http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=119301
Terror-Supporting American Imam 'Secretly' Extradited to Israel
00:50 Jan 12, '07 / 22 Tevet 5767
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

The former imam of Ohio's largest mosque was deported to Israel on a "secret flight" coordinated by the FBI and Israeli security services, according to an official statement released on Thursday.

The Islamic Center of Cleveland's Fawaz Damra had his American citizenship revoked after he was found to have been raising funds for the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in 1991. FBI sources called him a threat to national security, as the United States classifies Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organization. The Islamic Jihad is responsible for many fatal shooting and bombing attacks on civilians and security forces in Israel.

Damra's family requested that he be represented by Attorney Smadar Ben-Natan, who met with her new client on Wednesday at Kishon prison, where he is being held. Ben-Natan said that Damra has yet to be charged with any crimes by Israeli prosecutors, but that he is being closely questioned by Israeli security services. Also on Wednesday, a judge ordered Damra remanded for two weeks, at which time he will again be brought before a judge for a decision regarding further incarceration.

While still in FBI custody, Damra, 46, confirmed to investigators that he had raised money for terrorists, as well as having preached against Israel and the Jews, whom he called "sons of pigs and monkeys." Videotaped lectures with such anti-Semitic incitement were distributed in the US to raise funds for Islamic Jihad.

Other suspicions against Damra were raised in 2004, when it was determined that he had concealed his past associations from American immigration officials ten years earlier. Among the claims US officials have made regarding Damra's past are allegations that he was associated with Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin-Laden and with the murderer of Rabbi Meir Kahane, El-Sayyid Nosair, in the 1980s, that he was involved in counterfeiting and money laundering on behalf of Islamist groups through his mosque, and that he specifically raised funds for families of suicide bombers. He has also been involved in obstructing an FBI investigation.

Damra has claimed, however, that his world-view changed in 1993 when he began to attend university. He also has reportedly worked for organizations focusing on interfaith dialogue, although he did so even as his incitement-filled tapes were still being distributed.

Before details of the arranged extradition were released, it was reported that Damra, who was born in Shechem (Nablus) in Samaria, was to be welcomed into the Palestinian Authority. On Friday, his family members were informed by the Red Cross only that Damra had been detained by the Israelis at a border crossing.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/23/world/main682673.shtml
Israel's Sex Trade Escalating
3,000-5,000 Women Smuggled Into Country In Last Four Years

JERUSALEM, March 23, 2005

The report said women are sold to pimps for as much as $10,000 each, work 14-18 hours a day, charge about $30 a client but receive only a small fraction of the money for themselves.

(AP) Between 3,000 and 5,000 women have been smuggled into Israel over the past four years in a burgeoning, illegal sex industry, according to a parliamentary committee report issued Wednesday.

Zehava Galon, who heads the Committee Against Trade in Women, said the four-year inquiry showed how women are smuggled across the Egyptian border into Israel and "along the way, raped, beaten and then sold in public auctions." Most of the women are from the former Soviet Union, she said.

Galon, from the opposition Yahad Party, presented the report on Wednesday to the speaker of the parliament, Reuven Rivlin.

The panel faulted judges for light sentences, sometimes only community service, for men running the prostitution rings. The report called for minimum jail terms of 16 years instead.

The report said women are sold to pimps for as much as $10,000 each, work 14-18 hours a day, charge about $30 a client but receive only a small fraction of the money for themselves.

Galon said the biggest challenge in addressing the plight of foreign sex slavery in Israel was to change the attitudes of the public, and especially the police.

When the committee met with the law enforcement agencies, she said, "the prevailing attitude was to treat the women as illegal residents."

Since then the police have slowly begun to see the women as victims of crime, she said.

another older report on the Sex Slavery Trade in Israel
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/23/world/main682673.shtml

http://www.imemc.org/article/46504
Israeli Knesset passes law to revoke citizenship of \'unpatriotic\' Israelis
Wednesday January 10, 2007 23:12 by Saed Bannoura

A new law passed Wednesday will allow the Israeli government to revoke the citizenship of citizens considered unpatriotic to the Jewish state of Israel. The law is expected to be applied especially to the 20% of Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian origin.

Passage of the controversial law comes just as a torrent of criticism was launched by Knesset member Ahmed Tibi against the Knesset for alleged discrimination against its Arab members. Tibi accused the Knesset of discriminatory practices, in which Arab members are required to ask permission, even to use the bathroom, while Jewish members of the Knesset are not.

The new law, passed despite a recommendation against it by the Israeli Attorney General, allows for the deportation and revocation of citizenship of Israelis for a wide range of offenses, including "visiting enemy nations" and "encouraging terror against Israel", with the latter being so open to interpretation that many Palestinians with Israeli citizenship fear that simply being Palestinian will be reason enough for Israeli officials to revoke their citizenship.

The Israeli Attorney General called the law, "a drastic and extreme move that harms civil liberties." He also stated that the new law violates international law.

http://www.imemc.org/article/46503
Hamas: Israel is a reality; but recognition will only come when Israel recognizes Palestine
Wednesday January 10, 2007 21:47 by Saed Bannoura

Khaled Meshaal, the politburo spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, responded on Wednesday to the Israeli claim that Hamas "does not recognize Israel", saying that, in fact, Israel as a state is a reality, but adding that the real problem is that Israel does not recognize Palestine, or the right of Palestinians to have their own state.

In an interview with the Reuters News Agency, the Hamas leader, currently exiled in Syria, said, "As a Palestinian today I speak of a Palestinian and Arab demand for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land."

The state of Israel has refused to accept the Palestinian demand for a state, instead occupying all Palestinian land with a military occupation since 1967. In that time period, over 500,000 Israeli civilians have been transferred onto Palestinian land to live in settlements, in an attempt to expand the land area occupied by the state of Israel. Israel has never defined its own borders since the state's creation in 1948.

Meshaal's statement Wednesday did not differ considerably from an earlier statement from Hamas in June 2006, in which the party raised the possibility that they would recognize a state of Israel within the 1967 borders if Israel also recognized the Palestinian state. At that time, however, the statement, though heralded as a change of policy by Hamas, did not receive much publicity, and was followed by a three-month long Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in which over 400 Palestinian civilians were killed by invading Israeli forces.

The Hamas party, elected by the Palestinian people to a majority in the Palestinian Parliament in January, has been under international pressure to accept Israeli demands. The demands include a recognition of Israel, the renunciation of the use of violence in resisting the Israeli occupation of their land, and the acceptance of past peace accords brokered with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people by the rival Palestinian political party, Fateh.

Hamas did agree in June to recognize Israel if Israel recognized Palestine, to renounce violence if Israel also renounced violence, and to use the past peace accord as a basis for peace talks with Israel. But despite that fact, the Israeli and international pressure has remained in place, pressure which includes the illegal seizure of Palestinian import tax money by the Israeli government, and international sanctions on the Palestinian people. The sanctions are the first in history implemented against a population that is under military occupation.

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=18523
Peretz announces the cessation of work on the separation wall in the Dead Sea area
Date: 09 / 01 / 2007 Time: 17:08

Jerusalem - Ma'an - Amir Peretz, the Israeli defense minister has released a decree to freeze the current work on the wall in the Dead Sea area and to seek alternatives.

Israeli broadcast radio informed Ma'an that Peretz' decree came in response to Israeli parliamentary members from the national union party, who questioned him about the effects of the wall on the environment and nature in the area.

The regional council in Hebron welcomed the decree, stating, ''security may be stronger through the use of electronic cameras instead of the wall."