TRAIL OF TERROR Islamic takeover of U.S. already under way,Expert warns mainstream media providing talking points of Arab countries October 03, 2008
8:31 pm Eastern 2008 WorldNetDaily
AUDIO OF STORY
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An expert on terrorism is warning the United States should be fighting Islamization, which she believes already is under way. And author Brigitte Gabriel should know: She watched it happen in her native Lebanon.Lebanon used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East, Gabriel told radio talk show host Andrea Shea King in a recent hour-long interview Most people today do not know that. We were the majority, the Muslims were the minority, but as the years went by, the Muslims became the majority because of their birth rate, but also because of our open-border policy.We welcomed everyone into our country, Gabriel said, and people didn't realize that the minority, the Muslims in the society, was not tolerant and did not believe all people were equal.They tried to impose their way of thinking on us, and they succeeded, she said.An excerpt of her interview can be heard here: The result, Gabriel said, was that a radical terrorist organization tied to Islam, Hezbollah, now rules in Lebanon.As WND reported, Gabriel is fearful that terrorists believe now is the time to strike at America, while it is distracted by financial tension and election turmoil. She expressed the concerns during an interview with KSFO's Barbara Simpson, when she also discussed her new book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It.Gabriel's new interview with King is available on BlogTalkRadio.
She noted it's been seven years since the Sept. 11, 2001, act of war on U.S. soil by Islamists, but America is falling to Islam's attack, and the battle already is far advanced.They do not need to fire a single bullet to destroy us, she said. They are taking over our country culturally, just like they have taken over Europe.She said Islam is being taught across the U.S. as part of world history courses for seventh graders.A three-week course is teaching students to memorize and recite Islamic prayers and verses from the Quran, she said. Students have to adopt Islamic names, fast for a day to experience Ramadan, the holiest of Islamic religious holidays, and write about their experience as a Muslim at the end of the program. The exercises during the class include encouraging students to incorporate Arabic phrases such as Allahu Akbar in their speeches, and for students to imagine they were meeting disciples on a pilgrimage to Mecca. This is a state-approved curriculum, using state-adopted textbooks that have been part of the instructional program in California for over a decade.WND reported this week that a new study shows U.S. textbooks provide information such as that Jesus was a Palestinian and the nation of Israel imposes terrorism on others but is not a victim a terrorism.Now it is being rolled out nationwide. One book I discuss in particular is Across the Centuries, published by Houghton Mifflin. The Muslim Council on Education has been busy working with the State Department of Education and America's top three publishers who …are literally rewriting history, Gabriel said.Across the Centuries' is a staple in the State of California. This textbook is at best, a well of misinformation. It is 558 pages long and covers the 1500 years from the fall of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution. The text includes 55 pages devoted to Islam, seven pages noting the Middle Ages in Europe, and six pages of Christian history. The chapter on the Byzantine Empire received only six pages. The chapter on Islam accounts for 10 percent of the text, while Christianity and Judaism are almost entirely absent, she said.This is public education approved by the State Board of Education nationwide! Our students are being indoctrinated into Islam in our public schools and we don't even have a clue! How can this be allowed to be taught in public schools in America? Most people do not know about it because it is flying under the radar! she said.
At the university level it's worse, she said.
What's been happening for the last 16 years, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states ... because of the money coming from the oil, they have been pumping millions of dollars into our universities appointing Arab professors who are anti-American, anti-Israel, who have been basically brain-washing our students into believe we are the problem, she said.The children, who have been educated in American universities for the last 16 years, have graduated and are now working ... not influenced ... by our patriotic education as Americans, but they have been influenced by Arab thinking ... [and] hatred based on revenge, she said. The writing is on the wall. Who would have thought that Shariah would come to Harvard University with regulated women-only gym hours? That an imam in Des Moines, Iowa, gave an opening prayer at the 2007 Iowa Legislature's opening session in which he called on Allah to give victory over those who disbelieve? Muslim taxi drivers in Minnesota who refuse to pick up passengers carrying alcohol? The first Islamic public school, the Kahlil Gibran Academy, that opened in 2007, funded by tax dollars! American colleges designating Islamic prayer rooms on campus for use by Muslims only! Gabriel said.Those of us who come from the Middle East and see what's happening in the U.S. ... shake our heads in amazement, she said, calling her book a warning. We are coming up to a very important election. This is the time we need to understand what is at stake, why our voice counts, why we need togo out and vote. This is the time to make a difference before it is too late, she said. She said that's why besides her book, she's launched the ActForAmerica.org website.We launched this out of American Congress for Truth as our activism and political lobbying arm because I realized talking by itself is only wasting hot air and is entertainment. Action is the only way that's going to make a difference, she said. History reveals that the apathetic give way to the passionate, the complacent are subdued by the committed. ACT for America.org is mobilizing people all over the country and giving them the tools to resist the Islamic infiltration in our society on every level: schools, governments, universities and corporations.Our work is vital in educating the American public about what is happening behind the scenes, she said.
I encourage people to go to our website Act for America.org. I know we have citizen action training seminars coming up in Kansas City and in Indianapolis within the next two weeks. Sign up and attend them if you are in those areas. And check where we have chapters across the country and either join a chapter, or if there's no chapter in your community, sign up to lead one. Organized power at the grass roots level trumps the voices of political correctness, Gabriel said.The radical Islamists promised to destroy us, and as you know from the recent war in Lebanon, that country is now nearly Islamic, she said.We are not waiting for this phenomenon to occur here in the war against Islamofascism. We are not simply hoping for spontaneous grassroots eruptions that may or may not come. We are making it occur by organizing grassroots chapters and supporters across America. We will force elected representatives to choose. To align themselves with the grassroots voices of America or the voice of political correctness.Gabriel was born and raised in Lebanon. When she was 10, her home was bombed by radical Islamists. She spent two and a half months in a hospital with injuries, and then she survived with her parents for seven years hidden in an underground bomb shelter, subsisting without electricity or heat on a meager diet of rice, lentils and tufts of grass that grew outside the shelter. She crawled beneath sniper fire for sips of water from a nearby ditch.Those who have lived through such experiences are horrified at Americans' attitudes, she said.I have two guests staying with me, also from Lebanon, who ran to Israel for their lives when Israel withdrew out of Lebanon. And this is their first trip to America. I took them to New York and to Washington, D.C., last week and we were walking around and they were stunned at the gullibility of Americans. I took them to an air show this past week and they saw Muslims in our military. They looked at me in utter shock and said, Do Americans know these same Muslims would turn their guns against their fellow Americans, military men and women in the same tents, and kill them in the name of Islam? What is America thinking? Gabriel said.We are not only fighting a military jihad, we are fighting a cultural jihad and we need to wake up. We are as much at war with the cultural jihad as we are with the military jihad, Gabriel said.
Islam is coming to America while we are asleep at the wheel and only focusing on al-Qaida attacking us militarily. The Muslims are taking us over culturally and remember, they don't even have to fire one bullet, she said.Gabriel's book, according to American Jihad author Steve Emerson, is riveting, compelling and spellbinding. This is a must read for the entire American public.A compelling and captivating personal story with a powerful lesson about threats to freedom in our time, said R. James Woolsey, director of Central Intelligence from 1993-1995.There is a threat. We must do something about it. We must stop them, Gabriel said.Earlier, in an interview with WND columnist Larry Elder published in two parts, Because they hate, and Because they hate, part 2, Gabriel said al-Qaida already is inside the U.S., as is Hezbollah.We estimate thousands have already been smuggled into America. ... Hamas is here. ... They have cells in over 40 states. ... We also need to reform our immigration and visa programs. We need to monitor who is coming into our country and why. ... We need to increase human intelligence. … I want everyone who fits the terrorist profile to be profiled. We have men between the ages of 16 and 40 who have committed terrorist acts around the world in the name of Islam. They are not little old ladies from Ohio with blue hair. They are not children going to Disney World on their Easter vacation, she said.Elder asked: What happens if a Democrat wins the 2008 election? We are doomed. Our enemies want the Democrats to win. This last election, jihadist websites were playing victory songs and declaring the Democrats are our allies in the war against America, she said.
French FM says Mideast peace deal unlikely in 2008 by Christophe de Roquefeuil OCT 4,08
JENIN, West Bank (AFP) - A Middle East peace deal is unlikely by the end of the year, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Saturday, while urging Israelis and Palestinians to continue US-backed talks. We were supposed to get the document, not a final result but something, before the end of the year. But now we all know it will take a little bit longer, Kouchner told reporters in the West Bank town of Jenin.I don't know if we will see the Palestinian state before the end of the year, but I know this is absolutely a key and necessary -- we will get the Palestinian state.Kouchner made the remarks after meeting Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad at the start of a two-day visit to Israel and the occupied territories.
Fayyad praised France, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, for its support of US-backed peace talks relaunched last November, calling Kouchner a friend of the Palestinian people.Negotiations have made little progress since they were formally relaunched to great fanfare after a seven-year hiatus, with the two sides remaining deeply divided on the thorniest issues of the decades-old conflict.On Sunday Kouchner will meet outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is seeking to form a new coalition government following her election last month to head the ruling Kadima party.Kouchner will again call on Israel to reduce restrictions on movement in the Palestinian territories, which is stifling the local economy, a senior French diplomat said.The minister also intends to stress to his Israeli hosts the importance of freezing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the official added.Paris wants the trip to be a moment of consultation and dialogue allowing pressure to be kept up on both sides, a senior French official said.Kouchner joined Fayyad on a visit to Jenin, once a hotbed of militant violence and now the focus of a widening security crackdown in the West Bank that has been praised by Israel and the United States.He was to meet with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and senior Palestinian diplomats later in the West Bank political capital of Ramallah.The visit follows a meeting in New York last week of the Mideast Quartet (Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union) in which the group urged Israel and the Palestinians to seal a peace deal this year.
In a statement released in September 21 aid agencies said the quartet was losing its grip on the peace process by not doing enough to rein in the growth of Jewish settlements and improve freedom of movement in the West Bank.Negotiators have expressed hope that if a deal is not reached the next US president will continue to encourage the talks.The current (US) administration only became involved during the last year of George W Bush's second term. This is regrettable. We hope the new administration will involve itself straight away, a member of Kouchner's entourage said.The minister also hopes to check on the results of the Paris conference on aid to the Palestinians held in December, at which more than 7.7 billion dollars in aid was pledged over the coming seven years.Since then 1.4 billion dollars in direct budgetary support has been paid to the Palestinian Authority, according to French government figures.
Olmert's concession call went too far: Kadima lawmaker Sat Oct 4, 5:02 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - A senior lawmaker from the ruling Kadima party denounced outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's call for major concessions to the Palestinians, saying he went too far. Mr Olmert's remarks on the necessity of a territorial retreat from almost all the Palestinian territories go far beyond our positions of principle and are aligned with those of the extreme left, Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs and defence committee, said on public radio.He does not believe Olmert, in the time remaining to him, can reach an agreement with the Palestininians which would be binding on his successor.The party has never held a proper debate on the red lines not to cross in terms of territorial concessions but I think that they would be a long way from what Mr Olmert proposed, Hanegbi said.
Olmert told Yediot Aharonot daily in an interview published on Monday that Israel must give up almost the entire occupied West Bank including east Jerusalem as the price for peace with the Palestinians.He submitted his resignation on September 21 following graft allegations that caused police to recommend criminal charges. He will remain interim premier until a new government is formed.Hanegbi spoke on the day French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner began a two-day visit to the region with the aim of reviving the peace process ahead of the year-end deadline for an agreement.
Israeli general warns Hezbollah of harsh response By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 3, 3:27 PM ET
JERUSALEM - Israel will use disproportionate force if Hezbollah guerrillas attack Israel, a senior military commander said in published comments Friday, adding that any village used to fire missiles against the Jewish state will be destroyed. Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who commands forces along Israel's northern border, issued a similar threat against Syria.Eizenkot spoke to the Yediot Ahronot daily more than two years after Israel fought an inconclusive 33-day war against Hezbollah. That war, in which Hezbollah lobbed some 4,000 rockets and missiles into Israel, was widely seen as a failure, and Eizenkot has been busy rehabilitating the army's readiness since taking up his post in the aftermath of the fighting.Eizenkot said Israel would show no mercy on Lebanese villages that harbor Hezbollah fighters. Israel has repeatedly complained that Hezbollah fighters used residential areas for cover, limiting Israel's ability to respond.Eizenkot stressed that this is not a recommendation, but a plan approved by the highest levels. If fire is carried out from Shiite villages in Lebanon, this is the operational plan: Very aggressive fire.
He said Israel would use what he called the Dahiya doctrine, a reference to the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hezbollah's headquarters are located. During the 2006 war, Israel destroyed dozens of buildings in Dahiya, including the offices of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.What happened in the Dahiya quarter in Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired upon. We will apply disproportionate force upon it and cause great damage and destruction there, he said. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.In the interview, Eizenkot warned Syria against launching missiles into Israel. Everything I said about Hezbollah, regarding punishment and severe harm, is all the more true for a country that has assets. He also indicated Syria could be punished for Hezbollah's actions.Syria is a key backer of Hezbollah. Despite the recent resumption of indirect peace talks with Syria, Israel believes the Damascus regime continues to help rearm Hezbollah.There was no immediate response from Hezbollah or Syria. But Nasrallah has warned in recent weeks that Hezbollah's response to a future Israeli incursion will be more fierce than what took place in 2006.The 2006 war broke out when Hezbollah fighters burst across Israel's northern border, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. More than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 159 Israelis died in the fighting. The war ended with a U.N.-brokered truce, and in July, the bodies of the two abducted soldiers — believed to have died during or shortly after their capture — were returned to Israel in a swap with Hezbollah.The cease-fire has largely held, but Israel believes Hezbollah has replenished its arms supplies with Iranian and Syrian help.Eizenkot said dozens of rockets are concealed in homes in Shiite villages throughout southern Lebanon. He said Hezbollah has sent fighters to Iran for training, and Iranian military trainers have been spotted in Lebanon.You can see today the walls behind which the rockets are concealed, ready for launching. At the moment of truth, the walls will be knocked down — and the rockets fired.While Hezbollah has beefed up its capabilities, Eizenkot stressed that Israel has also greatly improved its training, readiness and intelligence since the war.I have great force relative to what existed then. I have no excuse for not achieving the objectives that will be assigned to me, he said.
IRAN WANTS NOTHING TO DO WITH ISRAEL IN A TRADE BLOC OR GROUPING, ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS ISRAEL YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO AND DO IT QUICK BEFORE IRAN DOES.
Tehran rejects Bahrain FM's call to bring Israel in from cold Fri Oct 3, 12:58 PM ET
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran rejected the Bahrain foreign minister's call for a new regional grouping which would include Israel as well as Arab states, Iran and Turkey, the official IRNA news agency reported on Friday. With all due respect that I have for my dear brother Sheikh Khaled (bin Ahmad al-Khalifa) the foreign minister of Bahrain, I believe that this suggestion cannot be executed, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told an IRNA reporter in New York.Our Bahraini friends know where the real problem lies and why this (idea) cannot be implemented, he added before leaving New York, where he attended the UN general assembly.Mottaki dubbed Tehran's regional arch foe as an illegal regime with many claims, (which) still thinks of expansion and continuing occupation.This regime is neither legitimate nor trustworthy, he added.Iran does not recognise the Jewish state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has attracted international condemnation by repeatedly predicting Israel is doomed to disappear and by branding the Holocaust a myth.The Bahraini chief diplomat unveiled his proposal for the creation of a regional bloc in an interview with pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat published on Wednesday.Israel, Iran, Turkey and Arab states should sit together in one organisation, he was quoted as saying.The tiny Gulf kingdom is a major ally of the United States and has a free trade agreement with Washington. It also hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.His comments were also not received so well back home, where lawmakers and opposition activists in Bahrain slammed them.Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa met Israeli officials during World Economic Forum summits in 2000 and 2003, while Sheikh Khaled met Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni at the United Nations last year.However, political groupings in Bahrain, which is ruled by a Sunni dynasty and has a Shiite majority, oppose any normalisation of ties with Israel.
Why Syria Will Keep Provoking Israel By ROBERT BAER
Fri Oct 3, 11:20 AM ET
Oddly enough, Saturday's car bombing in Damascus will serve Iran's interests. Tehran thrives on chaos, which presents it an opportunity to come to the aid of friendly regimes and causes in the Middle East that need backing. More than likely, Iranian leaders were on the phone with counterparts in Damascus all Saturday, telling the Syrians not to lose heart. The Iranian message to Damascus is simple: If Israel and the United States see any weakness in the Assad regime, they will drive a truck through it and bring it down. And, if history is anything to go by, that's a message Damascus will listen to. What we tend to ignore is why Syria has had an uninterrupted record of attaching itself to radical causes and countries like Iran. For starters, Syria is ruled by a besieged and insecure minority, the Alawites, a heterodox-Shi'ite ethnic minority. About 12% of Syria's population, the Alawites are looked at by extremist Sunni Muslims as heretics, fallen-away Muslims, usurpers who should be put to the sword. In the late 70s and early 80s, the Sunni extremists came close to getting their way. During a February 1982 Muslim Brotherhood insurrection in Hama, Syria's third largest city, Hafez al-Assad felt compelled to flatten it in order to stay in power.
But it wasn't until the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that Syria finally beat the Muslim Brothers. By joining Iran in the so-called Islamic resistance against Israel, Assad associated the Alawites with a cause larger than themselves. It was not unlike the 60s and 70s when Syria backed radical Palestinian groups - and fought Israel head-on in 1967 and 1973. The 18-year war in Lebanon (1982-2000) decisively undercut the Muslim Brothers' charge that the Alawites were apostate traitors and dupes of Israel and the United States. Had the Muslim Brothers continued to kill Alawites, they would have been considered the traitors. There's nothing like a good war to stabilize an unstable regime. Given a choice, the Alawites would be happy to skirt the 21st century, satisfied with ruling a Third World backwater. But geography won't allow it. Syria is at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in which Syria has no choice but take sides. Since the Alawites cannot settle with Tel Aviv and survive the wrath of the Muslim Brothers, it remains reliant on its alliance with Tehran. And this is not to mention that with the division between Shi'ites and Sunnis widening, the Alawites will feel they need Iran and its message of belligerence to Israel more than ever. So if, for instance, Iran suggests that Syria respond to Saturday's bombing by shipping more weapons to Hizballah, Syria will be inclined to agree. Having been embraced as honorary Shi'ites by Tehran, a regime whose survival depends on its maintaining some sort of Islamic credentials, in the face of accusations of heresy and apostasy, needs its relationship with Tehran, and to be seen to be shoring up fellow Shi'ites. To Americans, it may appear reckless for the Syrians to provoke Israel by beefing up Hizballah - especially with Israel now constrained in how it can respond to Iran's nuclear program. (The U.S. has made clear to the Israelis that getting into a war with Iran is the proverbial bridge too far, and that Washington therefore won't support or enable an Israeli military strike on the Islamic Republic.) But, again, Americans don't understand the Alawites' dark insecurity - and the fact that they will risk war with Israel if they believe their survival requires it. Time.com
Israel to install radar antennae near nuclear site Fri Oct 3, 6:20 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel will install two massive radar antennae near the Dimona nuclear plant to bolster its defence measures against Iran, the Maariv newspaper reported on Friday. The 400 metre-high (1,300 feet) antennae will be erected in the Negev desert near a top-secret military site where Israel is widely believed to have developed the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, the paper said.An Israeli army spokesman said a new installation was being constructed but would not give further details, saying only that it was a military facility serving current military activities.Maariv said work on the twin masts, which would be the largest in the region, would begin in two weeks and would be completed in three months, but did not provide details on what the system would be used for.The newspaper said the antennae were part of a massive new radar system that the United States will deploy in Israel, a project announced by the Pentagon earlier this week.The deployment comes amid heightened fears regarding Iran's nuclear enrichment programme, which the United States and Israel say is aimed at developing weapons that could threaten the Jewish state's existence.Iran insists its programme is entirely peaceful.Israel has long considered Iran its main strategic threat, both because of its nuclear programme and because of repeated statements by Iranian leaders predicting the demise of the Jewish state.
The Pentagon was scheduled to deploy the radar to Israel in the autumn of 2009 for a joint exercise but moved it up a year following high-level talks in Washington.The United States deployed a similar radar to Japan in 2006 in response to a North Korean missile test.Also known as X-Band, the AN/TPY2 radar is designed to track ballistic missiles through space and provide ground-based missiles with the targeting data needed to intercept them.Data from the system will be provided to Israel's missile defence system, but the radar will remain owned and operated by the US military.
Stunning Words from Israel's Lame-Duck Leader By Larry Derfner
Thu Oct 2, 5:36 PM ET
JERUSALEM--Lame-duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert raised a lot of eyebrows by saying that in return for peace, Israel will have to give up virtually all the land it conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.Apparently, there is a certain liberation that comes from having a political career in tatters over allegations of having pocketed envelopes of cash and other corrupt actions.What I'm telling you now has never been said by an Israeli leader before me, Olmert told journalists from Yediot Aharonot, the country's largest newspaper, in a lengthy pre-Rosh Hashana interview.
Technically, he's right; no previous Israeli premier ever publicly stated his willingness to sign peace treaties that gave the Palestinians almost all...if not all of the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, as well as the entire Golan Heights to Syria.Yet, dramatic as his remarks sounded, there's probably less to them than meets the eye.For one thing, Olmert can't make good on his bold words because he has resigned (because of the corruption investigations against him), and will soon be replaced in a government reshuffle or elections.For another thing, it's not exactly a revelation to say that the price of peace for Israel is all or virtually all of the conquered territories. Israel first offered the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace in a 1994 message to the United States, and offered nearly all of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem to the Palestinians in closed-door negotiations in 2001. Furthermore, the peace talks that the Olmert government is now conducting with the Palestinian Authority and Syria are tacitly understood to require a full-scale Israeli withdrawal if they are to succeed.What's more, Olmert made it clear that peace doesn't require only Israel to step up; the Palestinians and Syrians have to step up as well, and they are even farther away from the plate than Israel.Unfortunately, the Palestinians do not have the courage, strength, determination, will, and urgency required, he said, adding that Syria had yet to accept Israel's demand to distance itself from Iran and Hezbollah.
Olmert's Arab interlocutors sounded unimpressed.
Palestinian negotiators said they still hadn't been given anything in writing, while the Syrians again turned down Israel's offer to negotiate directly instead of through Turkish mediators.At home, Olmert's powerful right-wing opposition attacked him for endangering the existence of the state of Israel, in the words of one Knesset member.Meanwhile, no reaction has come from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Olmert's recently elected successor as Kadima party leader who is trying to form a coalition government that would put her in his seat. However, Livni, who heads the peace talks with the Palestinians and supports the negotiations with Syria, is widely assumed to have roughly the same map in mind that Olmert described.On Iran, Olmert didn't explicitly rule out an attack on its nuclear facilities, but implicitly, he did. The assumption that if America and Russia and China and Britain and Germany don't know how to deal with the Iranians, [but] we Israelis do know, we will deal with it, we will act--this is an example of our loss of a sense of proportion, he said.Maybe the most eye-opening part of the interview was Olmert's disparagement of Israel's supremely influential military establishment. With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop, he said. All these things are worthless.He told of being briefed once by the country's top security officials and afterward telling them, When I listen to you, I understand why we haven't made peace in 40 years with the Palestinians and Syrians, and why we won't make peace in another 40 years with the Palestinians and Syrians.Actually, coming from an Israeli prime minister, that probably does count as a revelation.
Olmert questioned for eighth time in corruption probes Thu Oct 2, 11:01 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was questioned by police on Thursday for the eighth time since May on corruption allegations that led him to resign from office last month. Investigators questioned Olmert for around two hours on the Investment Centre affair, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, adding that the outgoing prime minister was likely to be questioned again in the coming weeks.The probe -- one of several concerning Olmert -- involves allegations that as trade minister he steered tens of millions of dollars worth of state funds towards a company owned by his former law partner Uri Messer.It is one of several criminal investigations into Olmert, who resigned on September 21 to battle the charges amid a growing chorus of criticism from political allies and foes alike.All the allegations concern his dealings as Jerusalem mayor and trade minister in the 13 years before he assumed the premiership in 2006.He will continue to serve as interim prime minister until Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni forms a new governing coalition or the country holds snap elections -- a period of political limbo that could last weeks or months.Police have recommended that the 63-year-old Olmert be indicted on criminal charges in two cases where he is accused of illegally accepting large sums of cash from a US financier and multiple-billing foreign trips.
Olmert has denied any wrongdoing.
On Thursday, police again quizzed Olmert about the second of the two cases -- dubbed the Rishon Tours affair after the company that organised his travel -- and he refused to answer their questions.His adviser Amir Dan said the acting premier had refused because police had already announced two weeks ago that they had completed their investigation of the case and had recommended that charges be pressed.At the start (of the interview), surprisingly he was asked about the Rishon Tours case, Dan told army radio.Suddenly the investigators have remembered that they failed to check everything out, he complained.Olmert's resignation has dealt a major blow to already sluggish US-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks relaunched in November 2007, when the two sides vowed to try to reach a full peace deal by the end of 2008.If Livni is unable to form a government in the coming weeks, general elections would be held early next year, which polls suggest would give the right-wing opposition Likud party the most seats in parliament.
Mideast peace meet planned for November Thu Oct 2, 4:55 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East Quartet will meet in November to review progress in US-backed peace talks launched nearly a year ago, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday. Citing a senior official in Jerusalem, the paper reported that the meeting would be held in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 27, the one-year anniversary of the US conference that relaunched the negotiations.The two sides formally revived the peace process after a seven-year hiatus under the auspices of the Quartet, which groups the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.The negotiations have made little visible progress since then however, despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's joint pledge to try to reach a full agreement by the end of 2008.An Israeli official confirmed to AFP on condition of anonymity that such a meeting was in the works.During this meeting, the date and place of which have not yet been established, Israelis and Palestinians will for the first time present a summary of their agreements and differences, the official said.At last month's UN General Assembly, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the Quartet had expressed interest in such a conference but had not yet agreed on a firm date.The two sides remain deeply divided on the core issues of the decades-old conflict, including the future status of Jerusalem, the fate of some 4.6 million Palestinian refugees, and continuing Israeli settlement activity.The talks were dealt a further blow last month when Olmert resigned amid a series of corruption allegations, plunging the Jewish state into what could be months of political turmoil and uncertainty.Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has been heading the negotiations, is now struggling to cobble together a new governing coalition in a bid to avoid early general elections which could bring the right-wing Likud party to power.
