A top Brazilian rabbi charged with shoplifting says he plans to seek God's forgiveness when he meets next month with the pope

April 14, 2006

JTA

Sobel seeks forgiveness in pope's presence

A top Brazilian rabbi charged with shoplifting says he plans to seek God's forgiveness when he meets next month with the pope.

Rabbi Henry Sobel, who has led the Sao Paolo Jewish congregation, told the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper that he still plans on joining other Brazilian religious leaders next month in a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Brazil, a predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

"I am not Catholic, so I cannot ask for the pope's forgiveness," Sobel said in remarks translated by the Associated Press in a story Friday. "But I will ask the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Israel to forgive me. Perhaps in the pope's presence I could feel his humility and have some of it enter my soul."

Sobel faces shoplifting charges in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was arrested in March. He is well regarded in Brazil for his activism against the dictatorship in that country in the 1960s and for promoting inter-religious harmony.

Giuliani tied to pedophilia

March 12, 2007

Rudy Giuliani - What gets covered regarding morals?

by Sara,

This is about a story that for some crack-pot reason is not getting written up by the national media, even though if you do just a mite of googleing, you'll discover that the Right Wing has long had the story, but gotten no traction on it. To read all the bloody details, what you do is google the two names, Alan Placa and Rudy Giuliani, and you can read about it for hours, should you have a taste for Priestly Pedophilia and the investigations of recent years thereof. I'll sketch an outline of the story here.

Placa and Giuliani became friends when they were 13-14, when they began High School, and remained close friends through College. Post college Placa went to the Seminary, and Giuliani off to Law School. After he was ordained, Placa went off to Law School too. Eventually he became a Monsignor in the Diocese of Rockville Center, Long Island NY, and as we know Giuliani went to DC to Reagan's DOJ. When Giuliani needed an Annulment of his first marriage, Placa did the job.

But Monsignor Placa got into considerable trouble in the late 1990's and early 2000 era, when he not only was accused of abuse of two minors, who could not sue him or the diocese because the five year statute of limitations was long past, but when the whole huge story broke, first in Boston, and then across the country, Monsignor Placa comes up in several parts of it. While serving on Long Island, he had developed a legal strategy for dealing with abuse complaints that involved having an "intervention team" that met with family members and the abused, without revealing that Placa was indeed the Diocese Lawyer on such matters. Placa took great pride that in cases that if litigated might cost the Diocese Millions, he could frequently manipulate the situation, and get out for a few thousand. Of course the Monsignor was flying a false flag -- he was not a spiritual counsel, he was the Bishop's Lawyer. He traveled the country teaching Bishops the technique -- apparently 200 cases where he was successful outside his own diocese.

Well into the 1980's, the preferred method of dealing with Priestly Pedophilia was to send the guy off for "therapy." There were several institutions available, St. Lukes in Maryland still exists and is professional, but there was another, the House of Affirmation run by a Father Thomas A. Kane, which was a huge fraud. Kane lied about his degrees in Psychology, but that was only found out later. In the meantime he acquired lots of high grade real estate, and when he was about to go under, he transferred title to Placa. (Estate in Mass, Estate in Florida among other assets.). The transfers were not discovered till years later. (When evaluated under court order the Houses of Affirmation were judged to have no treatment program that passed a professional review.)

In 2002 when this whole story was all over the papers and all, Suffolk County on Long Island ordered up a Grand Jury to review the whole situation with Rockville Center Diocese, and while they could not charge Placa because of Statute of Limitations matters, they issued a report about his "intervention team" that manipulated victims and their families, and his own unanswered accusations of abuse of two teens, (they didn't know about the House of Affirmation Property deals), and as a result, Monsignor Placa was suspended from the Priesthood, and essentially defrocked. Apparently his case has been sent to Rome where it rests. He was allowed to say one public Mass -- at the funeral of Rudy's Mother. (Which is why her funeral was picketed by victims.)

So after 2002 Rudy is no longer Mayor -- and he establishes a Consulting Firm in his name, supposedly dealing with private-public partnerships and all that, and who does he partner up with? Well Former Monsignor Alan Placa, his best buddy from High School and College. When the Long Island Grand Jury was trying to serve him with a Subpoena, Rudy hid him till the term was out. Then, Placa developed a speciality within Guiliani and Associates of taking private Not for Profit Hospitals owned by orders of Nuns who no longer had the membership to administer or staff them -- from which the Corporate Health Community was willing to pay nice commissions to the Guiliani Consultants.

Now every bit of this has been reported over the years in Newsday, the NYTimes, and to some extent in books by Jason Berry. You can find all the articles archived at the Bishopsaccountability Web site. You can find the report of the Grand Jury there. In fact the Times front paged it when Rudy hired Placa for his firm. And you can find the efforts of the Right Wing Bloggers to make an issue of this -- but they have never gotten any traction. By the way, one little part of it involved a real shouting match between Donoghue of the Catholic Civil Rights outfit, (Anti-Edwards) and Jimmy Breslin -- and I really recommend their essays as informative reading. Breslin wanted to know why a Catholic Civil Rights outfit should not be about advocacy against sexual abuse of minors, and he got a fight and not an answer.

So what I want to know is why did Rudy hire this guy? Is this his version of Affirmative Action? We know he recommended Kerik to George W. Bush for Homeland Security -- is this his taste in Health and Human Services? (God Help Us.)

I invite everyone to google all the documents and get your own take on the matter. But I have problems. Why, given the press that Placa's problems have already had, including Rudy's hiring of Placa, has this not been presented front face to the Religious Right of the Republican Party now discussing nominations -- with the question, do you really believe Christian Conservatives think this taste in appointees or hiring decisions is what they want?

I guess our problem is we have no little blue dress.

March 12, 2007 at 19:21 | Permalink

The Gestapo and Wehrmacht of our time

03/12/07

Khalid Amayreh

"German Catholic Bishop visiting Israel and the Occupied Territories on 5 March compared Israel’s oppression
of Palestinians with Nazi oppression of Jews at Ghetto Warsaw." (Warsaw ghetto left, and Ramallah ghetto)

© By Khalid Amayreh, for thepeoplesvoice.org

“I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.” Harry Truman

[More:]

When a conscientious German Catholic Bishop visiting Israel and the Occupied Territories on 5 March compared Israel’s oppression of Palestinians with Nazi oppression of Jews at Ghetto Warsaw, Israeli apologists got furious.

Gregor Maria Franz Hanke of Eichstatt couldn’t suppress his rectitude and human decency when he was brought face to face with the affronting ugliness of the “separation wall” which has already morphed Palestinian population centers into modern-day concentration camps.

Upon seeing the misshapen creature, which is as ugly and as deformed as the Nazi-like mentality that gave birth to it, the German bishop said the following:

"This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto."

Unfortunately, we don’t have many religious leaders, let alone politicians, who are willing to call the spade a spade, especially when it happens to be in Jewish hands.

But this man said it as it is , preferring to be at ease with his conscience at the expense of standing accused and vilified by the holocaust cult.

There are many reasons and motives for western flaccidity toward Israel and Zionism. Some westerners believe that the holocaust, which was perpetrated by Europeans, should justify anything and everything Israel does to the Palestinians, including crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Many other westerners, especially North Americans, are simply scandalously ignorant of the Nazi-like nature of the Israeli state. Others know the facts very well, but are too cowardly and dishonest to speak up for fear of Zionist intimidation and retaliation. Others are simply malicious and believe that Israel, by virtue of being powerful militarily, has the right to pursue Nazi-like policies in order to serve its goals and interests. This is the same folk who would have embraced the Third Reich soul and heart because power is their God and “realism” is their religion.

I believe that people like the honorable bishop and all other free-minded voices that speak up in defense of truth, that don’t flinch from calling the spade a spade and refuse to cringe or cower in the face of evil, are the salt of mother earth and the crème de le crème of humanity. It these sporadic candles of light that keeps our world from plunging into moral nihilism.

Hence, we must salute them for their courage and morality and never allow ourselves to betray them or let them down. We must seek to emulate them in their courage and honesty and moral defiance in the face of evil, because in the final analysis life itself is a moral stand and is too short to be squandered and exhausted in the zigzags of political correctness. The
Quran states:

“By the passage of time, man is indeed in a state of loss, except for those who believe, and do good deeds, and counsel each other to truth and counsel each other to patience.”

Of course, the bishop of Eichstatt is not inventing anything. He simply saw this diabolical, gigantic structure meandering around Palestinian population centers all over the West Bank, from Jenin in the north to Dahiriya in the south, cutting of neighbor from neighbor, and creating ghettos congested with poverty, misery, hunger and oppression.

In fact, had the bishop gone a little deeper and a little further, the overwhelming ugliness of Israel’s shame would have shocked him even further. I am saying this because Israel has not stopped at merely converting Palestinian towns and villages into virtual detention camps, but went many steps further by making sure that the tormented souls in these ghettos are constantly and relentlessly hounded and surrounded.

Indeed, not a day passes these days without the Israeli occupation army and the Gestapo-like Mishmar Gvul (Border Police) carrying out several raids into Palestinian towns and villages. During these criminals rape-like forays, innocent people are killed, injured and arrested, and their property is destroyed.

This writer witnessed an incursion at the village of al-Kum, 20 kilometers west of Hebron on Saturday, 10 March.

Around 2: a.m., numerous Israeli troops and paramilitary policemen stormed the small village (pop. 3000), placed it under curfew amid loud explosions of stun grenades meant to terrorize the people. Then the forces spread all over the village, vandalizing property and smashing glass and turning furniture upside down. After that, the mostly undisciplined soldiers used an elderly man, in his early 70s, as a human shield. Then they raided the local mosque, arrested three young men in their early mid 20s and left seven hours later.

Around the same time, a Palestinian driver who reportedly transferred Palestinian laborers into East Jerusalem was beaten to death by the grandchildren of the Holocaust. According to eyewitnesses, Israeli Border Policemen ganged up on the man, identified as 32-year-old Wael Yousef Karawi, beat him on the head with the butts of their rifles, causing him a massive brain hemorrhage. The man collapsed and died on the spot. Then a few hours later a mendacious statement coming out of the Israeli mill of lie claimed that the man died of “natural causes.”

A day earlier, another poor Palestinian worker was killed in Gaza as he sought to enter Israel to find work. Israel has been starving Palestinians en mass by preventing them from accessing work and food. This manifestly criminal policy is carried out by barring Palestinians from fishing off the Gaza shore “for security reasons.” Today, as I write this piece, an Israeli naval patrol opened fire on two fishermen, injuring them both. More to the point, Gazans are not allowed to travel abroad for work or even medical treatment, because the so-called “border terminal” between Gaza and Egypt (Gaza’s only exit to the outside world) is kept closed by Israel nearly all the time for no reason other than tormenting an already thoroughly tormented people.

Non the less, Israel still has the audacity to tell the world that it has ended its occupation of Gaza. You see God’s lying people.

Two weeks ago, the Israeli occupation army murdered two people in Nablus, including a young boy who hurled a stone toward (not on or at but toward) an Israeli Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) rampaging through the streets of the city. The other man was shot dead as he stood at his rooftop to fix a TV antenna. Responding to charges of cold-blooded murder, an Israeli army spokesperson said rather tersely that the “incident is being investigated.”

Of course, this is a lie, nothing is being investigated, and even if there was an investigation, it would blame the victims and declare the killers ‘innocent of any wrong doing” because they acted in accordance with outstanding army instructions.!!!! Well, even the Gestapo and SS were also acting in accordance with outstanding army instructions.

In the meantime, the Israeli state keeps swelling its dungeons and detention camps with young Palestinians. The declared reason is “security,” but the real reason is to keep as many Palestinians as possible behind bars in order to use them as bargaining chips in any prospective negotiations with the inherently weak Palestinian Authority.

According to both Israeli and Palestinian sources, the Israeli army rounds up an average of 15-20 Palestinians per days. Now the number of Palestinian detainees and internees in Israeli jails and detention camps stands at 10,000-11,000.

On Friday, 9 March, an Israeli military court sentenced Hebron MP Hatem Qafisha, to six months of “administrative detention,” without charge or trial. The six months are renewable depending on the mood of the Shin Beth officer in charge of the Hebron region. There are Palestinian detainees who have been languishing in Israeli dungeons for 80 or even 90 months without charge or trial. Usually, the mantra of security is always ready to be evoked in defense of the Nazi-like justice system.

In fact, Qafisha has already spent 93 months in Israeli jails first for “harboring extremist views” and second for “competing in legislative elections under the banner of a terrorist organization,” a clear allusion to Hamas.

Well, didn’t Israel and the United States consent to the participation of Hamas in the elections which took place in 2006? If so, why arrest these people, including democratically-elected lawmakers, cabinet ministers, and even the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Aziz Dweik, and dumping them in detention camps for lengthy terms? If they have committed any crime, let them be tried before a genuine court of law, not before the court of the occupation for which a Palestinian is guilty even if proven innocent…just as the Nazi courts viewed Jews as guilty even proven innocent.

Are the Zionists the Nazis of our time? Are the Israeli army and police the Wehrmacht and Gestapo of our time? This is a question for Jews to answer. Maybe they will come to the realization that this sick and sickening state is corroding their humanity. Just maybe. (end)

-###-

March 12, 2007 © Copyright March 12, 2007 by Khalid Amayreh - amayreh@p-ol.com This article originates on http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org - Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit, © By Khalid Amayreh, for thepeoplesvoice.org, is attached and the title and text remain unchanged.

Irish bishops: Israel has turned Gaza Strip into a 'large prison'

Last update - 19:47 27/02/2007

By The Associated Press

A group of Irish Roman Catholic bishops on Tuesday called into question Ireland's commercial ties with Israel, saying Israel has made the Gaza Strip "little more than a large prison" for Palestinians.

"Where there is evidence of systematic abuse of human rights on a large scale, as in the Occupied Territories, there are questions that must be asked concerning the appropriateness of maintaining close business, cultural and commercial links with Israel," said auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Raymond Field.

There is a long history of support for Palestinians in Ireland, particularly among nationalist parties such as Sinn Fein, which equate their own fight to end British rule in Ireland with the desire by Palestinians for their own state.

Field, chairman of the Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs (ICJSA), which advises Ireland's top Catholic clerics on social issues, described travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as an "injustice."

"We are calling for an end to restrictions on family reunification, and an end to humiliating treatment of people at checkpoints," Field said in an ICJSA statement ahead of a meeting with Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern.

Field said restrictions, which Israel says protect it against Palestinian attacks, also make it difficult for Christians to worship at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

"In effect, the communities of Bethlehem and East Jerusalem are forced to live divided by a 25 foot wall," said Field.

"We also intend to raise with Minister Ahern the intolerable situation that is the daily lot of the Palestinians who live in Gaza," Field said.

The ICJSA's statement also questioned the way in which the European Union handled its dealings with Israel.

"While we welcome cooperation between the EU and its neighbouring countries, nevertheless such cooperation should not be at the expense of a large segment of the indigenous population - in this case the Palestinians."

Zionists Systematically Destroy Cultural Traditions

Saturday, December 23, 2006

The Israeli-built wall is “a sign of all that is wrong in the human heart.” Archbishop of Canterbury


left: Pilgrims in Bethlehem over ninety years ago prior to the Zionist genocide on Palestinian culture (Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora).

What's particularly smarmy about Zionists is that they kill, maim, dispossess, and then lie about it. Ignorant journalists even let them explain Palestinians, for example in the Chicago Tribune Daniel Rossing, former director of the department for Christian communities in the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs is quoted for his 'knowledge' about Palestinian Christians:

"They are viewed by [Israeli] Jews as part of the vast Arab world, and viewed by their Muslim neighbors as suspect because of their Western connections," Rossing said.

I'm not sure why an Israeli government official, a government which is systematically destroying Palestinian cultural traditions that have existed for millenia, is the last word on Palestinian Christians.

Christians in Palestine are living links to the earliest Christians. No longer are Christians from Bethlehem able to pilgrimage on Palm Sunday to Jerusalem. Jerusalem and Bethlehem, one diocese, has been severed by the Wall. Seventy-two out of eighty shops on the Jerusalem-Bethlehem Road have closed.

The economic strangulation as a result of the Apartheid Wall has seen the flight of many Christian families from Bethlehem.

But Zionist equivocators, like the odious American Zionist Justus Weiner, who actually published a hideous book asserting that Edward Said wasn't a Palestinian, are offered up as experts on Palestinian Muslim-Christian relations while Har Homa, the illegal Jews only settlement on Bethlehem land, is setting up a tourist village to accommodate visitors to Bethlehem, so that the Zionists can cash in on the tourist trade. Zionists are also set to annex the land on which Bethlehem's aquifer sits.

Regarding a Church Times newsletter which stated "local Christians are adversely affected by living as a minority within a Muslim society," Palestinian Bishop Riad Abu El Assal in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury recently wrote:

"To us, the gentle coexistence of Christians and Muslims is a source of strength; indeed, we regard ourselves as a beacon to the wider Middle East and, through it, the rest of the world. The crisis facing Christians here is entirely due to the Israeli occupation, which, in recent years, has seen entire communities imprisoned behind the Israeli-built wall."

Yet, in today's Church Times (UK subscription only), a Reverend Tim White, obviously more concerned with promoting a very racist, land grabbing, water hoarding genocidal Zionism, rather than defending the few "original stones" left in Palestine disputes Bishop Riad:

"The Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt Revd Riah Abu El-Assal is in a state of denial when he attributes to Israel sole and exclusive responsibility."

While the Palestinians deal with a very physical wall cutting them off from their farmlands, cutting them off from basic services, cutting them off from their families, we in the west must continue to battle the wall of ignorance.

According to a recent survey, only fifteen percent of Americans even know that Bethlehem is a Palestinian city. No wonder, then, that a headline in the December 21 European Stars and Stripes (full electronic print version) read "Ramstein group traces footsteps of Jesus in Israel."

In the same issue a full page is devoted to "the meaning and traditions of Hanukkah, on which Protestant Women of the Chapel and also Military Council of Catholic Women in Naples, Italy, were enlightened by the Jewish Chaplain.

"'I love the Jews, for they are God's chosen people,' said Army Sgt. Maj. Rozenia Carter, a member of the group. 'I'm here because I heard the rabbi was speaking and I wanted to understand more about their culture. What a belssing it was to light one of the menorahs...It was truly awesome.'"

I am sure that Sgt. Maj. Carter, of the Protestant women, has no clue about the plight of her fellow Christians in Palestine or about the five hundred mixed Christian and Muslim villages that were destroyed in 1947-48. I have an idea that Sgt. Maj. Carter, of the Protestant women, may be one of the eighty-five percent of Americans who doesn't even know that Bethlehem today is a mixed Muslim and Christian town, with a sixty percent unemployment rate.

She probably doesn't know that some of her poor fellow Christians in Bethlehem whose houses were subsidized by the Greek Orthodox Church are facing demolition orders.

She also probably doesn't know that Hanukkah is a very minor holiday, and it probably hasn't occurred to her why it's so highly publicized and feted in the US.

She probably doesn't know that Sis Levin, wife of former CNN correspondent Jeremy Levin, who was also a hostage in Beirut, organized a Palm Sunday procession for the Christian Children of Bethlehem from Bethlehm to Jerusalem, but they were turned away at gunpoint by God's chosen people.

Most likely, the Sgt. Major doesn't know any of this because she grew up in a country that's so Zionised that if we say "Merry Christmas," it's akin to an expletive.

So right now I just don't feel very merry. I was in Bethlehem in the early seventies. I still vividly recall the Israeli sniper on top of the Church of the Nativity I could see from my friend's house.

We Palestinian-Americans have no one to blame but ourselves for the appalling lack of ignorance about Palestine in our society. It is very hard to make inroads in a society that's so Zionised that only fifteen percent of Americans know that Bethlehem is a Palestinian town.

The alternative, however, is to sit back and watch the completion of the destruction of Palestine's cultural traditions. Let ignorant Catholic, Protestant, and maybe not so ignorant Jews light a menorah and delude themselves that this is real multi-culturalism rather than just another exercise in heralding Israel. Palestine was once multi-cultural; it is now Jews preferred and privileged in every way.

In this holy season, let us increase our efforts to de-Zionize the country that our fathers and mothers adopted.

Much of the information here comes from Open Bethlehem. Much more is available at Open Bethlehem. The powerpoint presentations on the site are very informative regarding the effects of Israel's systematic attempt to grab the land and force the indigenous residents out.

# posted by umkahlil @ 12:15 AM

Anglican Leader Denounces Iraq War

Saturday December 23, 2006 12:46 PM

By THOMAS WAGNER

Associated Press Writer

LONDON (AP) - The Iraq war has endangered the lives of Christians across the Middle East, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in a commentary published Saturday that criticized the U.S.-led coalition.

The failure to develop a strategy to prevent Christians from being seen as ``supporters of the crusading West'' worsened the difficult situation they already faced in the Middle East, Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, wrote in a commentary in The London Times.

The British government rejected that assessment, instead blaming extremists in countries such as Iraq who indiscriminately attack moderate Muslims and Christians in an effort to impose their way of life on everyone.

``We disagree with his views. We don't think that it is our policies in Iraq that cause suffering of Christians,'' the Foreign Office said in a statement.

Williams, on a four-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land before Christmas with other British church leaders, said another source of the problem was the Israeli-built wall around the traditional site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem.

After six years of Israel-Palestinian fighting, the town is now walled in by Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Poverty is deepening and Christians are leaving in droves. Israel says the wall is meant to stop Palestinian suicide bombers, but Palestinians see it as land grab.

``There are some disturbing signs of Muslim anti-Christian feeling, despite the consistent traditions of coexistence,'' Williams wrote of Bethlehem. ``But their plight is made still more intolerable by the tragic conditions created by the 'security fence' that almost chokes the shrinking town.''

The first Christian believers, Williams wrote, were Middle Easterners, and ``it's a sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region.''

The troubles Christians face and their resulting migration to other countries fuels the myth in the East and West that ``Islam can't live with other faiths and that the East-West collision is an irreconcilable clash of faith and cultures,'' Williams wrote.

The Anglican leader said it was imperative to directly confront the problem that Christians face in the Middle East and to reach out to moderate Muslims.

``We need to confront it, not by weighing in with firepower, but by making real relationships with the communities there and working at trustful contacts with those Muslims who understand their own history and want to live in a lively, varied culture.''

Williams was scheduled to return to Britain on Saturday.

Heavy fighting continues between Hamas and U.S. backed Fatah faction

U.S. military officers are running the heavily armed Fatah faction death squads. Most of Fatah is sitting this one out. Hamas is protecting the Palestinians as best they can from these attacks. Israel backs the U.S. and Abbas.
---

Heavy fighting continues between Hamas and Fatah
Updated Fri. Dec. 22 2006 6:29 AM ET

Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Ferocious gunbattles broke out between Hamas and Fatah militants in the Gaza Strip and West Bank early Friday, underscoring the fragility of a new truce between the rival factions. A Hamas militiaman injured in violence that touched off the Gaza City shootout died of his wounds.

In other tension between the two factions, the office of President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah blocked five major Hamas appointments to senior government positions earlier this week. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas accused Abbas of trying to subvert the government's authority by refusing to authorize the appointments.

Abbas' power struggle with Hamas turned violent earlier this month after he declared that efforts to form a more moderate coalition government with the militantly anti-Israel Islamic group had broken down.

The street battle early Friday in Gaza City, which encompassed Abbas' residence and the home of Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas, broke out as Hamas militiamen tried to free two fighters kidnapped Thursday.

In the charged atmosphere pervading Gaza, the firefight quickly spread out of control. Within minutes, it encompassed the presidential guard outside Abbas' house, other security officers in the area and the Hamas militiamen guarding Zahar's home and the nearby Foreign Ministry building.

Gunmen manning strategic rooftop positions began shooting at other armed men in the streets.

The presidential guard took up defensive positions behind newly built walls of sandbags and cement block barriers outside the residence of Abbas, who was not in Gaza at the time.

Hamas officials said Fatah gunmen shot at Zahar's home.

One witness estimated that more than 2,000 bullets were fired in the first 10 minutes of the shootout, and several rocket-propelled grenades were also launched. Despite the scale and intensity of the fighting, no one was wounded, health officials said.

Residents of the neighbourhood, the scene of other gunbattles over the past week, said they put their children in bathtubs for protection against stray bullets. Others tucked themselves in corners for safety.

The violence died down after about 20 minutes as Muslim clerics and other mediators worked to restore calm.

A Hamas militiaman injured in the course of the kidnapping Thursday, Ayman Jirjawi, died of his wounds early Friday, said Islam Shahwan, a militia spokesman.

Hamas accused a Fatah-linked clan of carrying out the abduction to avenge the deaths of two clan members in factional fighting in Gaza last week. The fighting left 16 people dead and dozens injured before the truce took effect Tuesday night.

The internal violence has been mostly confined to Gaza, but fighting spilled over to the West Bank town of Nablus Friday morning. Witnesses and medics said about a dozen gunmen from Hamas and Fatah clashed near a soccer stadium where Hamas men were preparing for a rally. Palestinian medics said a bystander was wounded in the crossfire.

Terrified residents huddled in their homes.

Tiham Tufah, who lives near the stadium, said she hid with her husband and two daughters in their living room. "We feel caught in the middle of a big war, and we are really afraid,'' Tufah said. "We can't leave the house or look out the window. We live in fear.''

The factional fighting _ the violent mirror of Abbas' power struggle with Hamas _ also played out on the bureaucratic level Friday. In a letter to the office of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, Abbas chief of staff Rafiq Husseini said five proposed Hamas appointments were illegal, in some cases because the positions were not actually vacant or did not exist.

The letter said other proposed appointments would be blocked on the same ground.

In a related development, a top Abbas aide, Azzam al-Ahmed, reiterated the Palestinian president's offer on Thursday to resume coalition talks with Hamas, but said it would only be good for a week or two.

Abbas had hoped a more moderate coalition between Hamas and his Fatah would allow the West to resume desperately needed aid, cut off to pressure the Hamas government to recognize Israel and renounce violence.

The Palestinian infighting coincided with stepped-up Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, destabilizing a shaky ceasefire between militant factions and Israel.

One rocket was fired early Friday, in addition to six launched on Thursday. The attacks Thursday caused no injuries to Israelis, but wounded three Palestinian children when a rocket veered off course, hospital officials and a relative said.

Israeli officials say Palestinian militants have fired nearly 50 rockets since the Nov. 26 truce took effect. Israel has not retaliated, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned this week that his patience was wearing thin.

Supporters Call for the Recall of South African Ambassador From Tel Aviv and Sanctions Against Israel

Monday, December 18, 2006

Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa) and Supporters Call for the Recall of South African Ambassador From Tel Aviv and Sanctions Against Israel

At a press conference held today in South Africa the Palestine Solidarity Committee, COSATU (the Congress of South African Trade Unions representing 1.2 million workers) and the South African Council of Churches called on the South African government to recall the ambassador to Israel and to implement sanctions against Israel.

Speakers at the conference included Willie Madisha (president of COSATU) Eddie Makue (general secretary of the South African Council of Churches), Ali Halimeh (Palestinian Ambassador to South Africa), Virginia Tilley (academic and author), Na’eem Jeenah (chair), Salim Vally (Palestine Solidarity Committee and Patrick Craven (spokesperson for COSATU).

They released the following joint statement:

We, delegates of organisations and movements that represent and have the support of the majority of South Africans, oppose and condemn the Israeli atrocities in Palestine and we make the following call:

• We call on the South African government to immediately recall the South African ambassador from Tel Aviv and to begin the process of ending diplomatic relations with Israel.
• We call on all South Africans to establish a strong, forceful and determined boycott and sanctions campaign against the Israeli apartheid state until the end of the occupation.
• We call on South Africans to identify a national day of action in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to observe it with rolling mass action around the country.
• We call on the South African government to ensure that no South African serves – in any capacity – in the Israeli Occupation Forces and that any South African citizen doing so will be prosecuted under the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act.
• We demand that Israel immediately withdraws all Israeli Occupation Forces from Gaza and ends the occupation of Palestinian lands.
• We demand that Israel abides by the provisions of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and refrains from imposing collective punishment on Palestinian civilians (as per the UN Human Rights Council declaration issued on 6 July 2006).
• Call on Israel to release all detained Palestinian ministers and legislators and to release all political prisoners – including hundreds of women and children.
• We call on the EU to stop the severe sanctions imposed by Europe on the Palestinian Authority as a penalty for exercising their democratic right and electing a government of their choice. This by itself is a brutal intervention on behalf of the occupation.
• We call on the United Nations to implement the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on Israel’s Apartheid wall.
• We call on the United Nations to ensure that Israel fulfils its obligations in terms of international law.
  

Settling to hide the truth

Roger Mahony spent millions and kept details of clergy sex abuse secret, but what was the real cost of the deal?

By Jeffrey Anderson, JEFFREY ANDERSON is a staff writer at the L.A. Weekly.
December 5, 2006

THE $60-MILLION settlement announced last week between 45 molestation victims and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is a brutal reminder that moral crisis cannot be cured through legal compromise.

In those cases, and the hundreds more yet to be settled, victims want the truth to come out about abusive priests; they also want the perpetrators and those who harbored them, including Cardinal Roger Mahony and his hierarchy, to face consequences.

Mahony, for his part, wants to put the whole mess behind him and shield from public view any documents that could provide the truth — while also preserving the finances of his archdiocese.

But here's what is wrong with the mediation approach both sides agreed to: It leads to compromise but not reconciliation. No one can move beyond the past if they don't know what truly happened. No one can prevent relapse without fully understanding what, or who, led to the problem. Now Mahony and his flock of 4.3 million risk the return of a cancer that has stricken the church and eroded its leaders' moral authority.

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Four years ago, the Boston archdiocese set the standard for a cathartic end to scandal. Clergy abuse victims and their lawyers went into court and forced the archdiocese to turn over documents that showed in vivid detail the complicity of Cardinal Bernard Law and his hierarchy in shielding pedophile priests and transferring them to other parishes, where they molested again. The revelations were stunning and led to Law's resignation.

Mahony and his fellow church officials took note and took steps to ensure that no such revelations would occur here. Victims' lawyers in Los Angeles played right into the cardinal's hand by lobbying for a change in the law that allowed hundreds of older claims to be heard. The number of cases was so great that the courts devised a consolidated plan that forced the entire scandal into private mediation for more than two years. With this settlement, these 45 cases will never see a courtroom, where the discovery process might have cracked open Mahony's files.

Plaintiffs' continuing demands that these files be released was the major stumbling block for years. This settlement sets that issue to one side and lets a retired judge decide what the church can keep secret. Victims' lawyers even bargained away their right to appeal. Most likely, this judge will rule the same way another did in a case against the Diocese of Orange last year, unsealing only files about priests who were dead or who had no objections.

No documents, no truth, no closure — for anyone.

Church lawyers argued — and probably still believe — that what happened in Boston was no panacea. Parishes closed; enrollment in the priesthood dropped. The new cardinal faces controversy all the time. But no one in Boston is still speculating about who knew what when, as Catholic Angelenos will be for years to come.

Is this justice? For those who carried their scarred youths into court, seeking an end to years of anguish? Or for loyal Catholics who still wonder whether their parishes or schools will close?

Mahony dug in his heels like the chief executive of an oil company accused of a massive spill. The only difference is that shareholders in a private corporation have the option of dumping stock if its value sinks. The dividend that members of an organized religion seek is not so easy to give up on.

Like a clever executive who is looking at either retirement (to a cushy post at the Vatican) or a stubborn march to infamy as the tarnished but enduring prelate, Mahony wanted it this way. For $60 million, he has just disposed of all the outstanding claims post-1986 — when the archdiocese became self-insured — and pre-1954, when it wasn't insured at all. Conveniently, that takes care of the cases of abuse that happened on Mahony's 20-year watch. He still faces a choice of battling with insurance companies to pay off remaining pre-1986 claims or kissing off another half a billion or so of the church's money. But there's little doubt that the roughly 500 remaining claims will be tidied up in the coming years.

It's hard to see what evil lies in men, and what weakness brings them down, when the truth remains locked away. Church documents remain the Holy Grail that victims and their lawyers said they were looking for but will probably never see. Even if they do, the risk of consequences for Mahony and his hierarchy might have passed.

Someday, perhaps soon, the rest of the victims of clergy sex abuse and their lawyers will be left shaking their heads, glad the legal battle is over. Then the cardinal can finally rest as the man who kept his kingdom afloat but sacrificed the morality it was supposed to have been built on.

Rabbis forbid using schoolbooks with map of pre-1967 lines

Last update - 19:41 05/12/2006

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

An organization of right-wing rabbis on Tuesday issued a Halakhic decree forbidding students from using schoolbooks featuring maps of Israel which include the pre-1967 Green Line border, Israel Radio reported.

The decree came in response to Education Minister Yuli Tamir's decision on Tuesday to add the pre-1967 borders to all new editions of textbooks.

Tamir defended the decision as the only way to teach students the basis of the region's politics, but her order came under fire from a number of right-wing groups.

Chairman of the National Union-National Religious Party Zevulun Orlev criticized Tamir's decision, saying she was imposing her "Peace Now" ideology on the ministry.

Tamir said Israel could not demand of its Arab neighbors to mark the June 4, 1967 borders, while the Israeli education system erased them from its textbooks and from children's awareness.

MK Ronit Tirosh (Kadima), formerly the Director-General of the Education Ministry, also criticized Tamir, saying that she does not possess the authority to issue such an order.

"The education minister in not permitted to interfere with the content of textbooks, and should also have consulted the other members of the Knesset before making such changes," Tirosh said Tuesday.

Professor Yoram Bar-Gal, head of Geography and Environmental Studies at Haifa University, said Tamir's directive to bring the Green Line back to the maps would be hard to follow. He said that most of the textbooks are issued by private publishers who would not be keen on changing the plates at their expense.

Two years ago Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a lecturer in language and education at Hebrew University, published research on six study books that had been published after the Oslo agreement. Some of these books were officially endorsed by the Education Ministry. Many teachers adopted other books even without the ministry's approval.

Her main findings included the disappearance of the Green Line and Arab cities in Israel from the maps in these books, and their presentation of sites and settlements in "Judea and Samaria," rather than in the "West Bank," as an integral part of Israel.

Md. Rabbi Gets 6 Years in Prison

Friday December 1, 2006 8:46 PM

By MATTHEW BARAKAT

Associated Press Writer

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A Maryland rabbi ensnared in a nationally televised sex sting was sentenced to 6 years in prison Friday for attempting to have sex with someone posing as a 13-year-old boy.

David A. Kaye, 56, of Rockville, Md., was convicted in September on federal charges of enticement and traveling across state lines to engage in illegal sexual conduct.

Most of the evidence came from a sting on ``Dateline NBC'' that was conducted in conjunction with an Internet watchdog group called Perverted Justice.

A Perverted Justice member posing as a 13-year-old boy met Kaye in an online chat room in 2005, and Kaye solicited sex acts. When Kaye drove to what he thought was the boy's home in Virginia, he was instead confronted by a TV reporter and camera crew and admitted he was there for ``not something good.''

At his sentencing, prosecutors said Kaye's crime was not an isolated incident, and submitted affidavits from others who claimed Kaye engaged in improper conduct, including one incident at a youth camp as far back as 1974.Kaye denied any improper conduct in those instances.

He said that he now believes his actions last August were ``a cry out for help.''

Kaye was a rabbi at a congregation in Potomac, Md., for 16 years and at the time of the sting was vice president of a Jewish youth organization called PANIM: the Institute for Jewish Leaders and Values.

Perverted Justice says its stings have resulted in more than 100 convictions nationwide since 2004. The group has a partnership with NBC to produce additional shows, titled ``To Catch a Predator.''

Critics claim Perverted Justice's methods border on vigilantism. Last month in Texas, a man about to be arrested after being caught in a Perverted Justice sting shot and killed himself when police came to arrest him.

New in Gaza: Priest, nun human shields

Priest, nun from Michigan join dozens of Palestinians gathered at Gaza houses in effort to prevent bombing, say ‘If Israel claims family member involved in violence, arrest them, don’t’ destroy home populated by entire family’

Ali Waked


For the past two months, the IDF has been called activists and their family members in Gaza to warn them of their intent on bombing their homes.

Palestinians have found away to prevent the bombings; dozens, even hundreds, gather at the homes of those wanted, thereby thwarting the destruction. In recent days, Father Peter and Sister Mary Ellen of Michigan have joined them.

At the end of last week, the IDF informed the Brudi family in Jabalya of their intent to bomb and demolish their home in protest of their son’s activities with the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC).

Since then, hundreds of neighbors and activists of all organizations congregated at the house in an effort to prevent the demolition. The same idea was adopted at the home of a prominent Hamas activist in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh even held a press conference there.

These homes have become pilgrimage sites in recent days not only for locals. Foreign peace activists have started to show interests in the phenomenon, and two Americans, a priest and a nun from Michigan, arrived at Jabalya from Michigan to take part in the human shield mission at the Brudi family home.

Sister Mary Ellen told Ynet, “We are here to find out the truth and to be with the family and these people, who are trying to prevent the demolition of a home where an entire family lives.”




The Sister continued, “We are against any type of violence, whether from the Palestinian side or the Israeli side, by we are here to be with a family that may have their house bombed and demolished because of the claim that one or two members are involved in violence.”

She explained, “We are against any type of collective punishment and feel this punishment is wrong, a complete mistake. If the Israelis claim a family member is involved in violence, then they can arrest them, but not destroy a home populated by an entire family.”

She also explained that she was well aware of the Qassam rockets fired from the northern Gaza Strip towards Sderot, and said, “I adamantly oppose and condemn the firings like I condemn all violence.”

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