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Newsletter : 8fax1102.txt
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>PD
>Israel Faxx
>JN Nov. 2, 1998, Vol. 6, No. 196
Miss Lebanon To Avoid Miss Israel
By IsraelWire
Miss Lebanon, Clemence Ashkar, 18, a sociology student, won't be
vying any time soon for the title of Miss Congeniality. Citing a
state of war with Israel, Lebanon's new beauty queen declared she
would not shake hands with her Israeli counterpart at the Miss
World and Miss Universe contests. "We all know that Lebanon is in
conflict with Israel, which is occupying an important region in our
country. If I see her, I will not shake hands with her and will try
to keep a distance from her so that I won't have to shake hands
with her."
Civil War Predicted in Arafat's Palestine
By Al Pessin (VOA-Jerusalem)
The militant Palestinian group Hamas says it will turn the power of its military wing against Palestinian Authority targets in response to the crackdown on militant groups the Authority launched last week.
In a leaflet sent to news organizations, the Hamas military wing
accused Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority of treason and said,
"There is no room for self-control or silence any more." It says
the Palestinian Authority is loyal to Israel, and its officials and
security forces will not be safe from Hamas attacks.
Last week, the Authority arrested about 100 Hamas members and put its spiritual leader under house arrest. Palestinian officials were angry Hamas had tried to attack an Israeli school bus inside the Gaza Strip immediately after the Wye River agreement was signed. The agreement requires a Palestinian Authority crackdown on Hamas and other violent militant groups.
Palestinians have long been concerned that open confrontation between Hamas and the Authority might lead to a civil war. Most Palestinians support the Authority and its moderate approach, but many also believe groups like Hamas keep necessary pressure on Israel.
Racists, Neo-Nazis, Gay Bashers Spread Message Online
By IsraelWire
The conference room in Ocean City is jammed with more than 100
people, all peering at an enlarged computer screen displaying an
ominous image: a man in a white hood holding a pump shotgun. It's
one of dozens of Ku Klux Klan sites on the World Wide Web, but the
people studying it aren't hatemongers. They're federal agents,
state police and detectives from law enforcement agencies
throughout the mid-Atlantic.
"Just as hate groups can use these Web sites to their advantage, we
can use them to ours," says Raymond Franklin, a police training
instructor in Maryland who teaches a crash course in high-tech
hate. "It's free information. These people are going to tell us
what they're doing, and we don't even have to send out an
investigator. Just click on it at your desktop."
His "Hate Directory," one of the nation's most comprehensive
listings of such organizations, lists more than 300 Web sites,
newsgroups, chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards that deliver
electronic messages of violence or hatred.
"A lot of times these aren't just rednecks in the basement with a
personal computer. We are talking about very serious technological
endeavors here. The Internet has given people a very powerful
weapon to use for hate."
Just ask 45-year-old Don Black of West Palm Beach, Fla., a computer
consultant who manages Web pages for Stormfront - his own white
nationalist movement - plus sites for two dozen other white
supremacist causes. His own site, mirrored on a Russian server and
available in Spanish as well as English, is regarded by
academicians as one of the most popular racist sites - with more
than one million visitors and counting.
"The political fashion today is the eradication of all vestiges of
white culture, and we believe white people throughout the world
must unite and stand up for their rights," Black says. "Our purpose
with the Web site is to provide information, and for those who are
attracted to our point of view, to offer them an online community."
That community includes an online "Aryan Dating Page" that touts
itself as a listing of available singles who must be "heterosexual,
white gentiles only."
Franklin's list of Web sites is designed not only to help police,
but also to educate Web surfers about potential dangers online.
Parents should be aware, he said, that a high school student doing
a term paper on the Holocaust is likely to stumble across hate
group sites that claim that the mass executions didn't happen or
were justified.
Some countries have invoked censorship to combat the sites. That
doesn't mean hate sites can operate free of surveillance by
watchdog groups. The Anti-Defamation League, which recently released
a report entitled "The Web of Hate: Extremists Exploit the
Internet," has developed the first software filter designed to
block hate sites.
The software is due to be released next month, said Jordan Kessler,
a research analyst at ADL who specializes in studying hate on the
Internet. Once installed on a home computer, the program will block
all sites that the ADL has deemed to be directing hatred.
Franklin's Web site can be found at
http://earthops.org/hatedir.html.
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