relations he has in the Arab world to influence the Hamas and the Hezbollah to stop” targeting civilians “in their fight against Israel,” notably when launching rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and during the summer war from southern Lebanon, European Jewish Congress President Pierre Besnainou said.
The meeting with Chirac also centered on Iran, anti-Semitism in France and Europe generally, and on the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.
The delegation told Chirac that Jewish leaders have asked European officials to harmonize different countries’ legislation dealing with anti-Semitism, and to use existing French laws as an example.
French law since 1990 bans public expressions of racism, anti-Semitism or xenophobia.
Poll: Lebanese opinion of U.S. worse
The Lebanese public dislikes the United States more since Israel’s recent war with Hezbollah, a poll found.
A Gallup World Poll conducted Sept. 18 to Oct. 12 found that 64 percent of Lebanese surveyed said their opinion of the United States was worse following the summer war, during which the Israeli army damaged Lebanese infrastructure while retaliating, with U.S. backing, for Hezbollah attacks launched from Lebanon.
This year, 59 percent of Lebanese respondents had unfavorable attitudes toward the United States, while 28 percent favorable; last year, the same poll showed 42 percent with unfavorable attitudes and 39 percent favorable.
Also, 24 percent of respondents said the United States was most to blame for the war, behind only Israel, which was blamed by 40 percent.
The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted nationwide, except some southern regions, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Dershowitz criticizes Israeli bombing
Alan Dershowitz criticized Israel’s use of cluster bombs during the war with Lebanon.
The Harvard University law professor told a UCLA audience Nov. 8 that “I condemn Israel for its use of cluster bombs in the last days” of the war with Hezbollah, according to CampusJ.com.
But he was far more aggressive in attacking Israel’s regular critics, calling their focus on alleged Israeli human rights violations “obsessive” while they “ignore first-grade human rights violations” in places like China and Sudan.
The disproportionate focus on Israel means that the Jewish state “is being treated as a Jew among nations,” he said.
Report: Israel chose cheap bombs
Israel reportedly decided against using a local, safe variety of cluster-bombs during its war against Hezbollah for cost reasons.
Citing security sources, Ha’aretz reported Tuesday that Israel’s air force and artillery decided to use U.S.-made cluster munitions in the Lebanon war because these could be payed for out of U.S. defense grants, overlooking the fact that the weapons had a high “dud” rate.
Leftover cluster bombs have killed 14 people in Lebanon since hostilities ended, and wounded dozens.
According to Ha’aretz, an Israeli arms firm produces a more reliable cluster bomb, but this was not covered by the armed forces’ budgets.
Military officials had no immediate comment on the report.
http://www.jta.org
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