Israel Update for April 2007



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Illustrating just how destructive such rockets can be, an Israeli web site revealed in April some very disturbing news that had been classified until then. As this reporter and others learned last July, a Hizbullah missile landed inside the grounds of Haifa's main oil refinery during the war, located along Haifa Bay. Had it struck only several dozen feet away, it would have landed upon a chemical storage facility located in the compound, probably releasing tons of poisonous gasses into the air over Israel's third largest urban area.

That exact chilling scenario was described to me by Haifa's mayor, Yonah Yahav, when I interviewed him at a funeral for an American teenage girl, killed in a terrorist attack upon a Haifa city bus in March 2003. With the US-British assault upon the Baathist regime in Iraq about to begin, Yahav revealed that Israeli officials were far more concerned over a potential Hizbullah strike upon the oil refinery-which he said could release toxic fumes upon the city and kill thousands of people-than they were with Saddam's reported non-conventional weapons arsenal, which he pointed out had probably already been transported anyway from Iraq into Syria.

Peace...Peace...

Soon after PM Olmert announced his willingness during April to accept major portions of the Saudi peace initiative, he felt compelled to denounce the Palestinian leadership for putting forth "unreasonable demands" during negotiations for a widely anticipated prisoner swap designed to free Gilad Shalit. Media reports said the PA wants hundreds of Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for the captured IDF soldier, taken by Hamas infiltrators near the Gaza Strip last June. Controversy especially surrounded the PA's declared intention to secure freedom for Marwan Barghouti, sentenced to life for orchestrating a series of terror assaults that left dozens of Israeli civilians dead or wounded earlier this decade. All of this came as the whereabouts and condition of kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston, stationed in the Gaza Strip for over three years before his March 12 abduction, remained unknown, and as Muslim groups bombed several more internet cafes and a Christian book shop and school in Gaza City.

The Israeli public was shocked to learn that one of its own had been slaughtered during April's horrendous Virginia Tech massacre in America. Still, the fact that Professor Liviu Librescu, a 76 year old holocaust survivor, was shot dead on Israel's annual Holocaust Memorial Day while bravely protecting his young students from the lone gunman, was a source of bittersweet pride. It also acted as a reminder that life is not only dangerous for Jews living in Israel. Indeed, the God of Israel has promised to watch over and deliver His people living in their biblical homeland, even in times of conflict. "And the Lord their God will save them in that day, as the flock of His people. For they are as the stones of a crown, sparkling in His land" (Zechariah 9:16).  CR

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