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In the first 5 months of 2002 there were over 700 anti-Semitic violent attacks in France (08.13.2002)


Anti-SemitismThe Jewish Ledger (www.jewishledger.com) has published an article that describes how anti-Semitic France has become.

Evelyne Sitruk always envisioned Marseille as a model of tolerance and diversity amid stodgy, stratified France, a Mediterranean port of 800,000 with a cosmopolitan mix of Italians, Armenians, some 70,000 Jews and North Africans.

Now she finds it downright hostile.

"I was strolling with my family at Pesach," she recalls, "and for the first time in my life, someone spat on me and called me a 'sale Juive' [dirty Jew]. It was like a slap in the face." [...]

Anxiety is gripping French Jews. They've seen synagogues ablaze, cemeteries vandalized and walls painted with swastikas as they face what observers have called the worst spate of antisemitism since World War II. Hate crimes rose from just one in 1998 to more than 700 in the first five months of 2002.

Observant Jews live in a state of siege. Police now patrol in front of the Jewish schools. Graffiti and swastikas appear almost nightly in Strasbourg. Rabbis exhort congregants in Marseille to cover their kipas in public.

Jewish men guard the front of synagogues during services, walkie-talkies in hand, revolvers hidden in their pocket. Parents forbid their sons to play soccer because of a vicious attack in Paris.


I lived in France for three years, and although it's a beautiful country, unfortunately it's full of Frenchmen. With 25% voting for the fascist Le Pen (extreme right), 25% voting for the communist and Trotskiste parties (extreme left), and many Islamic fundamentalists (extreme stupidity) - you have over half of France's population that are anti-Semitic and/or anti-Israeli nutcases.

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British Israel-bashing (05.06.2002)


OpinionJust found this great article on the Jerusalem Post about bluring lines between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in England.

The articles also mentions how Britain's left hates Israel and many wish for its destruction. Their position is similar to the extreme left I encountered in the U.S.: people from Berkeley, CA and supporters of Nader, who would be extremely pleased if Israel was destroyed. I also found it interesting that those who hate Israel in the U.K. also call Palestinian terrorists "militants" or "activists", the same way that NPR/QKED does in the U.S (see the email I sent to NPR).

"There is a loose, but growing, coalition of anti-American, anti-globalization, animal rights, ecologically pure activists," says one political observer, "and in the collective mindset of that coalition, Israel - and, by extension, Jews - represent a combined hate target. This is no coincidence. Those who are attracted to such a coalition are drawn from both the Left and the Right - and anti-Semitism provides them with their common denominator."

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15-year-old Israeli kid deliberately murdered by Palestinian homicide/suicide bomber (11.07.2002)


VictimsFaces of the Victims has published the story of Eliran Rosenberg, a 15-year-old Israeli kid who was deliberately murdered by a genocide bomber from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas ("Islamic Resistance").



Eliran Rosenberg, 15
Murdered by a
Palestinian terrorist


On March 28, 2001, Eliran Rosenberg, 15, was killed in a suicide bombing at a gas station east of the Israeli town of Kfar Saba.

Eliran was a 9th grade student at the "Bnei Hayil" yeshiva in Kedumim in Samaria. The school for junior high and high school boys was established three years ago to provide a framework for pupils suffering from attention deficit disorders (ADD) who have difficulty coping in a regular framework. He and some of his fellow students would wait near the gas station every morning for the bulletproof bus that took them to school.

On this fatal morning, the Palestinian homicide/suicide bomber positioned himself among the group of teenage boys in the parking lot and then blew himself up. Eliran Rosenberg was killed along with Naftali Lanzkorn. Four of their fellow students were injured.

Eliran was a computer enthusiast, and was always ready to help his classmates. His math teacher Efrat Velner related that Eliran always smiled and laughed. "He treated me as a friend and not just a teacher, he was very bright," she said.

Eliran was the oldest child of Michal and Yoram Rosenberg, who had divorced and remarried. He was close to both families who lived in Givat Shmuel, comprising seven brothers and sisters. His stepfather, Rafael Zayat, related that, on the day he was killed, Eliran was to have received a school award for excellence.

Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat was buried in Petah Tikva


To send condolences or to donate to Eliran's family, please click here.

I copy below the full story on the homicide/suicide bombing.

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Israel starts to produce smallpox vaccine (08.05.2002)


NewsThe Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) reports that Israel has begun producing the smallpox vaccine in preparation for a possible biological attack by Iraq.

Enough vaccines have been produced for Israel's entire population of about 6.6 million people but the government has yet to make a decision to begin immunizations, Health Ministry spokesman Ido Hadari said.

He would not say when production of the vaccines had begun but said the decision to start had come in light of fears of a possible biological attack by Iraq or a terrorist group. It would take Israel a few days to vaccinate the population.

"The trigger could be a few things; the U.S. strike on Iraq, whenever that is, or a terrorist attack, some sort of mega-event with a lot of casualties," Hadari said.

Iraq attacked Israel with Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf War but they were not fitted with biological or chemical weapons.


I lived in Israel in the 90's and had to wear a gas mask dozens of times during the Gulf war, when Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles against the Israeli civilian population. Palestinians fully supported Iraq during the Gulf War and cheered from their roofs as the missiles landed in Tel-Aviv.

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Daily lives and Palestinian Terrorism (05.15.2002)


NewsHa'Aretz has a good article on how some Israelis are coping with the current wave of Palestinian terrorism.

"Avoiding buses and malls, reading a book, keeping the children at home, pampering oneself with new appliances and binging on sweets - these are all ways in which Israelis are coping with the trauma of the home-front war."

The article covers how a few Israelis are reacting to the latest Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. Many choose not to go to public places, including restaurants and malls, in fear of meeting a Palestinian homicide/suicide bomber willing to blow him/herself up and kill everyone around him/her.

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Israel's fight against Palestinian terrorism is working (06.10.2002)


NewsThe Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) reports that two Palestinians who were ready to murder unarmed Israeli civilians (including kids) in homicide/suicide operations were arrested yesterday by the IDF (Israel's army).

Two would-be Palestinian suicide bombers, the head of Islamic Jihad in Ramallah, and 30 Palestinians affiliated with Hamas, Tanzim, and Islamic Jihad were arrested by soldiers and border policemen operating inside Ramallah since early yesterday morning, the IDF reported.

Yesterday afternoon security forces also discovered two cars rigged with tens of kilograms of explosives ready to be used in a terrorist attack against Israeli targets. Inside the vehicles were found Israeli identity cards and Palestinian Authority documents.


Hamas and Islamic Jihad are two Palestinian terrorist groups whose only purpose is to destroy the State of Israel and create an Islamic Palestinian State instead. The Tanzim is one of Arafat's terrorist groups.

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Palestinian terrorist murders four women and five men in homicide bombing in Tel-Aviv; dozens injured (04.17.2006)


Palestinian TerrorismA murderer from the Palestinian terrorist group named "Islamic Jihad" has killed 9 Israelis:

[...] Terror struck in southern Tel Aviv as a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd at the entrance to a fast food stand, killing nine people and wounding close to 70 others.



Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing that ripped through the Rosh Ha'ir shwarma stand on Rehov Salome in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhood of Neveh Sha'anan, not far from the old Tel Aviv central bus station. The same restaurant was hit in a similar suicide attack three months ago, injuring 20 people.



Four of the victims were women, and five were men. Seven names have been released: Philip Balahsan, 45, from Ashdod, a father of two children who were wounded as well; Victor Erez, 60, from Givatayim; the restaurant's security guard Binyamin Hafuta, 47, from Lod; Ariel Darhi from Bat Yam; Lili Yunis, 42, from Oranit; David Shmuelov, 28, from Holon; Piroshka Boda, 50, and Rosalia Basalia, 48, both Romanian citizens; [...]



Thirty-six of the victims remained hospitalized overnight at Ichilov, Sheba and Wolfson Hospitals, and at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva. The wounded included two children, a 60-year-old French tourist, and a 16-year-old American tourist who was listed in critical condition. Nine victims were listed in serious condition, 16 moderate and the rest in light condition.


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One more Palestinian mass murderer destroyed by Israel (04.17.2004)


NewsIsrael National News (www.israelnn.com) reports that one more Palestinian mass murderer has been destroyed by Israel:

As the United States continues to pursue Bin Laden in Afghanistan, Israel got its man this evening. The extreme terrorist leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who became the leader of Hamas in Gaza less than a month ago, was felled in an Israeli helicopter missile attack in his car. Two of his bodyguards were also killed in the attack. [...]

Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, said that the attack on Rantisi was not a retaliation for today's murderous attack by a Palestinian suicide terrorist, in which an Israeli policeman was killed, but "was part of Israel's long-term war against terrorism.

We see this war taking place in Spain and Kenya and Bali, and Israel is fighting this war as well." Another government source told Army Radio that this was the first opportunity to strike at Rantisi, and that Israel will continue targeting terrorist leaders who seek to kill innocent Israelis - including whomever replaces Rantisi as leader of Hamas. "People who want to see stability in our region should not ask themselves why Israel killed him now," said Gillerman, "but rather why we did not do this before."


Hamas (in Arabic "Islamic Resistance") is an organization with one goal: to destroy the State of Israel and murder all of her Jewish citizens. A few weeks ago, another Palestinian mass murderer, who originally created Hamas was also destroyed by the Israeli army. Click here for more details.

Hamas is responsible for murdering hundreds of Israeli women and children in the last few years. For a complete list of homicide bombings executed by these bastards, click here.

The war against Al-Qaeda, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Arafat's Al-Aksa Brigades and other Islamic mass murderers continues.

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Bin Laden is a hero for certain Arab-Americans (07.08.2002)


NewsThe Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org) has translated an article from the London Arabic-language daily "Al-Quds".

In this article, Muhammad Salameh, a resident of California, is proud to say his heroes are all of the Muslims currently fighting Jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan and the West Bank and Gaza. For this Arab-American, 'Bin Laden is his hero of this generation'.

Anyone who rises up against American arrogance and tyranny and causes the Americans fear and trembling are also heroes, in the eyes of some."

"Sheikh Osama bin Laden, who preferred Jihad and life in the mountains and caves to the pleasures of [this] transitory world… although he is a wealthy man, the son of wealthy men – is one of our noble heroes whom history and generations to come will recognize as restoring honor to this [Islamic] nation. No one can monopolize history or distort the truth all the time. It is my right as an Arab and a Muslim to choose my hero, as the Americans choose theirs."

"Therefore I say to them, in the loudest possible voice, that Osama bin Laden is my hero of this generation."

"Muhammad Amin Salameh, California." (1)


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Dmoz.org, Open Directory Project, has strong anti-Israel bias (10.26.2002)


OpinionDmoz.org is an open directory project owned by Netscape, and therefore by American Online (AOL). It defines itself as follows:

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.


It is basically a huge directory of websites with descriptions written by real people, who have volunteered for no charge. In theory that's great: what's better than to have real human beings going over the sites and describing what they see, instead of just getting a result from a random software algorithm?

The problem, or should I say "my problem", is that there's apparently only one guy, going by the alias of "shermain", who decides what the descriptions should be for ANY site related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This "shermain" turns out to be very pro-Palestinian and deliberately twists the descriptions of all pro-Israeli sites into something pejorative.

I was surprised to find out that "shermain" has described my site, FactsOfIsrael.com, as follows:

Commentary suggesting that any act or opinion not unqualifiedly in support of Israel reflects an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic mindset.


That's completely unfair.

I have spent months working on the FactsOfIsrael.com site, newsletter and screensaver - my whole idea was to list facts, not "commentary". Although the site by definition presents the Israeli perspective, I have also posted, in multiple occasions, articles critical of some of Israel's policies. The site's content is very far from only "suggesting that any act or opinion not unqualifiedly in support of Israel reflects an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic mindset."

"shermain" completely ignores the Maps, History, Stats, Palestine and Democracy pages. He couldn't care less about the pages on Victims, Palestinian Terrorism , Anti-Semitism, and Jewish History. The weekly newsletter or the screensaver I wrote and distribute for free don't get one line.

The worst thing is that the Google and Netscape search engines use the descriptions from Dmoz.org in their search results - thousands of potential surfers will certainly not even check FactsOfIsrael.com due to the decision of one person, "shermain", to describe the site in a negative light.

I have sent the Dmoz.org an email requesting an update to my description but I haven't heard yet from them.

This is pretty depressing and I'm thinking of shutting down FactsOfIsrael.com. I get hate messages and even death threats almost on a daily basis, and messages of support are extremely rare. Then comes along "shermain" who takes hundreds of hours of work and squashes it all into a derogatory and offensive one liner.

I feel like throwing up.

Update: After doing a search, I found that the guys at jewishinternetassociation.org have actually published a page on the Dmoz.org anti-Israel bias. It has a lot of good information: check it out here. Maybe there's some hope.

Update2: Little Green Footballs has also posted on the Dmoz.org anti-Israel bias. But the original posting is from July, leading me to think that nothing is going to change easily in the Open Hate Project.

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US will veto any anti-Israeli UN resolution that does not mention Palestinian terrorism (07.27.2002)


NewsThe Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) reports that the US will veto any one-sided UN resolution against Israel that does not mention Palestinian terrorism.

In a major policy shift, the United States told the Security Council on Friday it will only consider Mideast resolutions that explicitly condemn Palestinian terrorism and call on both sides to seek a political solution to 22 months of bloodshed, according to a U.S. official. [...]

The council was meeting in closed session to discuss a resolution circulated by the Palestinians that condemns Israel and expresses sympathy for Palestinian victims. The proposal doesn't mention Israeli victims or Palestinians attacks such as one earlier Friday in which four people were killed when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on two Israeli cars.

The United States, which acts as Israel's protector in the Security Council, has used its powerful veto against similar resolutions in the past but never laid out conditions for consideration of resolutions.

According to the official, Negroponte told council members that future Mideast resolutions must include a condemnation of terrorism and explicit condemnation of the militant groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyr's Brigade _ which is linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Any resolution to be considered by the United States also would need to call on both parties to pursue a political, as opposed to a military, solution to the conflict.


This is great news - I particualrly like the fact that Fatah and the Al-Aksa brigades were mentioned. The Al-Aksa brigades are responsible for hundreds of terrorists attacks and suicide bombings and it directly reports to Yasser Arafat. It's time for European and American leftists to wake up and admit that Arafat and his thugs organize and support their terrorist organizations.

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New FactsOfIsrael.com AvantGo Channel for Palm and Windows CE (07.19.2002)


AnnouncementI have released the FactsOfIsrael.com "AvantGo Channel" for the Palm Pilot and Windows CE. If you have a Palm Pilot or Windows CE, our AvantGo channel will contain the last 3 articles published on FactsOfIsrael.com.



Latest News on your Palm


Synch Up your Palm in the morning and read the articles in the bus! Note: you don't need a Palm modem to use this feature, and you can also sign up to get articles from CNN, the New York Times, etc... It's free!

To learn more about AvantGo, click here.
To get the FactsOfIsrael.com AvantGo Channel (32Kb max), click on the image above or here.

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Arafat wishes to create rogue Palestinian State, born out of war and which will not live in peace (11.07.2002)


OpinionEhud Ya'ari, one of my favorite Israeli political analysts, has an excellent article in the Jerusalem Report that explains why it's important not to allow Arafat and his thugs to create a rogue Palestinian State, born out of terrorism and war and which will not live in peace:

Arafat’s strategic goal is runaway statehood that is not born out of peace and will not live in peace. And in this, he has to fail.

The "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement prepared by the U.S. and the other members of the Quartet -- Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- is nothing more than a rough draft for dragging out the real bargaining time until after the offensive against Iraq. Of course, the authors treat their own detailed document with great seriousness, but at this stage, it is too full of verbal negligence and planning flaws to serve as a route to any agreement.

The Road Map calls for Palestinian security and political reform and Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian cities, followed by a "provisional" Palestinian state in part of the West Bank and Gaza and a final-status agreement by 2005-6. But it displays a dangerous disregard for the effect that continued Palestinian terror attacks, and particularly suicide bombings, will have on the process as a whole.

Today, unfortunately, it is explosives that dictate the course of events, not diplomatic declarations. By choosing to spare the Palestinian Authority from any real effort in dealing with terrorism in the early stages, the drafters of the Road Map are essentially sealing the fate of the whole plan. What happened in late October is a case in point: The moment that suicide bombers were dispatched from Jenin, the army was forced to go back in and retake the city.

There cannot possibly be a situation where Israeli withdrawals and relaxation of counterterrorism measures go hand in hand with continued attacks.


I copy the full article below - like Rudra, my friend from India, used to say: "It's good stuff." :-)

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The deliberate killing of unarmed civilians is terrorism, part 2 (06.19.2002)


OpinionI just wrote an email to Michael Moran from MSNBC.com . Mr. Moran is critical of the TerrorPetition.com campaign which is collecting 100,000 signatures to call on the media:

1) To demonstrate moral leadership and journalistic integrity.
2) To label Palestinian suicide bombers as “terrorists”.
3) To stop whitewashing heinous acts of murder.

If you haven't already done so, please click here to sign the petition - the deliberate killing of unarmed civilians is terrorism. It's as simple as that, but some journalists, like Mr. Moran, have a different agenda - please help them understand that they can't get away it.

I copy my full response to Mr. Moran below.

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Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israeli movements in San Francisco push Bay Area Jews to the right (06.16.2002)


OpinionThe New Republic (www.thenewrepublic.com) has a good article on the recent anti-semitic incidents at SFSU and also an explanation on why Jews in the Bay Area don't have a choice today but to support the Republican party.

The rash of incidents culminated on May 7 when approximately 30 Jewish students at SFSU, cleaning up after a peaceful, university-authorized, pro-Israel demonstration, were surrounded by at least twice as many pro-Palestinian students who screamed, "Hitler didn't finish the job," "F*** the Jews," and "Die, racist pigs." (At least one person was caught on videotape hurling anti-Palestinian epithets back.) University and city police formed a barrier, and the Jewish students were trapped for more than 20 minutes before police funneled them out of the plaza. "I felt very threatened," recalls Yitzhak Santis, director of Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council in San Francisco, who attended the rally and was present when the counterdemonstrators closed in. "I'm convinced that if the police had not been present there would have been violence." [...]

But at San Francisco State to say that I believe in a two-state solution and the right of Israel to exist becomes a right-wing position." Says Goldstein, "It has become politically incorrect among the left to show support for Israel, and that scares me because I really don't want to become a Republican. I really don't." In the Bay Area, he might not have a choice.


To know more about the SFSU anti-semitic incidents, check out the SFSU Blog Burst, to see the blood libel poster from Palestinians students in the Bay Area, click here.

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