Middle East briefs

By JTA

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Assad plays down Israeli sortie

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel’s mysterious air raid on Syria last month targeted a disused military building, Bashar Assad said.

The Syrian president made the claim Oct. 1 in a BBC interview, his first explicit comment about a Sept. 6 sortie the Israeli government refuses to discuss. Assad said the incident demonstrated Israel’s “visceral antipathy toward peace” and rejected international speculation that a secret Syrian nuclear facility, perhaps supplied by North Korea, had been destroyed. The Syrian president played down the prospect of a new war with Israel, saying he wanted new peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made similar overtures recently. But Assad was more circumspect when asked about the upcoming U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace conference, which several Arab leaders are expected to attend. “If they don’t talk about the Syrian occupied territory, no, there’s no way for Syria to go there,” he said, referring to the bedrock demand by Damascus for a return of the Golan Heights from Israel. “It should be about comprehensive peace, and Syria is part of this comprehensive peace. Without that we shouldn’t go; we wouldn’t go.”

Israel lifts veil on sortie 

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel officially acknowledged for the first time it struck targets in Syria a month ago. Military censors on Oct. 2 partially lifted a gag order on reporting about the alleged Syria air strike, and permitted Israeli media to report that the air force struck a Syrian target on Sept. 6, though further details on the operation remain barred from publication. The decision to ease Jerusalem’s official silence over the mysterious sortie followed the expiration, on Oct. 1, of a blanket censorship order issued to all reporters in Israel. Such a curb on reporting in Israel is considered unprecedented by many veteran military journalists.

Warmongering seen in Israel Syrian sortie

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Syria accused Israel of staging a strategic air raid to prepare international opinion for a future war between the countries. Deputy Syrian President Farouk Shara said Sept. 29 that an Israeli sortie over northern Syria on Sept. 6 was “psychological warfare” by the Jewish state. Jerusalem has only tersely acknowledged the sortie, but it stirred foreign speculation that a secret North Korean-supplied nuclear facility had been bombed. “They are making things up to justify an aggression in the future,” Shara told reporters. “They are playing on public opinion to mislead it.”

Clinton backs Israel attack on Syria

JERUSALEM (JTA)—U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) backed what she said was an Israeli attack on a Syrian nuclear target. “What we think we know is that with North Korean help, financial and technical and material, the Syrians apparently were putting together, and perhaps over some period of years, a nuclear facility, and the Israelis took it out,” the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination said in a debate Sept. 26. “I strongly support that.” The Bush administration, Israel and Syria have been reticent to discuss the Sept. 6 incident in detail, and Clinton was challenged during the debate over her certainty that Israel was targeting a nuclear program. “There was evidence of a North Korea freighter coming in with supplies,” she said. “There was intelligence and other kinds of verification. So I don’t think it’s a question of if they ‘feel it.’ That is a much higher standard of proof. Apparently it was meant with respect to Syria.”

Israeli minister lashes out at Israeli leftists

JERUSALEM (JTA)—An Israeli Cabinet minister blamed the political far left for the country’s problems. Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman lashed out Oct. 2 after learning that far-left group Gush Shalom had called for a boycott of musicians scheduled to appear at celebrations of the West Bank settlement movement. “Our troubles, our problems, our casualties—all are due to these people,” Lieberman, who heads the rightist Yisrael Beiteinu party and who lives in a West Bank settlement, told Army Radio. “I have nothing against the Arabs or the world. My grievance is with the Israeli left,” he said. “They are trying to break us from within at any cost, to break up every consensus.” Lieberman further referred to leftists as “Hellenists,” a term favored by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the outlawed far-right movement Kach. The comments drew fire from the left-wing opposition. Meretz Party lawmaker Yossi Beilin said Lieberman has a “twisted mind.” There were misgivings even within Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalition government. Lawmaker Danny Yatom, whose Labor Party is the biggest partner to Olmert’s Kadima, said Lieberman’s statements “suggest that he doesn’t understand democracy.”

Official: French TV staged Dura shooting

JERUSALEM (JTA)—The controversial 2000 shooting of a Palestinian boy was staged by a French TV station, an Israeli official says. Daniel Seaman, director of the Government Press Office, said in an official letter to the Israel Law Center that 12-year-old Mohammad Dura could not have been hit by Israeli fire and that the France 2 cameraman had staged the shot. The videotape of the boy dying in his father’s arms after being caught in the crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in Gaza was beamed around the world in late September 2000, shortly before the start of the second intafada. “It is impossible that the child was hit by Israeli troops,” Seaman wrote. “The wounds actually show that they were caused by shots that came from the Palestinian direction.” The Israeli army took responsibility for killing Dura, but an investigation later showed that the bullets, based on the angle of their entry, were fired from Palestinian gunmen. Seaman has refused a request by the law center to revoke France 2’s press accreditation.

‘Jewish lobby’ model for atheist

JERUSALEM (JTA)—A renowned atheist cited the “Jewish lobby” as a model for his campaign to promote atheism in the United States. Richard Dawkins said he wanted to gain the same kind of influence as the Jewish lobby, saying it “monopolizes” U.S. foreign policy. “When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told—religious Jews anyway—than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see,” Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist who advocates atheism, told the Guardian newspaper. “So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.” Dawkins, an Oxford professor who wrote the best-seller “The God Delusion,” told the Guardian that he wants to organize American atheists to counter the influence of religious groups. “I think some sort of political organization is what they need,” he said.

Fans fighting for Tel Aviv diamond

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Baseball supporters launched a campaign to stop the city of Tel Aviv from destroying its lone baseball field. The baseball field at Sportek in Hayarkon Park was renovated this year with funds donated by North American Jews for use by the new Israel Baseball League. Now that the inaugural season is over, the municipality wants to take down the outfield fence and allow the grounds to become uneven again, according to a report in The Jerusalem Post. Local baseball fans and the nonprofit Israel Association for Baseball have been using the field for years and also have asked the city to reconsider. The league had many disputes with the city during the baseball season, which as a result opened late in Tel Aviv. It will not be using the field next season.

Israel completes release of 86 prisoners

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel completed its planned release of 86 jailed Palestinians, a goodwill gesture toward Mahmoud Abbas’ administration. Twenty-nine prisoners, mostly from the Palestinian Authority president’s Fatah faction, were bused to the Gaza Strip on Oct. 2 after a 24-hour delay. The holdup, media reports revealed, was due to a short-lived protest by armed forces chief Lt. -Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who had argued that it was inappropriate to return prisoners to Gaza while Hamas continues to hold hostage and is incommunicado on an Israeli soldier, Sgt. Gilad Shalit. On Oct. 1, 56 Palestinian prisoners were returned to their homes in the West Bank. Israel had been scheduled to free 57 inmates from that territory but one was held back amid suspicions that he is aligned with Hamas. Jailed for involvement in terrorist attacks that did not cause serious casualties, the 86 men were freed early by the Olmert government in an effort to shore up Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas.

Christians march for Jerusalem 

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Christian supporters of Israel marched in Jerusalem to celebrate 40 years since the city’s unification. An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 Christians from more than 90 countries staged the annual Feast of the Tabernacles parade in the Israeli capital Oct. 2. They were joined by thousands of Israelis who flocked to Jerusalem as part of additional celebrations of the Old City’s liberation in the1967 Middle East war. The annual Tabernacles gathering sponsored by the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem is among Israel’s biggest tourist events, bringing as much as $18 million to the local economy. Israeli politicians further note its importance in fostering goodwill among the country’s non-Jewish backers abroad.