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The introduction of scanners has been criticized by human rights groups. (Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images)

By Will Pavia, www.TimesOnline.co.uk

A Muslim woman was barred from boarding a flight after she refused to undergo a full body scan for religious reasons.

The passenger was passing through security at Manchester Airport when she was selected at random for a full-body scanner.

She was warned that she would be stopped from boarding the plane but she decided to forfeit her ticket to Pakistan rather than submit to the scan. Her female traveling companion also declined to step into the scanner, citing “medical reasons” for her refusal.

The two women are thought to be the first passengers to refuse to submit to scanning by the machines, which have provoked controversy among human rights groups.

Scanners were introduced on a limited basis last month at Heathrow and Manchester airports in response to the alleged attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day using explosives concealed in his underpants.

The x-ray machines allow security officials to check for concealed weapons but they also afford clear outlines of passengers’ genitals. They are due to be introduced in all airports by the end of the year.

Civil liberties campaigners have said the scans represent an invasion of privacy and their introduction may yet be challenged by the Human Rights Commission.

Trevor Phillips, head of the commission, has told Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, that there are concerns over passengers’ privacy and an apparent lack of safeguards to ensure that the scanners are used without discrimination.

Sources at Manchester Airport have said the two women were due to board a flight two weeks ago when they were turned back at security.

No other passengers had objected to the checks and about 15,000 have so far submitted to the piercing eye of the £80,000 ($120,000) Rapiscan machine at the airport’s Terminal 2.

The second female passenger was said to be concerned because she had an infection. They may be the first to be turned back for their refusal to be scanned, though a spokesman for Heathrow said it could not comment on individual cases.

At Manchester, a spokeswoman said: “Two female passengers who were booked to fly out of Terminal Two refused to be scanned for medical and religious reasons.

“In accordance with the government directive on scanners, they were not permitted to fly. Body scanning is a big change for customers who are selected under the new rules and we are aware that privacy concerns are on our customers’ minds, which is why we have put strict procedures to reassure them that their privacy will be protected.”

Last month, Lord Adonis stressed that an interim code of practice on the use of body scanners stipulated that passengers would not be selected “on the basis of personal characteristics”.

He said that images captured by body scanners would be immediately deleted after the passenger had gone through and that security staff were appropriately trained and supervised.

Objectors to the scanners, and indeed the two women who forfeited their flight last month, have an unlikely ally in Pope Benedict XVI, a man who is likely to be waved through airport security for the rest of his life.

Last month he told an audience from the aerospace industry that, notwithstanding the threat from terrorism, “the primary asset to be safeguarded and treasured is the person, in his or her integrity”.

www.JTA.org

A United States congressman urged Energy Secretary Steven Chu to modify his trip to the Middle East to include Israel.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), in a letter to Chu, wrote of his disappointment that the secretary’s trip this week to the Middle East does not include Israel. Chu is visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to promote investments in energy technologies — which is exactly why Israel should be included, the New York representative wrote.

“Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation and leads the world in civilian research and development spending per capita,” the letter said. “We know that the United States is addicted to foreign oil — by focusing on the petrodollar states it creates the appearance of an addict rewarding his pusher.”

By Jon Leyne, news.bbc.co.uk

Airlines that fail to comply with the ruling will be banned or detained.

Iran has warned that airlines will be banned from flying into its airspace, unless they use the term “Persian Gulf” on their in-flight monitors. The transport minister has threatened to impound planes that fail to comply.

The nation is most insistent that the stretch of water separating it from its southern neighbors should be known as the Persian Gulf. To call it the Gulf, annoys the authorities; to call it the Arabian Gulf, infuriates them even more.

Conferences are held to make the matter quite clear, an ancient map with definitive proof of the correct name was sent on a world tour. And recently a foreign member of the cabin crew working for an Iranian airline was sacked and expelled from Iran when he got it wrong.

* BBC style is to refer to the body of water between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Gulf. * Iran calls it the Persian Gulf, also the more historically recognized term. * Saudi Arabia and most other Arab states insist on calling it the Arabian Gulf.

Now the Iranian transport minister has given foreign airlines 15 days to change the name to Persian Gulf on their in flight monitors. If they failed, they would be prevented from entering Iranian airspace, he warned. And if the offense was repeated, foreign airliners would be grounded and refused permission to leave Iran.

Numerous Arab airlines fly into Iran every day, not to mention Europeans and others, so it remains to be seen how they will respond.

As for the minister, Hamid Behbahani, it may or may not be a coincidence that he is making a stand on this patriotic matter at a time when he is facing calls for his impeachment for alleged lack of competence.

By Karin Laub, Associated Press

GAZA City, Gaza Strip – Hamas officials said Monday, Feb 15, that they have detained a British freelance journalist for up to 15 days, an unprecedented step against a foreigner since the Islamic militants seized Gaza in 2007.

Documentary filmmaker Paul Martin was detained Sunday at a Gaza military tribunal where he was to testify on behalf of a local man accused of collaborating with Israel, said Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab Ghussein. He had just begun to speak when the prosecutor ordered police to arrest him, saying the Briton was wanted in the case, according to Ehab Jaber, the attorney for the Gaza man accused of collaborating.

“The policeman put the handcuffs on him, and took him out of the court to prison. They were rough with him,” said Jaber, who witnessed the scene.

Ghussein said Martin, who has produced reports in the past for British Broadcasting Corp. and The Times of London, is suspected of harming Gaza’s security. He said the order to detain him was based on a confession by a suspected collaborator with Israel – an apparent reference to the man on trial.

Martin was being questioned and will be held until the investigation is completed, Ghussein said, adding that the current arrest warrant gives authorities the right to detain him for 15 days with the option to release him early.

Martin has met with British consular officials since his arrest, Ghussein said.

The British Consulate in Jerusalem said Martin is 55. A spokeswoman said the British government was “very concerned” and has been in touch with Martin’s family. She spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Iyad Alami, a lawyer for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, met with Martin for half an hour on Monday. Martin was in good condition, Alami said, adding that he wanted to learn more about the case before deciding whether his group would represent the journalist. He would not share any more details on the meeting.

The rights group’s director, Raji Sourani, said earlier Monday that he was asked by Martin to represent him.

Martin’s colleagues called for his immediate release.

“We expect Hamas, as we do all parties, to respect the rights of every journalist on assignment, to work without fear of being arrested,” said the Foreign Press Association, which represents journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Since Hamas wrested Gaza from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas nearly three years ago, it has carefully avoided confrontations with foreign visitors, particularly journalists. It also has tried to reach out to the West in hopes of ending an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade.

In the two years before the Hamas takeover, more than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers were abducted in Gaza, which was plagued by political violence and lawlessness.

Most of the kidnappings were carried out by gunmen seeking favors from the government or trying to settle scores with rivals. Hamas has neutralized most of its rivals and prides itself in restoring a sense of security in Gaza.

Gaza’s Foreign Ministry said it “wishes to reassure all journalists working in the region that the Palestinian government guarantees their freedom to work in the Gaza Strip without interference.”

Ahmed Youssef, a ministry official, said that Martin “is being detained for clear security reasons, and it is nothing to do with his job as a journalist or (him being) a Westerner.”

The chain of events began Sunday when Martin went to the military court to speak on behalf of Mohammed Abu Muailik, who is being accused of collaborating with Israel, said Jaber, Abu Muailik’s defense attorney.

The attorney said Martin had been working on a documentary about Abu Muailik, who has been in detention since June.

A spokesman for a Gaza militant group, the Abu Rish Brigades, said Abu Muailik is a former member. The brigades are a violent offshoot of Hamas rival Fatah, the movement led by Abbas.

Jaber would not discuss details of Abu Muailik’s past, but said his client works in computer maintenance and has a business relationship with an Israeli partner.

Asked about confessions that might have implicated Martin, Jaber said: “These confessions … came under psychological and physical pressure. Anyone who was under such torture would say the same. We have evidence that he is not a collaborator.”

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, CNSNews.com

Photo: Dutch politician Geert Wilders following a court appearance in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Jan. 13, 2010. He is seeking to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims with his film, ‘Fitna. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

The complaint also refers to comments he has made about Islam in the Dutch media, in particular an open letter published in 2007 calling for the Koran to be outlawed in the Netherlands on the grounds that it contains verses instructing Muslims “to oppress, persecute or kill Christians, Jews, dissidents and non-believers, to beat and rape women, and to establish an Islamic state by force.”

As part of the effort to prove his contention that his views on the nature of Islam are accurate, Wilders had wanted the court to hear, in their own words, van Gogh’s unrepentant and Koran-quoting killer as well as two hard-line Iranian ayatollahs, a radical imam based in The Hague, and a controversial Sunni scholar.

Also on his witness list were scholars and researchers specializing in Islam, human rights and law, including a former Muslim who is an expert in sharia (Islamic law).

The public prosecutor opposed Wilders’s request, and the court last week agreed that he could call only three of the 18.

One of the three is Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born critic of Islam who caused an uproar in a 2006 al-Jazeera interview when she spoke of a clash “between civilization and backwardness, chaos and rationality, a conflict between freedom and oppression, democracy and dictatorship, human rights on the one hand and the violation of these rights on the other, between those who treat women like animals, and those who treat them like human beings.”

The other two permitted witnesses are Dutch scholars Hans Jansen, an expert on Islamic fundamentalism; and Simon Admiraal, whose research focuses on radicalization in Arabic sermons.

The judges also ruled that the three witnesses’ testimony would have to be heard behind closed doors.

“Apparently the truth about Islam must remain a secret,” the Wilders trial website commented.

In their ruling, the judges said the accused would have ample opportunity to tell the court during the trial how he views its decision to disallow most of the witnesses he had requested.

‘A judgment on Islam’

Among those rejected by the court were:

– Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the secretary of the powerful Council of Guardians and current Friday prayer leader in Tehran, who frequently rails against America.

– Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a former head of Iran’s judiciary, who said in February 2000 that the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 calling for the death of Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie was “divine” and “irrevocable” and would be carried out, “Allah-willing.”

– Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an influential Egyptian Sunni scholar controversial for having called Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis justifiable “martyrdom operations.”

Radio Netherlands International reported that “some feared that had the judges allowed all seventeen [sic] defense witnesses, the trial would become a judgment on Islam, rather than a judgment on whether or not Geert Wilders has incited hatred.”

Robert Spencer, author on The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran and the editor of Jihad Watch – and another of those on Wilders’s list turned down by the court – said last week that Sultan, Jansen, and Admiraal would be “excellent” witnesses.

“Nonetheless, this decision indicates the court’s bias against Wilders, and so does not bode well for him,” he commented.

Spencer said the court was “railroading” Wilders.

“He had wanted to call Mohammed Bouyeri, the Qur’an-inspired murderer of Theo Van Gogh, who would have proven his point immediately, and others who would have buttressed the truth of what he has said,” he said. “That the court has hindered his ability to do this shows that the railroad tracks are being laid into place.”

By Nasser Karimi, Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran began enriching uranium to a higher level on Tuesday, February 9, an acceleration of its nuclear program that was followed by a U.S. threat of a “significant regime of sanctions.” Speaking in Washington, President Barack Obama said the process of developing an additional set of sanctions on Iran was moving along quickly, but he gave no specific timeline. Iran, he said, was still pursuing a nuclear program that would lead to nuclear weapons.

Iran’s announcement Tuesday that it has begun enriching uranium to a higher level raised fears that the process could eventually be used to give the Islamic republic nuclear weapons. Iran denies that its program is geared toward acquiring a nuclear weapon.

France and the U.S. have said that Iran’s action left no choice but to push harder for a fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions to punish it. Russia, which has close ties to Iran and has opposed new sanctions, appeared to edge closer to Washington’s position, saying the new enrichment plans show the suspicions about Iran’s intentions are well-founded.

Iranian state television said the process began in the presence of inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Uranium has to be enriched to fuel nuclear power plants and Iran needs the 20 percent enriched fuel for a research reactor producing medical isotopes. Enriching uranium to 90 percent, however, creates the material for nuclear weapons, which many countries are afraid Iran is seeking. Iran denies the charge.

In an effort to defuse the crisis, the International Atomic Energy Agency brokered a deal last year in which Iran would ship out its low enriched uranium to be processed abroad and returned a year later. Iran initially rejected the deal, then later said that if an acceptable alternative could be reached, it would not continue the high level enriching process. Ali Akbar Salehi, a vice president as well as the head of the country’s nuclear program, said the further enrichment would be unnecessary if the West found a way to provide Iran with the needed fuel.

“Whenever they provide the fuel, we will halt production of 20 percent,” he told state TV late Monday. Iran has so far enriched uranium to a level of 3.5 percent, which is suitable for use in fueling nuclear power plants.

On Tuesday, the spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Ramin Mehmanparast, said any plan by the West to impose new Security Council resolutions would not be helpful. “If they attempt another resolution, they are making a mistake. It is not helpful in resolving the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West,” he said. “They are completely wrong if they think our people will back down even a single step.”

Salehi said Iran has been trying to buy the higher enriched fuel for its research reactor for the past several months, but the West made providing the fuel conditional on Iran’s acceptance of the U.N.-drafted agreement to ship its uranium stockpile abroad first. That plan would come with some safeguards, because the enriched fuel provided to Iran would be in a form that would be difficult to further process to make weapons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, listens to a technician during his visit of the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility.

According to the report on state TV, the higher level enrichment began after Iranian scientists injected 25 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched UF6, or Uranium hexafluoride, gas into a cascade of 164 centrifuge machines at a laboratory in the central town of Natanz, some 150 miles (241 kilometers) south of Tehran. The machines are expected to produce some 2.5 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium out of 25 kilograms of gas every month, according to the report. It said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were present during the injection.

When asked about the enrichment process, Gill Tudor of the IAEA only said that the agency had inspectors in the country already. “The agency continues to have inspectors in Iran conducting normal safeguard operations,” Tudor said.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes a new U.N. resolution would lay the legal groundwork countries need to impose sanctions independently and pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Germany is “very concerned about the developments in Iran,” and that “if Iran insists on refusing to join negotiations, talks at the United Nations will be unavoidable and we will then have to talk about new measures.”

“There is also the possibility of widening the sanctions,” he told reporters in Berlin.

No new U.N. Security Council sanctions can be passed, however, without unanimous agreement from all members, including China, which has been reluctant to impose new punitive measures on Iran. China called for more talks on Tuesday, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, saying “I hope the relevant parties will step up efforts and push for progress in the dialogue and negotiations.”

Russia, another Security Council member, has also been reluctant to back new sanctions. The nation’s security chief said on Tuesday, however, that Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to higher levels has added to doubts about its nuclear program. “Iran says it doesn’t want to have nuclear weapons. But its actions, including its decision to enrich uranium to 20 percent, have raised doubts among other nations, and these doubts are quite well-founded,” Nikolai Patrushev was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Iran says it needs the 20 percent enriched fuel for a research reactor producing radio isotopes to treat cancer and manufacture radiography materials. Iran says more than 850,000 people need the products for their illnesses.

By Dr. Jonathan Halevy

In the days following the Haiti earthquake, the international press was awash in astonishing reports commending Israel’s tremendous work in medical disaster response and setting up a field hospital operation that had other nations looking on in awe. Even as these reports left us feeling intense pride, our reaction back in Israel has been one of far less surprise.

Dr. Jonathan Halevy

From CBS to CNN to MSNBC and numerous other outlets across the media landscape, wide-eyed medical reporters witnessed the Israeli operation with an underlying tone of combined admiration and jealousy.

Why is it that of the dozens of countries contributing to the relief effort, with delegations of all shapes and sizes, it’s the Israelis who travel halfway around the world and within hours have a fully operational hospital in place? Journalists pointed with amazement at our mobile imaging machinery and sedated patients on ventilators and asked outright why anyone else couldn’t be doing this.

The reason we in Israel are not surprised is because we know that we’ve been training for years for just these types of scenarios. We can also appreciate that Israel sees part of its mandate as a military and medical leader to make sure that expertise and know-how will benefit the international community should the opportunity present itself.

And so, as much as our enemies desire to paint the IDF solely as a hawkish, war-seeking powerhouse, the mission in Haiti shows just the opposite to be true.

Admittedly, Israel’s adeptness in launching these types of operations stems from a history of confronting hostilities and being prepared to address every possible threat. I personally recall from my days as commander of a field hospital in the First Lebanon War that we set up such a field medical facility within hours and that “real-life” training was just one of many invaluable tests that would benefit the IDF Medical Corps in the future.

Over the years, the brave men and women of our army have recalled those lessons on all too many occasions, both here and, just as often, in ports of call in other parts of the world.

So when the news came across the wires that Haiti had been rocked by a devastating earthquake, the question was never if Israel would be there to respond, but only how soon.

Those of us involved in emergency management and disaster response know all too well that Israel has a unique advantage over most, if not all, nations in this discipline. Every week, a major drill is held at a hospital somewhere in Israel. Our protocols and emergency departments have become models for hospitals all around the world.

Despite our relatively small size and urban landscapes that pale in comparison to most of the West, our Home Front Command has made it a principal training objective to remain ever-ready for all types of disasters.

Even with the very limited traditional communication tools that exist between Israel and our rescue teams in Haiti, I had the chance to be in touch with my colleagues from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem on several occasions after they landed in the earthquake zone. The underlying tone that came across was one of overwhelming shock at the scope of the disaster they faced, yet they admitted that they felt as prepared as humanly possible for the medical realities they were confronting.

What has been most challenging, without a doubt, has been the emotional experiences. Many of those in the field hospital were seasoned veterans of the military and have treated hundreds if not thousands of victims of warfare and terrorism. However, they reported that perhaps more than ever before, in Haiti desperate questions of medical ethics had to be asked even before the ones over the best course of treatment. Each patient had to be judged based on the chances for his or her survival. The medical process only then commenced if the doctors and nurses believed that this case had better chances for a positive outcome than the victim that lay immediately next in line.

These were devastating questions for even the most hardened medical professional and ones that challenge Israel’s medical teams countless times each day.

Beyond these stories of disaster and loss, the Israeli experience in Haiti still has been one of hope and promise. The world quickly learned that the “successes” we achieved there came because we appreciated the continuous need for this type of training. Even more so, it is recognized that we have a role in contributing to the greater welfare of the international community.

Perhaps it’s unfortunate that it took the devastating tragedy in Haiti for the world to understand this valuable lesson that Israel has an enormous amount of good to contribute, both in good times and bad. Yet we can also be hopeful and confident that it’s one not soon forgotten.

***************************************************

Dr. Jonathan Halevy is director-general of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. This piece first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

www.JWeekly.com

The infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign stolen last December from Auschwitz and broken into three pieces has been returned to the museum at the site of the Nazi death camp.

Police, who had quickly recovered the damaged sign after its theft, gave it to museum officials at a brief Jan. 21 ceremony in Krakow. It was then taken to the museum 50 miles away, where conservation experts examined the three dark steel pieces of the sign, whose cynical Nazi slogan means “Work Sets You Free.”

Thieves had cut up the sign at the site of the death camp the night of their heist to make it easier to transport in their getaway car.

Five Polish suspects have confessed to stealing it on Dec. 18. However, officials earlier this week were still seeking a suspected neo-Nazi from Sweden who is believed to have ordered the theft, possibly for a collector of Nazi memorabilia, prosecutors said.

Auschwitz spokesman Pawel Sawicki said officials must still decide whether to eventually put back the original sign or leave up the replica now in its place.

See related articles posted December 19, 2009 and January 9, 2010.

By Daniel Schwammenthal, online.WSJ.com  Wall Street Journal

Meet Ibrahim, a 23-year old Palestinian refugee living in the West Bank. Unlike those descendants of refugees born in United Nations camps, Ibrahim fled his birthplace just two years ago. And he wasn’t running away from Israelis, but from his Palestinian brethren in Gaza.

Ibrahim’s crime in that Hamas-ruled territory was to be a Christian, a transgression he compounded in the Islamists’ eyes by writing love poems.

“Muslims tied to Hamas tried to take me twice,” says Ibrahim, and he didn’t want to find out what they’d do to him if they ever kidnapped him. He hasn’t seen his family since Christmas 2007 and is afraid even to talk to them on the phone.

Speaking to a group of foreign journalists in the Bethlehem Bible College where he is studying theology, Ibrahim describes a life of fear in Gaza. “My sister is under a lot of pressure to wear a headscarf. People are turning more and more to Islamic fundamentalism and the situation for Christians is very difficult,” he says.

In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Ibrahim’s Christian friends have also left Gaza.

On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier. Yet until Palestinian terrorist groups turned Bethlehem into a safe haven for suicide bombers, Bethlehemites were free to enter Israel, just as many Israelis routinely visited Bethlehem.

The other truth usually ignored by the Western press is that the barrier helped restore calm and security not just in Israel, but also in the West Bank including Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity, which Palestinian gunmen stormed and defiled in 2002 to escape from Israeli security forces, is now filled again with tourists and pilgrims from around the world.

A demonstration of power: Muslims praying in Manger Square, Aug. 7, 2009.

But even here in Jesus’ birthplace, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Christians live on a knife’s edge. Ibrahim tells me that Muslims often stand in front of the gate of the Bible College and read from the Quran to intimidate Christian students. Other Muslims like to roll out their prayer rugs right in Manger Square.

Asked about why Muslims would pray so close to one of Christianity’s holiest sites, Pastor Alex Awad, dean of students at the Bible College, diplomatically advises me to pose this question to the Muslims themselves. Mindful of his community’s precarious situation, he is at pains to stress that whatever problems Christians may have with their Muslim neighbors, it’s not the PA’s fault.

“Muslims and Christians live here in relative harmony,” he tells reporters, only to add that Christians “feel the pressure of Islam . . . There is intimidation and fanaticism but these are little instances and there is no general persecution.”

Samir Qumsieh, the founder of what he says is the holy land’s only Christian TV station, also stresses that there is no “Christian suffering” and that the Christians’ problems are not orchestrated by the PA. Yet his stories of land theft, beatings and intimidation make one wonder why, if the PA doesn’t approve of such injustices, it is doing so little to stop it?

Christians have only recently begun to talk about how Muslim gangs simply come and take possession of Christian-owned land while the Palestinian security services, almost exclusively staffed by Muslims, stand by. Qumsieh’s own home was firebombed three years ago. The perpetrators were never caught.

“We have never suffered as we are suffering now,” Qumsieh confesses, violating his own introductory warning to the assorted foreign correspondents in his office not to use the word “suffering.”

Always a minority religion among the predominantly Muslim Palestinians, Christians are, Qumsieh says, “melting away,” even in Bethlehem. While they represented about 80% of the city’s population 60 years ago, their numbers are now down to about 20%, a result not just of Muslims’ higher birth rates but also widespread Christian emigration. “Our future as a Christian community here is gloomy,” Qumsieh says.

Palestinian plight not attributable to Israel barely seems to register in the West’s collective conscience. As Christians around the world reflect on Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection in this season that extends from from Christmas to Easter, perhaps we can think of Ibrahim and those Christians still suffering in Gaza and Bethlehem.

Al-Ahram credits Meir Dagan with single-handedly stalling Iranian nuclear program for eight years

By Roee Nahmias, www.YNetNews.com

Egypt’s Al-Ahram reported last weekend that Iran was being prevented from developing staggering nuclear capabilities by Israel’s Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, whom the paper dubbed “Israel’s superman.”

“The Iranians definitely know who is behind the assassination of nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi in Tehran on Tuesday. Every Iranian official understands the magic word – Dagan. Without this man the Iranian nuclear program would have taken off years ago,” the report says.

“The head of the Israeli Mossad, unknown to many because he works in silence and away from the media tumult, has delivered painful blows to the Iranian program over the past eight years and caused it to stall despite the hubbub surrounding it. This fact has made Dagan the superman of the Jewish state.”

The report was written by the paper’s former chief of Gaza Strip affairs, Ashraf Abu al-Haul.

“Those who follow occurrences within Israel know that the current Mossad chief has achieved things no one could have imagined in everything from the Iranian nuclear program and the capabilities of the Syrian army to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. However he has never published his activities, and publications have always come from the other side,” he wrote.

Al-Haul credits Dagan with “very brave actions taken in the Middle East,” including the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008, the bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, and a strike on an arms convoy headed from Iran to Gaza through Sudan last year.