Middle East Update

Spain recently hosted its first international conference on the Holocaust, as Spanish schools prepare to introduce the Holocaust into their national history curriculum in the near future. Although Spain’s involvement in the Holocaust was limited - on the one hand, Spain refused to shelter Jews who had escaped via the Pyrenees Mountains, while on the other hand Spanish diplomats assisted in efforts in Budapest to save Jews.

Conal Urquhart
One of the kidnappers of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston, Muqtassar Khatab, was killed Wednesday September 26, when an Israeli missile hit the vehicle he was traveling in.

(VOA News)
The Iranian government is building a secret underground military nuclear facility near its existing complex at Natanz, the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran asserted at a news conference in Paris Thursday September 27. The underground facility is five kilometers from the Natanz complex and will be operational in six months.

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.”