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Newsletter : 2fax0125.txt
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>JN Jan. 25, 2002, Vol. 10, No. 17
U.S., Israel Alarmed By Egyptian Maneuvers
By IsraelNationalNews.com
Israel has asked the U.S. to cease supplying Egypt with arms systems, including F-15 fighter aircraft - because Egypt appears to want to use them against Israel.
In Egypt's last military maneuvers, it identified its "dummy" enemy as Israel. Jane's Defense Weekly reports that for this reason, Israel wants the U.S. military support stopped.
Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1978, but Israel has long complained that Egypt has been relating to Israel as an enemy.
Israeli Air Strike in Gaza
By VOA News
Palestinians have said that a strike by Israeli helicopter gunships has killed one man and wounded two others in the Gaza Strip. Helicopter-fired missiles hit a car in the town of Khan Younis after nightfall Thursday. The occupants of the car were said to be members of Hamas.
Earlier in the day, the mangled bodies of two Palestinians were found outside a Jewish settlement in Gaza, apparently blown up by their own bombs. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attempted attack against the settlement. Elsewhere, Israeli troops occupying the Palestinian-ruled town of Ramallah killed a Palestinian intelligence officer in an exchange of fire.
In Hebron, undercover Israeli troops wearing Arab headdress arrested a Palestinian man that Israel accused of being a member of Fatah and an expert in preparing explosives. The Israeli army arrested 10 other suspected militants in villages around Bethlehem.
Beirut Blast Kills Former Christian Militia Chief
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
A car bombing in Beirut has killed former Lebanese Christian militia commander Elie Hobeika. The bomb ripped apart Hobeika's SUV in Beirut's eastern Hazmiyeh district. At least three of his bodyguards also died in Thursday's blast and several other people were injured.
Some investigators believe 22 pounds of dynamite placed in a nearby car were detonated by remote control. An obscure anti-Syrian Lebanese group claimed responsibility, saying Hobeika had betrayed Lebanon and was a Syrian agent.
Early in the Lebanese civil war, Hobeika served as head of the Israeli-allied Lebanese Forces militia, which massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982.
Only days before his death, Hobeika said he felt his life was threatened as a court in Belgium considered legal action concerning those massacres.
Lebanese officials charged Israel had killed Hobeika to prevent him from testifying in Belgium where a group of Palestinians has filed suit charging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the massacres.
An Israeli government spokesman dismissed the allegation that Israel's government was behind the murder of Hobeika as "complete rubbish." Some of Hobeika's neighbors said they believe Palestinians had finally taken revenge for the killings 20 years ago.
Meanwhile, the French news agency quoted an Israeli official as accusing Syria of being involved in Thursday's murder. Hobeika always denied responsibility for the killings in the Palestinian refugee camps. This week, he told some Belgian senators he was ready to testify in the case against Sharon.
Sharon was Israeli defense minister at the time of the 1982 massacres. His troops encircled the refugee camps when Lebanese forces militiamen killed camp residents inside.
An Israeli government inquiry in 1983 found Sharon indirectly responsible for the killings by the militia and recommended that he never again hold the defense portfolio.
CBS TV Finds the Reich Stuff: Hitler
By the N.Y. Post
CBS is developing a four-hour miniseries about young Adolf Hitler. It will explore the early life of the man who would be Fuhrer, as well as the social and political environment that allowed him to rise to power.
The project's producer, Alliance Atlantis, has optioned the rights to two books by Hitler historian Ian Kershaw and will use the author's best-selling "Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris" as the basis for the miniseries. The picture is being developed for the 2002-03 season.
"We are telling the story of an antihero, and he is the main character of the film," said Ed Gernon, who will serve as an executive producer. "Part of the story is a society that conspired to make [Hitler] possible - and then stood back and did nothing to stop him. He was a man underestimated by everyone, [particularly] those who tried to use him."
Gernon said he and CBS are committed to creating a picture that paints a historically accurate, rather than sensationalistic, portrait of Hitler. "We wanted to make sure we had the most unimpeachable source material. It took quite a bit of convincing to get this scholar from England to let an American network use his books to make this. We're going to put the story up on its feet and let the audience judge him."
