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Archive for October, 2008

Is the world financial crisis leading Israelis abroad to come back home?

The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption reports a fifty percent increase in the number of Israelis living abroad applying for state help to return to the country as a result of the world financial crisis. Over the past two months, since the collapse of [...]

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Knesset speaker Dalia Itzik set the elections for February 10, 2009. That’s about 100 days from now.

Here are a few observations from some of the polls released today.

In a Haaretz Dialogue poll, those asked who is most able to deal with Israel’s security problems, 33 percent of respondents answered Netanyahu, 26 percent said Defense Minister [...]

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More from Sarah Palin:
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer
LEESBURG, Virginia (AP) _ Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is meeting with the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. as part of a three-city tour in Virginia.
Monday’s meeting preceded a rally Palin is holding in Leesburg, west of Washington, D.C. Palin greeted ambassador Sallai Meridor and apologized for not [...]

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AqsaTube is back up as of Sunday. Sources tell me that the Foreign Ministry has asked the Russian government to speak to the Russian Internet Service Provider 2X4 to remove AqsaTube from its service, but that the Russians have still not acted. In any case, even if the Russians take AqsaTube down, it seems likely [...]

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The 2008 Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders released today has some fascinating data.
The entire report is here.
Israel’s press freedom, inside the country, ranks at 46 [out of 173; Eritrea is last]
In the West Bank, where Israeli military law is sovereign, Israeli press freedom ranks at 149 [just between the Democratic Republic [...]

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Here are the latest rumors floating around the Middle East:
Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah was poisoned by a highly toxic chemical just a few days ago and his life saved by a special team of 15 Iranian doctors jetted into Lebanon. Which could maybe explain why he’s not going to Egypt.
For starters, what kind of [...]

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Seems there is a coordinated campaign to revive the Saudi Peace Plan, [AKA Arab Peace Initiative]. In what seems like a coordinated media blitz, several regional leaders and commentators have brought it up today.
First, there was Ehud Barak, who said on Army Radio this morning that Israel was seriously reconsidering the plan: “There is room [...]

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AN EVEN MORE UP-TO-DATE UPDATE: Aqsatube is down again. Reuven Erlich of the Terrorism Information Center tells me “they seem to be having trouble, we might be making their lives harder.”
Watch this space.
UPDATE: AqsaTube is back online; and has found a new service provider
The full report from the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center is here. [...]

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Just spoke to Google, who said that after my request for comment, they’ve removed their AdSense program from Hamas’ new AqsaTube website.
Here’s the story published here yesterday:
Hamas, the terrorist group in control of the Gaza Strip, recently launched a new Internet site called “AqsaTube“. It is a file-sharing site enabling users to upload videos. Its [...]

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Acre burning

Violence in the northern mixed city of Acre is continuing Friday, with reports of a near gun battle between an Arab resident of the city and police, who are out in force to calm the situation.
Here are a few interesting statistics about Acre:
According to statistics on the website of the Acre municipality, the average [...]

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Yom Kippur 2008

Young preachers garbed in white bellowing out lessons at a makeshift outdoor open-plan synagogue with a huge picnic mat underneath, on the corners of King George, Bograshov and Bnei Tzion [the bastion of secular Israel these three corners]. Dozens of religious people sit in a circle surrounding the speaker, wives with head coverings, young children [...]

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Someone sent me this today:

Seems you can really let loose and create your own signs here.

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I’m going to keep on updating this post with positive and negative observations as they come up. I know it’s started on the negative side, but what can you do, these are my fellow Israelis:
When you party outside my building – in a residential area – with your friends and scream and shout and spin [...]

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First nightmare: UN Nuclear watchdog IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei says the likelihood that terrorists will detonate a nuclear weapon poses the greatest risk to world security, surpassing proliferation threats from Iran and North Korea.
From Bloomberg:
“There is a lot of interest on the part of extremist groups to obtain nuclear material,” ElBaradei, director-general of the [...]

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BERLIN – Sixty years after World War II and the Holocaust, and according to intelligence sources approximately 18 months until Iran can create a nuclear bomb, the diplomatic relationship between Israel and Germany is moving into high gear as Jerusalem presses Berlin to lead the EU in isolating Teheran. Jerusalem and Berlin agree that Iran [...]

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