Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and Photos

Hundreds of African refugees were evacuated yesterday from a bomb shelter in South Tel Aviv. In the last few months, about two hundred and fifty refugees have faced inhuman conditions. They have been staying in over- crowded, deserted structures often flooded with no drinking water or electricity. They receive no medical care and are frequently harassed by the immigration police.

Israel tried to deport some of the refugees back to Egypt but could not stop the thousands of refugees who crossed the Southern border into Israel.

Israel has so far failed to find a solution for dozens of refugees who seek political asylum in Israel. Since Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, these desperate people have no where else to go. Tel Aviv municipality officials have recently complained that government provided almost no help in finding solutions. As a result, these hundreds of refugee have been relying on the kindness of a few representatives by Tel Aviv municipality and some local volunteers.

I was very disappointed with the government’s policy on this issue. Everyone is now talking about Israel’s 60th Independence Day. But the 60 years that have passed seem to erase our collective memory. Considering Israel’s history, we have a moral responsibility to help these African refugees. The government should let the refugees work so they can provide for themselves and regain their human dignity. Israel’s ideology forces us to demonstrate more solidarity than that.

In a way, one might feel sorry for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as his weekend Arab Summit in Damascus was rampant with “no-shows”, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki of Iraq all boycotting it, to name a few. Some leaders, who did show up, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddafi seemed more interested in getting photographed, rather than making any outstanding contributions to improving things in the region.

For his part, Bashar al-Assad used the meeting to express his willingness to enter into talks with Israel, as long as Israel is willing to return to the June 4, 1967 borders, which includes the entire Golan Heights “down to the eastern shore of the Kinneret”. Assad emphasized this point that saying he is not willing to compromise “on even one square centimeter of the Golan Heights” which as far as most Israelis are concerned, puts the situation of a possible peace deal with Israel’s eastern enemy back to shit’s creek.

Despite Assad’s hard stance, it was revealed that Syrian officials are saying that a “line of communication” has been opened between Damascus and Jerusalem, and that they, the Syrians, now say that the ball is in Israel’s court in regard to actual negotiations between the two countries. The two day Summit ended with a call for Israel to accept an Arab sponsored peace initiative, most of which is completely unacceptable by Israel.

No high ranking American officials were present at the Summit. Meanwhile, Israeli government officials, meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have agreed to make life a bit easier for West Back Palestinians by proposing to remove as many as 50 roadblocks to make traveling by Palestinians within the West Bank as well as to Israel itself more easier. It has also been disclosed that Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and other Israeli officials have been meeting with Palestinian officials like Abu Allah in secret locations in and around Jerusalem; the purpose of which is to reach a peace deal by the end of this year.. These meetings, however, have not included any Hamas leaders, who are still confined to Gaza by both Israel and West Bank Palestinians.

Assad obviously has more than just national pride in mind in wanting to regain his lost territory. Like most other countries this region, Syria has a chronic water shortage that makes one of Israel’s main sources of fresh water look exceedingly attractive. The streams on the Golan, many fed by melting snow from Mt. Hermon, are one of the Kinneret’s important water suppliers. Syria would like to have the lake’s eastern shore back in it’s possession so it can simply pump water out of the lake like it did prior of June 4, 1967. With the present lake level already reaching the critical “redline,” even Israel may soon not be able have this important water supply available, let alone Syria.

So in the end, any proposed peace talks are not likely to have much chance of succeeding, unless Syria and Israel are willing to compromise.

Israel environmental activists, together with government officials are hoping to bring young Diaspora Jews closer to their Israeli counterparts. Young Diaspora Jews in North America have shown less interest in giving support to Israel, and this trend will hopefully be reversed by sponsoring environmental awareness projects that will help young people in both Israel and abroad find a common ground that will bring them closer together. And that common ground appears to be in dealing with issues that affect both groups, especially environmental ones.

Being a small country with limited natural resources, Israel presently has numerous environmental problems, including air, water, soil and noise pollution. Air pollution is presently the number one environmental problem that Israel faces, due to over all traffic congestion on the country’s roads, as well as in major cities. Following this is water pollution, where Israeli water department officials have made recent warnings that the country’s main fresh water sources, Lake Kinneret and the Coastal and mountain aquifers are so low that they are in danger of becoming irreversibly polluted.

Israeli environmental organizations, such as the Society for the Protection of Nature (SPNI) are now working on projects that can be coordinated jointly with similar organizations in the Diaspora, such as the American Environmental Protection Agency and the American Environmental Movement. One of the most serious environmental “time bombs” currently present in Israel is the Ramat Hovav hazardous waste site which is located less than 30 kilometers from the city of Beer Sheva. Young Jewish environmentalists are being invited to visit Israel and help participate in projects that are co-sponsored with Israeli environmental awareness organizations. The Ramat Hovav Industrial Waste Site is now threatening to pollute underground aquifers not only in Israel’s Negev region but in other areas as well.

For its part, SPNI has a wealth of material printed in English, French, and other languages on serious environmental issues in Israel. The organization sponsors nature trips and other outings to visitors and is promoting family memberships for the price of $55 per year. Foreign members will receive the organization’s quarterly magazine as well as being updated on environmental activities occurring during the year. The organization is also seeking volunteers form abroad to work in the country’s national parks and nature reserves as well as help clean up the country’s sea shores and other natural recreational facilities. Donations from Jews and others living abroad are being ear marked for such projects as bird watching sanctuaries in the Hula Valley and near Eilat, as well as other nature projects.

By becoming personally involved, especially as volunteers, it is hoped that many young Diaspora Jews will eventually make Aliyah to Israel.

On Saturday, an Israeli man accidentally ran over his friend’s 3 year old son, apparently in front of the father’s eyes. The child is now hospitalized in critical condition.

This weekend has taken its toll as part of this horrible routine: a 17 year old was killed in a motorcycle accident and another 22 year old was fatally wounded when he was hit by a truck. He died on his birthday. The high death toll of young people and children on the road is alarming.

The first months of 2008 mark high number of road accidents compared with previous years.

“We are all responsible, 45 fatalities a month is unacceptable”, said the transportation minister, Shaul Mofaz, during a convention last month. Mofaz urged judges to severely punish those who willfully break the law. Earlier on Saturday, a youth was seriously injured when her ATV flipped over. It seems that the father, who drove along with his daughter, is a serial traffic offender: police reports that the man has accumulated 23 traffic tickets.

I ask - are these accidents by traffic offenders inevitable? How many young people will join this horrifying statistics before someone acts? Like Bob Dylan sings, “how many deaths will it take till they know that too many people have died?” More people lose their lives on the Israeli roads during a single year than the victims who fallen prey to terror attacks over the last ten years. Traffic offenders must be taken off the roads; they are the real ticking bombs in the Israeli landscape.

I heard lots of talk about Fitna the Geert Wilders film about the Koran and its broadcasting recently on the Internet. You will notice that the movie was removed from LiveLeak with a statement saying something about threats and fear being the cause for the removal.
I tried to visit the movie website but nothing was there…

On the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s send visit to Israel so far this year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has expressed fears that Ismail Haniyeh’s radical Hamas organization could wind up taking control of the West Bank from Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, either by force or arms, or by democratic election. Barak, who was meeting with a U.S. envoy to the Middle East, said that he is afraid that all of the efforts that the Israeli government is trying to make in giving support to the Abbas led section of the Palestinian Authority will be for naught, should this happen, and Israel will then be in even greater danger, with hostile Hamas militiamen on Israel’s most vulnerable sections, ready to launch even more Qassam and Grad type rockets into Israel’s most populated areas.

With Palestinian general elections not far away, many disenchanted Palestinians may see Hamas’ victories as reason to elect them to be the political entity in the West Bank as well, as Abbas’ Fatah organization has not really done much to satisfy the people, and is about as corrupt as it was in Gaza. Hamas, on the other hand, is known for giving social assistance to its constituents, even though it has been much harsher on the lives of most Palestinians, including forcing them to live according to strict Shaari Islamic law. West Bank Palestinians, on the other hand, have much more individual social and religious freedoms, which even includes am FM radio station which plays the latest popular Western hit tunes. The West Bank is also the home of approximately 200,000 Jewish residents, many of whom live in well established towns and settlements which include large sections of northern and eastern Jerusalem. This number is a far cry from the 9,000 settlers, who were evacuated from 21 settlements in Gaza back in August, 2005.

Judging from the experience of the Gaza disengagement, which many Israelis now blame for the continuous launchings of rockets into Israeli cities and towns like Sderot and Ashkelon, it will be more difficult to stage massive evacuations of Jewish settlers from the West Bank, as doing so could result in Qassam rockets striking cities like Kfar Saba and Grad-type rockets hitting Tel Aviv. Of course, it is more difficult to smuggle large quantities of arms and explosives into the West Bank as compared to Gaza (with its numerous tunnels on the border with Egypt). This wouldn’t stop resourceful terrorists from making their own rockets, however, and fueling with ammonium nitrate fertilizer as is now being done in Gaza.

Hamas has recently been increasing it’s activities in many West cities and towns, and for this reason, Barak and other Israeli officials fear that it might not make much for a weakened Abbas led government to be defeated either at the ballot box or by a coup. These fears have been advised to American and European government officials, and will be discussed with Secretary Rice during her visit.

Picture Hat Tip: Anat Mosberg Ynet
700,000 light bulbs were turned off yesterday on a Tel Aviv night between 8 and 9 o’clock as part of the Earth Hour, a global campaign to fight energy waste. Launched last year in Sidney Australia, the Earth Hour campaign has recruited aboard many major cities across the world. The citizens of Tel Aviv showed solidarity with the green cause and demonstrated that they care about global warming. Many of the city’s main business centers turned of their lights, and residents were encouraged to do the same. Coffee houses served their customers in the dark by sparkling candlelights. Customers discovered that saving electricity can actually be quite romantic!

Until 8 o’clock in the evening no one could predict how many citizens would be participating. But according to statistics, thousands of households turned off their lights turning the campaign a success. As the cultural heart of Israel, the Tel Aviv campaigners hope that the message will inspire the rest of the country.

You may not believe the extent of impact of this seemingly small scale act. One hour of blackout saves dozens of thousands tones of emitted greenhouse gases that damage the environment. The message of this campaign is straight forward - you can and should control your electric consumption. It is our individual and collective responsibility. We cannot trust governments to take it on because they simply won’t . At least not without our encouragement, and in many cases -protest. Politicians take action following public pressures and lobbying. Public support will push the Parliament Members to address these issues and enforce environmental regulations. We can be part of a large, global scale solution just by shutting off the lights when we don’t need them.

Strange and often gruesome things happen in this world, but one of the strangest occurred in May, 2007, in the city of Galveston Texas. It appears that a young man named Joshua Mauldin put his own baby daughter into a microwave oven, and turned in own full blast for about 20 seconds. The child lived, but suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over her body and has to have several skin graphs performed as well as losing part of her left ear.

Mauldin, who claims he is insane (obviously) is now on trial for the grisly act, and his daughter, known only as “Baby Ana” is in a foster home. The mother of the child is now in seclusion in another state. So far, the jury which is hearing Mauldin’s case has not been able to reach a verdict which could result in imprisonment for Mauldin for anywhere from 5 to 99 years. A court appointed psychologist, Dr. Harry Faust, met with Mauldin several times following the incident and said that the young man is “a bit strange, but not actually insane”. Mauldin reported bit himself on the wrist and hands several times during these sessions with Dr. Faust, which resulted in the opinion that Mauldin has impulsive and destructive tendencies.

When asked by police why he did such a thing to his own child, Mauldin’s reply was that “she wouldn’t stop crying – so I shut her up!” And indeed he did. Mauldin’s Mother, Joanie, testified that in her opinion, her son does have severe psychological problems and should be considered to be criminally insane. “I would do anything to turn the clock back and keep this horrible thing from happening”, Mauldin’s mom testified in court. The baby’s foster mother, Heather Croxton, testified that she would like very much to adopt the baby and give her the love and support needed to cope with her injuries. They baby will no doubt have emotional trauma to deal with in later life, even if she fully recovers from her physical injuries.

This kind of incident is just another example of scores of abuse incidents that happen to children by parents who really shouldn’t be taking care of children. Even here in Israel, numerous child abuse cases reach the media, including a recent one involving an ultra orthodox couple who are being investigated over allegations of severe child abuse over the years to their 12 children which included whippings, electric shocks, and even incest. Babies and young children have also been literally thrown out windows and from balconies of apartment buildings by their parents, often resulting in the children’s death. Although nothing as bizarre as the “micro-waved baby incident” has happened here yet, other tragic events, too numerous to mention, have resulted in the conclusion that countries like Israel are definitely not immune to cases of child abuse. It’s a sad reality, but all so true.

Yesterday Noam Shalit, father of the kidnapped soldier Gilad, passed a harsh critique of the government’s recent actions. Shalit is pointing a blaming finger at the Prime Minister Ehud Olment for not taking instant initiatives to release his son from Hamas captivity. According to Shalit, his son is paying the price for Olmert’s hesitation.

“I ask the prime minister, who said he would personally address the issue of the kidnapped soldiers, why out of the entire chain of command that is linked to the kidnapping fiasco should Corporal Gilad Shalit be the only one to pay the price?”, said Shalit.

Olmert failed to convince Gilad’s family that he is doing everything in his power to rescue Gilad Shalit. If the public believes that the government has forsaken the kidnapped soldiers, it will hurt the public support of the government’s actions, and will also hurt the motivation of the soldiers and those who are about to be enlisted. The morale has already been seriously damaged following the consequences of the second Lebanon war.

It is safe to say that almost every Israeli soldier is ready to put his or her life at risk, but only if the soldier knows the government will do its utmost in case something terrible happens. Olmert must work harder to gain the family’s trust. Olmert has complained that he is an unpopular prime minister. But to become a popular leader he must become a leader first, and to do that Olmert has to work harder to gain the public trust. In the meantime, he is not likely to win a popularity contest just yet.

Picture: The Washington Post

In a mode that could clearly say: “I told you so”, critics of America’s involvement in Iraq are now saying that the U.S. Administration sent the troopers there for one primary reason: to shore up a reliable source of crude oil that would keep flowing into American storage facilities, and hence into American citizens gas tanks for at least another 15 to 20 years. With Iraqi petroleum reserves estimated to be at least 10% to total world supply, and if major American oil companies like Exxon-Mobil and Amoco controlling the pumping of fossilized, primeval Earth in most of Iraq, then it would be a win-win situation; the winners being Uncle Sam and Co. of course.

Unfortunately, for President George Bush (an oilman himself) and his assistant, Vice President Dick Cheney (of Halliburton Corp. fame); things didn’t work out the way they wanted them to. Now that Iraqi and (presumably) US forces are staging an operation against Shiite militiamen in the oil rich Iraqi city of Basra, this oil war doctrine seems to be more relevant than ever. Iraqi oil production has been plagued with a scores of problems in both Iraq’s southern region as well as in the northern, Kurdish controlled sector.

Maybe this explains why so many top American officials have made so many “surprise visits” to Iraq in this 2008 election year.

Ever since the invasion of March, 2003, production and exports of Iraqi crude oil have been beset by a combination of old production equipment in bad repair, as well as countless incidents of sabotage by Iraqi insurgents and foreign elements who simply do not want Iraqi oil to fall into the hands of “The Great Satan”, no matter what the price to Iraq’s own economy. As oil has been this country’s major export (and was used by Saddam Hussein to fleece his pockets during his 30 year reign) not being able to produce and export sufficient quantities has resulted in the country’s economy becoming an international basket case.

Now, more five years later and 4,000 American way dead, this precious resource seems even more distant from American and other Western automobile gas tanks. Countries like Israel, who once feared possible attacks from Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, called WMD’s for short, now fear another oil rich country, Iran, whose leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has often called for Israel to be “wiped off the face of the map”. Despite the fact that the U.N. Headquarters is still located in New York City, American governmental officials, and especially New York City officials should have been more prudent than to let this man come twice to address the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, as well as speak before such a pristine academic institution as Columbia University. For it is Iran’s sponsored militiamen who are now fighting Americans in southern Iraq, as well as providing training and arms to Hamas militiaman in Gaza and to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Oil is now fetching more than $100 a barrel, and the U.S. Dollar is even weaker than currencies like the Israeli Shekel. It appears that the time has come for some serious stock-taking in regards to just why American forces went into Iraq in the first place, instead of simply letting Saddam Hussein and his cronies remain there as a possible buffer against the real world enemy – Iran.