The New Fight Against Iran’s Extremism
On the Economic Battlefield
by Israel HighWay Staff

For the last few years, as Iran reached milestone after milestone in its quest to become a nuclear power, the world has struggled with how to stop the growing specter of a nuclear armed Iran. Multiple UN Security Council resolutions have called for negotiations, increased monitoring and sanctions. World leaders from across the political spectrum have made public and private requests of the Iranian leadership, and the U.S and Israel have both alluded to the threat of force. Thus far, the Iranian government, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and backed by the Islamic authorities, has continued its march toward nuclear power.

Iran’s leaders have painted a big bull’s eye on Israel, and the threat is real. Iran has a strong and diverse arsenal – weapons systems from China, Russia, European countries, and their own domestic arms industry. But the weapons in its quiver also include international terrorist organizations under its command, such as Hamas and Hizballah, insurgent forces in Iraq attacking U.S. troops and undermining any remaining order in that torn country, a nuclear enrichment program that could develop into a regional and global threat, and crude oil exports that can be manipulated in order to significantly damage western economies.

How can the United States, Israel and the West counter Iran’s threat? Currently, due to the U.S. struggles in Iraq, an unsettled political situation in Israel, and Europe’s overall distaste for aggressive action (either via military action or a stronger package of sanctions) a military response is considered a very remote possibility. Instead, an economic attack has been launched to force Iran to retreat from its aggressive policies.

Issue of the Week is continued below

Israel: No Quick Fix for Rocket Threat by Steve Weizman

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday he authorized the army to do whatever it takes to halt Palestinian rocket fire, even as an Israeli was killed by a salvo from Gaza; but warned his Cabinet there was no quick solution. A rocket slammed into the town of Sderot, one of nine the Israeli army said struck the area on Sunday, killing a 36-year-old computer technician as he was driving. It was the second time in a week a Palestinian rocket has killed an Israeli there. He said Israel's campaign against the attacks would not be time-limited, nor would the country yield to outside pressure.

Olmert acknowledged there is no immediate military answer to the crude Kassam rockets, which have long baffled Israel's high-tech army. "We don't want to create unrealistic expectations that it's possible to stop the Kassams totally," he said. (AP/ABC News)

Labor Primaries: Barak Wins First Round

Ehud Barak (pictured) won the first round of the battle for the Labor party chairmanship. He beat Ami Ayalon 35.6 to 30.6 percent, but Barak can't declare victory quite yet. Since he failed to break the 40 percent bar necessary to win Labor party primaries, a run-off between the two top contenders will be held on June 12. Voter turnout for the primary elections reached 65.2 percent. Amir Peretz, the current chairman, came in far behind, with 22.4% of the votes. The other two candidates, Ophir Pines-Paz and Danny Yatom, had slightly more than 10% of votes combined. (YNetNews)

Florida Governor Heads to Israel to Promote Business

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida will head to Israel to promote business between the country and Florida. Crist will be traveling with several other business people from the state as well as several legislators. He has meetings scheduled at places including Israel Aerospace Industries and with Israeli leaders. Crist announced his intention to make the trip in his January inaugural address, and it will be his first international trip as governor. (AP/Herald Tribune)

It's Almost Like Being with Them by Michal Lando

Joseph and Shoshana Habob were among a roomful of parents of "lone soldiers" - youngsters serving in the IDF who do not have parents in the country - invited by the Jewish Agency's New York office this week to communicate via a satellite television hookup with their sons and daughters. A similar hookup allowed parents in the Ukraine and Paris to participate as well. For many parents of "lone soldiers," the opportunity to interact with their children was the closest they had come to seeing them in many months. "With all the available technology, this was something different," said Michal Gutman, an aliya emissary in New York who organized the event. "Even though you can speak with your soldier on the phone, this is almost like being with them."

The group of parents encapsulated the diversity of the local Jewish community. But what they share is the experience of having a child serve in an army who is thousands of miles away. This is what the Jewish Agency was trying to emphasize when it decided to organize the global link between the parents and their children, the first time a satellite conference of this kind has been arranged. (Jerusalem Post)

Student Web Hasbara Project 'Eye 2 Eye' Gives Teens Worldwide a Glimpse of Israel by Dina Feuchtwanger

Some extremely motivated ORT Israel students have created a Web site with the purpose of educating students around the globe on news and life in Israel. "Eye 2 Israel," the first hasbara (public relations) project of its kind, was established this past year and combines the efforts of 8th to 11th graders at ORT Israel high-schools with those of the Foreign Ministry to educate adolescents worldwide on topics relating to the state of Israel.

As part of the project, hasbara experts from the Foreign Ministry will instruct approximately 40 students from ORT Israel schools around the country on a monthly basis and help them develop the tools they need to do hasbara themselves. The Web site itself, is currently in English, and there are French, Arabic, Russian, and Spanish Web sites in the works, as well. The site aims to pass over a reliable, dynamic, and matter-of-fact message from adolescents living in Israel to their peers around the world. (Jerusalem Post)

A Young Briton's Fight for Israel by Tim Franks

Raoul Wootliff has, for the last 18 months, been studying in the Old City at a yeshiva, a religious college. He came to Jerusalem, from London, just as he turned 19. He wanted to expand and build on his Jewish identity. On this March day, his journey will take a new turn. Raoul is going to Bakoum - the army base which processes most new recruits. "Me being from England," he says "doesn't separate me from the fact that I'm a Jew. I feel that this army is not just an army for Israelis, by Israelis. It's an army for Jews - that is integral to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century." (BBC News)

Israel to Host Basketball Tournament to Promote Peace, Friendship

With a donation from the NBA's Atlanta Hawks co-owner Ed Peskowitz, Tel Aviv Uuniversity will host The Second Annual Friendship Games basketball tournament in June. Slated to begin on June 3 at TAU, the tournament will give Israeli audience a rare chance to watch the competitions of men and women's teams from 17 countries and regions including Palestine, Jordan, Russia, China, Serbia, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Cyprus, Slovenia and Israel. There will be an opening ceremony in the Arab village of Zemer on June 1.

Arie Rosenzweig, athletic director at TAU, was quoted as saying that, "It was important that Arab countries would participate and that we could find a vehicle for us to get to know each other. All of us have a mutual interest in basketball so this game was the natural choice." We are not going to change the world," said Alan Peskowitz, the Atlanta Hawks Co-owner. "But you can either wring your hands over seemingly insolvable problems or try to make a difference. This is our attempt to help people find common themes, common hopes, and common dreams, rather than focusing on their differences." (People's Daily - China)

Working for the Release of Israeli Soldiers by Shayna Schor, Jessica Bramnick, Jon Landau and Vered Idan

In Jewish life, it is a mitzvah to help others in need. As students of a day school, we believe in the value of helping others. During this difficult time, we truly feel that the mitzvah of Pidyon Shvuiim, redeeming of captives, is one of the most important to abide by. Three Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev and Gilad Shalit were kidnapped more than 310 days ago; they remain in captivity as we speak (despite UN Resolution 1701 which emphasized their being freed as part of the cease fire agreement that was put into effect last summer) and the families are still unsure of the condition of the young men.

Since the beginning of the year, the Activists for Israel Club students at our school have taken this issue into our own hands, as we believe that we have the potential to make a difference. The online petition we launched received over 1100 signatures; the petition text and signatures have been sent to the following powers: President Dahda of the Lebanese Red Cross, President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Our group of committed students had the fortunate opportunity to hear Ms. Karnit Goldwasser, wife of Ehud, speak to members of our MetroWest NJ community. Karnit has been traveling all around the world since last summer speaking to concerned citizens as well as government officials about the vitality of our immediate actions. Additionally, she emphasized the need to urge our congressmen to sign SR94, a bill which calls on the UN to help free the three Israelis, who are being held captive in violation of international law. We asked each student at our school to sign a letter to our congressmen that we composed, passing Karnit's message on and fulfilling her requests. This easy method is extremely effective, and we encourage you to do the same.

We pray with the Goldwasser, Regev and Shalit families for a healthy, safe and speedy return; we would like to commend them for working so hard to ensure that their voices be heard, and wish them comfort during this difficult time. For more information on the soldiers, please visit www.habanim.org.

The writers, Shayna Schor and Jessica Bramnick (9th grade), Jon Landau (10th) and Vered Idan (11th), are activists for Israel Club at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union. (Special to the Israel HighWay)

'NCIS' Regular Visits Character's Homeland by Maureen Ryan

For two seasons now, Cote de Pablo, who was born in Chile and raised in Miami, has played Ziva David, an Israeli Mossad agent assigned to the "NCIS" investigative team. But the actress had never been to Israel. Until now. The actress recently returned from her jaunt to Israel, and it sounded as though her head was still spinning. She said she loved the place and thought it gave her new insight into her driven character.

"I'm still trying to digest everything," de Pablo said. "Everywhere you go, you're surrounded by Muslims and Christians and Jews, you can feel the tension, and you can understand why that is going on, but at the same time, everywhere you walk is holy. I went to [the historic fort] Masada, I floated on the Dead Sea." Another experience that made a big impression on her was a visit to Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. People are so gorgeous, but they're really laid back. And they're incredibly well-informed about what's going on in the world," she noted. (Chicago Tribune)

A Small Global Village Converges at the Israel Festival
by Simona Kogan

Chinese acrobats, Uzbek actors, French and African dance troupes, a Dutch puppet master, and a professional bubble maker from Spain are just a few of the international acts from across the globe making their way to Israel for the 46th annual Israel Festival from May 25-June 6 in what festival director Yossi Talgan deems "an interruption of cultures." The two-week event features an amalgamation of diverse Israeli and international productions that include dance performances in Tel Aviv, children's plays in Holon, and indoor and outdoor showcases in Jerusalem. For the first time in ten years, Haifa will also feature various theatrical productions of the festival. (Israel21c)

It's a Family Thing by Barry Davis

There have been several illustrious three-member sibling jazz bands over the years - the Heath brothers and the Jones threesome all made their mark through the golden age of jazz in the 1940s and 1950s and beyond. But - with all due respect to the aforementioned titans of the jazz fraternity - the Cohens siblings are "our very own."

Saxophonist Yuval, saxophonist-clarinetist Anat (pictured) and trumpeter Avishai Cohen (in descending chronological order) have been spinning their familial musical magic for over five years now. Anat and Avishai have been making a splash on the New York scene for half a dozen or so years, while Yuval is one of the mainstays of the local jazz community, and recently released his debut album as leader. This week, the Cohens will combine their formidable sibling talents and energies at two concerts, at Avi Hai House in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv's Stricker Auditorium respectively. (Jerusalem Post)

Ayala's Independent Aliyah by Nathan Burstein

Ayala Ingedashet is the first of her kind in Israel: the first Ethiopian-born solo artist backed in a serious way by a major record label. The album, self-titled and stylishly packaged, deserves the support. Though the title of its first track means "To Move," most of the album serves as the auditory equivalent of a warm bath, broken up here and there, perhaps, with the soothing rhythms of a massage. Now a resident of northern Tel Aviv, Ingedashet began her life in what sometimes seems a distant universe, an impoverished village not far from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. She came here with her parents as a two-year-old in 1981, years before airlifts organized by the government would bring tens of thousands of additional Ethiopian Jews. Listen to her music here. (Jerusalem Post)

Gaza in Flames, Again Editorial

Two summers ago there were hopes that Gaza would bloom. That it would show the Palestinians' ability to rule themselves. That hasn't happened. The internal violence and the missiles launched from Gaza give little hope that a Palestinian state would be a peaceful one. Some people blame democracy for the chaos in Gaza. They argue that opening the parliamentary ballot to Hamas candidates was a blunder because it created the current crisis. But the failure in Gaza is not the fault of democracy. It's a gross failure of leadership to represent the interests of their people and establish peace and a Palestinian state. (Chicago Tribune)

Sderot Is Us by Ari Shavit

Every night, Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal (pictured) tours his city, checking the number of houses with lights on. At its height, Sderot had a population of 24,000, but now, with the refugees whom Hamas chased out being scattered throughout the country, no more than 10,000 people remain in the city. Sderot is the litmus test that will teach us what we can expect in the future. The struggle for Sderot should be viewed as a struggle for Israeli sovereignty. Sderot is all of us. We rise and fall with Sderot. (Ha'aretz)

See also:

View the videos, activities and reports of the Sderot Media Center.

Want to volunteer? Sderot's residents need you (YnetNews)

The sheriff of Sderot, by Rebecca Anna Stoil (Jerusalem Post)