Middle East Update

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates asked Congress yesterday, September 26, to approve an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the Bush administration’s 2008 war funding request to nearly $190 billion — the largest single-year total for the wars so far.

Nathan Burstein (Jerusalem Post)
Israel is on track to welcome more tourists in 2007 than in any year since the start of the second intifada in 2000. The country should greet a total of 2.3 million tourists by the end of the year, according to the Tourism Ministry. 2000 was the busiest year in the history of Israeli tourism, when the country had 2.41 million foreign visitors.

By Ezra HaLevi
IDF soldiers have arrested the last of the Palestinian Authority (PA) terrorists responsible for the brutal lynching of two IDF reservists in Ramallah seven years ago. Soldiers apprehended 36-year-old Tanzim terrorist Hayman Zaben in Shechem early Wednesday September 26. Zaben was one of those responsible for bludgeoning to death IDF reservists Vadim Nurzitz and Yossi Avrahami in a PA police station in Ramallah in October, 2000

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A U.S. State Department-funded University of California program which provides business training for residents of the Middle East specifically excluded Israeli Jews - until Jewish journalists protested. The University of California has now altered the program’s eligibility requirement that initially barred Israeli Jews.

by Gil Ronen
United States President George W. Bush urged the United Nations to reform its Human Rights Council Tuesday September 25, criticizing the body for ignoring abuses in places like Iran

“while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel. The American people are disappointed by the failures of the Human Rights Council,” Bush said. “The United Nations must reform its own Human Rights Council.”

by Ezra HaLevi and Hillel Fendel
Gaza-based terrorists fired four Kassam rockets and some 25 mortar shells at Israeli towns in the western Negev Wednesday morning September 26. A military committee set up by Defense Minister Ehud Barak recommends, among other things, that Israel reduce the electricity it supplies to Gaza by seven megawatt-hours following every Kassam rocket attack. The recommendation follows the Cabinet decision of last week defining Hamas-run Gaza as a “hostile entity.”

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
On Monday September 24, Israel’s Foreign Minister declared Israel’s support for the creation of an Arab State in Judea , Samaria and Gaza. She said that pouring money into the PA will not be sufficient. Livni furthermore declared that Israeli support for the transformation of the Palestinian Authority into an additional Arab state is a policy that

“will not change even in difficult periods of violence and terror.”

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
As 600 listened inside a hall at New York’s Columbia University on Monday September 24, , thousands lined streets around the school to hear a simulcast of a speech by Iranian ruler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After a scathing address by the Uni President, Lee Bollinger, Armadinejad said

‘We are friends with the Jewish people” He then called for a referendum ‘to determine the fate of Israel’.

Nahal Toosi
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to speak and answer questions at the US Columbia University forum Monday October 1, followed by an address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. (AP)

by Ezra HaLevi
A Fatah terrorist found with several bombs Sunday had been granted amnesty by the Olmert government after promising to refrain from returning to terrorist activity. Fares Natzer Hassin Abu Na’eem, 21, was apprehended in the village of Khalil, south of Shechem, after shooting at IDF forces operating in the area.

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