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Newsletter : 7fax0315.txt
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Israel's Eurovision Entry OK
Israel Faxx News Services
Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest will allow Israel's controversial entry.
The European Broadcasting Union, which oversees the annual songfest, announced Wednesday that all the participating nations' entries had been approved. That meant an implicit green light for "Push the Button," a song by Israeli band Teapacks that is widely assumed to allude to the Iranian nuclear program. Listen to the song at www.israelfaxx.com.
Teapacks has denied that the lyrics refer to a specific country. The dispute prompted the EBU earlier this month to threaten to disqualify "Push the Button." The first round of this year's Eurovision will take place May 10 in Helsinki.
Hamas, Fatah to Announce Unity Government Saturday
By VOA News
Leaders of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah said Wednesday that they would present a unity government to parliament on Saturday for a vote of confidence.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the ruling Hamas faction and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah met to finalize details for the coalition government - including who will hold the key position of interior minister.
The Palestinians hope the deal will end months of factional fighting and halt a Western aid embargo on the Hamas-led government. The factions agreed last month to form a unity government during talks in Saudi Arabia. The agreement did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or renounce violence. The United States, the European Union and Israel classify Hamas as a terrorist group.
In other news, an Israeli group opposed to Jewish West Bank settlements said one third of land allotted for the settlements is privately owned by Palestinians.
Peace Now issued figures drawn from a database of Israel's Civil Administration, which governs the West Bank. The Civil Administration called the report inaccurate. The U.S.-backed "road map" for Middle East peace calls for an end to settlement activity.
Hamas TV: Disengagement Key to Israel's Destruction
By IsraelNationalNews.com
Hamas-controlled TV is broadcasting a statement by the group's late leader Ahmad Yassin several times a day saying Israel's withdrawal from Gaza is the key to the destruction of the entire Jewish state.
The Islamist terror group which has ruled the Palestinian Authority since it overcame the Fatah group in parliamentary elections has launched the Al Aksa Satellite TV channel.
"Al Aqsa Satellite TV broadcasts numerous political messages during its daily programming," reads a report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which monitors and translates PA broadcasts. "The message that has been repeating most frequently this month is a statement made by Ahmad Yassin, founder and former head of Hamas, who was killed by Israel." Yassin's statement was made in 2005, in response to Ariel Sharon's announcement of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: "Sharon said yesterday that 'Nezarim [Israeli town in Gaza Strip] is [like] Tel Aviv.' Today he says: 'The day is near when we will leave Gaza.' That's it, it's lost, Tel Aviv is gone. They are defeated, they have no words left."
Continuing his prediction of where Disengagement would lead, Yassin said: "When this process will end, they will become a state with no ability, helpless. They established a state to protect the Jews from death and murder. If death and murder chase them in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya and everywhere among them, then they will say: 'What am I doing here? I founded a state to protect me from death, and if death chases me, I want to flee and go back to Europe and America.'"
Jordan Quietly Gaining Control of Temple Mount
By WorldNetDaily.com
Jordan has been quietly purchasing real estate surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in hopes of gaining more control over the area accessing the holy site, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.
The officials confirmed to WND the Jordanian Kingdom has been using shell companies during the past year to purchase several apartments and shops located at key peripheral sections of the Temple Mount.
The officials said Jordan also set up a commission to use the companies to petition mostly Arab landowners adjacent to eastern sections of the Temple Mount to sell their properties. They said profits from sales at any purchased shops would be reinvested to buy more real estate near the Mount and in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods.
The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned.
Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups. "Khateeb answers directly to Jordan," a Fatah official told WND.
The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem's Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Informed sources tell WND the hotel is owned by groups representing the Israeli government and is leased every 10 years to a new company. The last lease was signed in 1997 and expires later this year. It was not immediately clear whether Jordan's bid was accepted.
The Mount of Olives is site of many biblical events and is considered important to Judaism and Christianity. Real estate ownership in Jerusalem's Old City is widely considered a sensitive matter. Previous Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals tentatively divided parts of the city based on Jewish or Arab residence.
Jordan previously controlled eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from 1948 until Israel liberated the territory in the 1967 Six Day War. During the period of Jordanian control, Jews were barred from the Western Wall and Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest sites, and hundreds of synagogues were destroyed. Jordan constructed a road to the Intercontinental Hotel that stretched across the Mount of Olives, bulldozing hundreds of Jewish gravestones.
Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount. The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.
Last month WND first reported Prime Minister Ehud Olmert granted permission to Jordan to construct a large minaret at a site on the Temple Mount where Jewish groups here had petitioned to build a synagogue. A minaret is a tower usually attached to a mosque from which Muslims are called to the five Islamic daily prayers.
There are four minarets on the Temple Mount. The new minaret will be the largest one yet. It will be the first built on the Temple Mount in more than 600 years and is slated to tower over the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. It will reside next to the Al-Marwani Mosque, located at the site of Solomon's Stables.
A top leader of the Waqf told WND Olmert's granting of permission to build the minaret in the synagogue's place "confirms 100 percent the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) belongs to Muslims."
"This proves Jewish conspiracies for a synagogue will never succeed and solidifies our presence here. It will make Muslims worldwide more secure that the Jews will never take over the Haram al-Sharif," the Waqf official said.
Bill Would Allow Cab Drivers to Remove Passengers Without ID
By Ha'aretz
The Knesset Interior and Environment Committee approved a new bill on Wednesday that would allow taxi drivers to ask passengers for proof that they entered Israel legally.
The bill is designed to prevent taxi drivers from unwittingly transporting Palestinians who entered the country illegally with the intent of carrying out terrorist attacks.
According to the bill, which was passed in a vote of 8-2 in a second and third reading, if the passenger refuses to present identification, the driver will be allowed to refuse their fare.
The committee's chairman, Labor MK Ofir Pines-Paz and other committee members proposed limiting the territory to which the law would to high-risk areas like Jerusalem and areas along the West Bank. They also requested that the Public Security Ministry present the committee with statistics on the number of people illegally residing in Israel who assisted in carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis.
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said he supported the proposal to limit the territory covered by the bill to just certain high-risk areas, saying, "We paid a high price for infiltrations of the seam-line and other areas and Jerusalem has a network of transit stops serving people illegally residing in Israel and are seen as a preferred method of infiltration."
Pines-Paz said the area to be covered by the law will be announced within a month, so that drivers and the police will know in what areas passengers will be required to present identification to drivers who request it.
Pines-Paz stated that if the committee decides to extend the area temporarily covered by the bill, it will be up to the Public Security Ministry to present statistics from the past year on instances of illegal residents who were transported in taxis.
Seaweed Could be Used to Solve Energy Crisis
By Ha'aretz
The dramatic increase in the price of fuel in recent years has succeeded where many environmental groups have failed: It convinced many firms around the world to seek alternative sources of energy. One of the cheapest alternatives, already commercially available is the production of fuel from a variety of agricultural produce, mostly corn.
However, the increase in the demand for corn has also caused a significant price hike and developing nations' populations are experiencing difficulties obtaining corn for consumption.
It is now possible that new technology may offer a solution to the problem, which Israeli firm Seambiotic Ltd. revealed earlier this week. The technology allows the production of commercial quantities of fuel from a surprising source, one that will not undermine global food sources: seaweed.
The new technology unveiled by the firm at an international conference on marine biotechnology that opened on Sunday in Eilat, allows the industrial cultivation of seaweed through the use of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Instead of allowing the polluting gas -one of the main contributors to global warming- to escape into the atmosphere, the gas passes through a filtration process and enters a pool, where it feeds microscopic seaweed. The seaweed is used to produce fuel.
According to the scientists who developed this technology, it is possible to produce a liter of fuel for every five kilograms of seaweed. The technology was developed in the experimental farm set up by Seambiotic Ltd. three years ago in the compound of the Ashkelon power plant, with the support of the Israel Electric Corporation.
The seaweed pools are situated several hundred meters from the power plant smokestacks, and are filled with sea water that is used to cool the plant's turbines. The seaweed used is found in the Mediterranean in small concentrations, but the carbon dioxide allows it to grow in the pools at a concentration of one million times greater.
Last week, the company filed a technology patent in the United States. "In the scientific literature, it is stated that it is impossible to grow seaweed through the use of carbon dioxide from power plants, because of the large quantities of pollutants released from the smokestacks," said Amnon Bachar, director of Seambiotic.
"But it appears that whoever wrote that does not know how to grow seaweed. We have found that seaweed can grow on the basis of the carbon dioxide being emitted from power plants. We get the carbon dioxide for free, and the power plant produces less pollution," he said.
The use of carbon dioxide reduces the cost of production radically, to about 50 cents per kilo of seaweed.
Miss Israel 2007: Meet Liran Kohner
By YnetNews.com
Eighteen-year-old beauty contestant Liran Kohner was crowned Miss Israel for 2007 in a festive event broadcast on nationwide TV Tuesday evening. The pageant organized by the woman's weekly magazine "Laisha" for the 57th time, was held at the Congress Center in Haifa.
Liran, who is about to be recruited into the military will have to find the time to fulfill her various beauty queen obligations including participation in the Miss Universe Contest. She comes from a family of physicians, and hopes that she too will one day become a doctor or a vet. Meanwhile after successfully graduating high school she is awaiting her enlistment into the army.
In between interviews and change of dress, the event included the appearance of artists such as Teapacks, the group selected to appear at the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest and who performed their controversial song "Push the Button."
