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Newsletter : 9fax0514.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN May 14, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 91
Barak Web Site Hides Poll Results
By Arutz-7 News Service
Ehud Barak's One Israel's Internet web site has come up with some very encouraging results -- for Binyamin Netanyahu. The Russian-language web site polled readers on a series of questions, and -- until recently -- published the results. One question asked if the readers agree with Netanyahu's claim that he worked better for the Russian immigrants than any previous prime minister -- and 83% said yes.
Three Days Until the Election
By David Gollust (VOA-Jerusalem)
The political rhetoric is becoming more heated as campaigning in
Israel's crucial general election moves into its final days.
Israelis vote Monday for a new prime minister and parliament.
With opinion polls indicating he is falling farther behind Labor
party leader Ehud Barak in his bid for reelection, Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu is turning his wrath on Israel's news media
which, he says, have mobilized against him.
In campaign appearances, Netanyahu is accusing the media of
"brainwashing" the public with negative coverage. In Tel Aviv, he
led a crowd of right-wing Likud party supporters in a thundering
chant that the press is afraid of him.
The incident prompted a formal complaint to Israel's attorney
general from the National Federation of Journalists, which said the
prime minister is inciting violence against reporters.
The polls show Barak with a solid lead in the five-man race for
prime minister, though they indicate he would fall just short of
the simple majority needed to avoid a June 1 run-off against the
prime minister.
There is intense pressure on Center party candidate Yitzhak
Mordechai -- a bitter personal rival of the prime minister -- to
drop out of the race in favor of Barak. But fearing that a
withdrawal would hurt his party in the parallel election for
parliament, Mordechai said again Thursday he will stay in the
race.
Meanwhile veteran Israeli pollster Hannoch Smith told reporters
he expects the final set of pre-election polls in Israeli
newspapers Friday to show further gains for Barak. He said a
withdrawal by Israeli Arab candidate Azmi Bishara, who is likely to
get 4-5 percent of the vote, could be enough to hand victory to
Barak.
Bishara -- the first Arab to seek Israel's prime ministership --
says he will not withdraw unless he gets firm commitments from
the Labor party leader to advance Arab interests. He has said he
will announce a final decision late Saturday.
U.S. Conference on Nazi Slave Labor
By Kyle King (VOA-Washington)
US officials say there has been significant progress in the search
for a way to compensate tens of thousands of people forced into
slave labor by the Nazis during World War 2.
A two day Washington conference, marked the first time that lawyers
for German companies sat down together with lawyers for Nazi-era
slave labor victims who are trying to sue them.
German and US officials co-chaired the meeting, which also brought
together representatives from Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus,
Ukraine, Russia and Israel.
At the end of the session, Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat
said working groups dealing with separate issues like banks and
stolen property will try to come up with a concrete compensation
plan in three months "with the hope that the process can be agreed
to by Sept. 1, 1999, Which is the date set by the German
government, as it is the 60th anniversary of the commencement of
World War 2."
Germany has agreed to set up a special fund to compensate tens of
thousands of people who were used as forced laborers, agriculture
workers, or enslaved in Nazi labor camps. German companies have
said they will contribute generously to the plan, but their
participation has been complicated by a number of class action
lawsuits brought against the firms.
Eizenstat says the goal of those who participated in the conference
is to bring legal closure to the entire issue, and settle all
lawsuits at one time. He says no dollar amount for the compensation
fund was discussed at the session, but that all the participants
were in agreement on the need for a solution to the issue.
US officials say 70-90,000 former slave laborers could be included
in the compensation plan. They say the total number of people used
as forced laborers in eastern Europe could reach into the hundreds
of thousands, including about 500,000 used as forced agricultural
workers in Poland.
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