Levitt Letter Extra News

By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich www.JPost.com

The volunteer organization Ezer Mizion is holding a drive on Wednesday for blood samples to find a compatible donor for a six-year-old Kfar Saba girl named Amit, who has leukemia.

Six year old Amit awaits a bone marrow transplant

People between 18 and 50 years old and in good health who have never donated a sample to any bone marrow registry are invited to give a small sample to see whether they have a compatible type for stem cell transplants.

In addition to Amit, other cancer sufferers in Israel and around the world could benefit, especially Jews who have related tissue types. Thousands of new potential stem cell donors are expected to join Ezer Mizion’s registry.

The organization is also raising money to process the blood samples, each of which costs $46. Donations can be made and more information is available on the Web site at www.ezermizion.org.

The union of Jewish Agency staffers announced Tuesday that it was donating $4,600 to process 100 samples. Union head Yona Bezaleli and Jewish Agency chairman Ze’ev Bielski asked all staffers to join the project and find a compatible donor for Amit.

By Khaled Abu Toameh www.jpost.com

Hamas militiamen have rounded up hundreds of Fatah activists on suspicion of “collaboration” with Israel during Operation Cast Lead, Fatah members in the Gaza Strip told The Jerusalem Post.

They said the Hamas crackdown on Fatah intensified after the cease-fire went into effect early Sunday morning.

The Fatah members and eyewitnesses said the detainees were being held in school buildings and hospitals that Hamas had turned into make-shift interrogation centers. Hamas has also renewed house arrest orders that were issued against thousands of Fatah officials and activists in the Gaza Strip shortly after the military operation started.

The official said that the perpetrators belonged to Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, and to the movement’s Internal Security Force.

According to the official, at least three of the detainees had their eyes put out by their interrogators, who accused them of providing Israel with wartime information about the location of Hamas militiamen and officials. A number of Hamas leaders and spokesmen have claimed in the past few days that Fatah members in the Gaza Strip had been spying on their movement and passing the information to Israel.

Two Hamas officials, Salah Bardaweel and Fawzi Barhoum, accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his “spies” in the Gaza Strip of tipping off the Israelis about the movements of slain Hamas interior minister Said Siam, who was killed in an IAF strike on his brother’s home in Gaza City last week.

The Fatah official in Ramallah said that, apart from being baseless, the allegations were aimed at paving the way for a ruthless Hamas attack on Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip. “They were afraid to confront the Israeli army and many Hamas militiamen even ran away during the fighting,” he said. “Hamas is now venting its anger and frustration against our Fatah members there.”

Eyewitnesses said that Hamas militiamen had turned a number of hospitals and schools into temporary detention centers where dozens of Fatah members and supporters were being held on suspicion of helping Israel during the war. The eyewitnesses said that a children’s hospital and a mental health center in Gaza City, as well as a number of school buildings in Khan Yunis and Rafah, were among the places that Hamas had turned into “torture centers.”

A Fatah activist in Gaza City claimed that as many as 80 members of his faction were either shot in the legs or had their hands broken for allegedly defying Hamas’s house-arrest orders. “What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is a new massacre that is being carried out by Hamas against Fatah,” he said. “Where were these [Hamas] cowards when the Israeli army was here?”

The activist said that Hamas’s security forces had also confiscated cellular phones and computers belonging to thousands of local Fatah members and supporters.

Relatives of Abed al-Gharabli, a former Fatah security officer who spent 12 years in Israeli prisons, said he was kidnapped by a group of Hamas militiamen who shot him in both legs after severely torturing him. Ziad Abu Hayeh, one of the commanders of Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, is reported to have lost his sight after Hamas gunmen put out his eyes. According to Fatah activists, Abu Hayeh was kidnapped from his home in Khan Yunis by Hamas militiamen.

The Fatah men said that in a number of incidents, Hamas militiamen had kidnapped Fatah activists while they were attending the funerals of people killed during the war. In other cases, activists were detained and shot in the legs after they were spotted smiling in public – an act interpreted by Hamas as an expression of joy over Israel’s military offensive.

Last week, three brothers from the Subuh family were abducted by Hamas militiamen and taken to the Abdel Aziz Rantisi Mosque in Khan Yunis, where they were shot in the legs, a local journalist told the Post.

In a more recent incident, Hamas gunmen shot and killed 80-year-old Hisham Tawfik Najjar after storming his home and beating his four sons – all Fatah activists.

Fahmi Za’areer, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, revealed that at least 16 Fatah activists had been executed by Hamas in the past few days. He strongly condemned the Hamas clampdown on Fatah and warned against a bloodbath in the Gaza Strip.

A leaflet distributed by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in various parts of the Gaza Strip called on Hamas to “respect the blood of the Palestinian martyrs” and stop pursuing Fatah members. The leaflet said that Hamas had placed hundreds of Fatah men under house arrest in the past 48 hours and was warning that anyone who failed to comply with these orders would be shot.

By Alex West www.TheSun.co.uk

The al-Qaeda cell wiped out by Black Death may have infected ITSELF while developing biological weapons, it emerged last night. The terrorists planned to wreak havoc on Western targets but fell victims to their own weapon, a leading expert on chemical warfare believes.

The Sun revealed yesterday [see LLX post 1-19-09] that Black Death, also called the Plague, killed at least 40 fanatics at a terror training camp in Algeria earlier this month. It was thought they caught the disease through poor living conditions in their forest hideouts. But Dr. Igor Khrupinov, of Georgia University, said: “Al-Qaeda is known to experiment with biological weapons. And this group has direct communication with other cells around the world. Contagious diseases, like Ebola and anthrax, occur in northern Africa. It makes sense that people are trying to use them against Western governments.”

Dr. Khrupinov, once arms adviser to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, added: “Instead of using bombs, people with infectious diseases could be walking th rough cities.”

Black Death HAS been researched as a biological weapon before. And al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden’s fanatics were experimenting with anthrax in Afghanistan in 2001. Last year it was revealed that 100 suspected terrorists tried to become students in Britain, giving them access to labs.

In 2006 a plot to poison London’s water was unmasked. Ian Kearns, of the Institute for Public Policy Research, said: “The biological weapons threat is not going away. We’re not ready for it.”