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Newsletter : 9fax1025.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Oct. 25, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 197
Robot Extends "Helping Hand"
By IsraelWire
A new robot to aid humanity has made an appearance. This Israeli innovation named Robot 2001, has been developed by a Rosh HaAyin-based company, T.M.N Devices Ltd. The device, an electrically operated arm, is activated automatically by a switch to stow away a wheelchair inside the car trunk. Further information at www.tmn.co.il
U.S. Teen Sentenced to 24 Years in Israeli Prison
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
An Israeli court has sentenced American teenager Samuel Sheinbein to 24-years in jail for murdering a teenage acquaintance in the United States. Sheinbein was put on trial in Israel, after successfully appealing against extradition.
The sentencing of the 19-year-old Sheinbein by a court in Tel Aviv brings to a close a case which had threatened to harm relations between Israel and the United States.
Sheinbein fled to Israel shortly after the grisly murder of Alfredo Enrique Tello in Maryland in September 1997. Although he had never lived in Israel, Sheinbein claimed citizenship because his father was born in Palestine in 1944, four-years before the birth of the Jewish state.
Israeli courts upheld his right to be prosecuted in Israel under a law that forbids extradition of Israeli citizens to stand trial in a foreign court. Israeli prosecutors had recommended that Sheinbein, who pleaded guilty to murder under a plea bargain, receive the 24-year term. This was accepted by a Tel Aviv court, which handed down its decision Sunday. He will be eligible for parole after serving 16-years behind bars and weekend release after four-years.
The sentence is severe by Israeli standards. But state prosecutors in Maryland, where Sheinbein would have faced possible life imprisonment without parole, had earlier described the plea-bargain arrangement as -- an absolute outrage.
Sheinbein and a friend were accused of choking and slashing Tello to death and dismembering his body with a chainsaw. The friend, Aaron Needle, hanged himself in a U.S. jail in April 1998.
Pius XII Felt Nazi Atrocities Exaggerated
By IsraelWire
Pope Pius XII told the United States in 1942 he believed reports of
German atrocities against Jews were exaggerated and that he could
not denounce the Nazis without criticizing the Soviet Union,
according to a newly-discovered document in the US National
Archives.
The document - a secret report by the US envoy to the Vatican during the war on a 40-minute meeting he had with the pontiff on Dec. 30, 1942 - also quoted Pius as saying that he would, however, publicly condemn the Allies if they carried out a threat to bomb Rome.
The letter by envoy Harold Tittmann's to the Secretary of State offers new insight into the wartime thinking of Pius XII, who has been frequently criticized by Jewish groups and others for failing to speak out against the Nazis during the war.
A controversial new book by British journalist John Cornwell, "Hitler's Pope, the Secret History of Pius XII," says the pontiff minimized the Holocaust because he was a Germanophile and that he held anti-Semitic views before becoming Pope in 1939.
Pius, during his meeting with Tittmann, is surprised when the diplomat tells him that there are people who did not accept that he had finally publicly condemned the Nazis in his famous Christmas message of 1942 in which he declared that people were being killed because of their "race and nationality." Many thought that the message was too indirect.
Tittmann said in his "strictly confidential" four-page report, "(the pope) stated that he 'feared' that there was foundation for the atrocity reports of the Allies, but he led me to believe that he felt there had been some exaggeration for purposes of propaganda."
The diplomat added, "With regard to his Christmas message, the pope gave me the impression that he was sincere in believing that he had spoken therein clearly enough to satisfy all those who had been insisting in the past that he utter some word of condemnation of the Nazi atrocities and he seemed surprised when I told him that I thought there were some who did not share his belief.
"He said that he thought that it was plain to everyone he was referring to the Poles, Jews, and hostages when he declared that hundreds of thousands of persons had been killed or tortured through no fault of their own, sometimes only because of their race and he nationality. He explained that when talking of atrocities could not name the Nazis without mentioning at the same time the Bolsheviks, and this, he thought, might not be wholly pleasing to the Allies."
The American diplomat said the pope was concerned about threats being made over the BBC that the Allies would bomb Rome, although "he did not himself feel in the least apprehensive because he could not imagine that the Allies would do such a thing when there was so little to gain and so much to lose."
Tittmann said, "He made it clear that if Rome was bombed, he would be obliged to make a solemn and public protest and added that he was certain that the combined effect of the bombing and protest of Catholics throughout the world could only be hurtful to the cause of the Allies."
The Vatican has rejected accusations that Pius was an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. "He certainly was not (an anti-Semite). He helped the Jews," said Father Pierre Blet, the Vatican's leading historian on the Second World War.
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