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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1791724/posts

Smoke bomb thrown into Jewish kindergarten in Berlin
EJP ^ | Feb. 26, 2007 | Oliver Bradley

Posted on 02/26/2007 7:15:40 PM PST by Alouette

BERLIN (EJP)--- A tragedy was avoided on Sunday after a smoke bomb, thrown through a window of a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin, failed to ignite.

However, the school, located in a northwest neighbourhood of the German capital, was not spared by the spray painting of swastikas, other Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic phrases, such as “Auschwitz,” “Juden Raus” (Jews, get out) and “Sieg Heil”, on its outer walls, as well as on toys that had been lying around in the school’s playground.

A police spokesman said the attack did not cause serious damage or endanger children or staff at the school.

Berlin’s Interior Minister Ehrhart Körting condemned the attack as a "cowardly act" and called it “a particularly brutal one…one that had taken anti-Semitic acts to a new dimension”.

First time

Although individual Jewish children have occasionally been victims of anti-Semitism, it is the first time that an entire school had been targeted in Germany.

So far, no suspects have been found. Police are still investigating when exactly the attack took place and appealed for witnesses.

However, it seems as if it was planned to coincide with the inauguration of a new Torah scroll which took place on Sunday, several kilometres away, at the Chabad Lubavitch synagogue of the Jewish Family and Education Centre which runs the school.

“It was a miracle that the smoke bomb did not get off,” Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal of Chabad Lubavitch in Berlin, said.

The school is located in a villa, in a quiet park of the city’s Charlottenburg district.

Because the location had only been considered as temporary, the property was not secured in the same way that other Jewish buildings.

Instead of round-the-clock police protection, security guards came only in hourly intervals.

Three months after Vienna

The attack happened exactly three months to day after a Croatian national broke into the Lauder Chabad School in Vienna, Austria, and systematically smashed windows and porcelain with a crowbar.

The man, who called himself “Adolf Hitler”, later admitted that he was driven by anti-Semitic sentiments.

Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has accused the Berlin State Senate as well as Berlin’s local Jewish community of not having taken the necessary precautions to help divert such an attack.

“In today’s world, we know that such attacks are possible and could strike at any time… It is beyond me how security could have been so lax”.

Kramer was embarrassed that rabbis from around the world that were present at the Torah inauguration ceremony, had to experience first hand what an anti-Semitic act in Germany meant.

Gideon Joffe, who heads Berlin’s Jewish community, called the attack “a natural development resulting from last year’s election of several extreme right wing politicians to Berlin’s local parliament”.

Last summer, Stephan Kramer made public his concerns about the acute threat posed to Jewish sites in Germany.

Although Wolfgang Bosbach, vice president of the ruling Christian Democratic parliamentary group, and Dieter Wiefelspuetz, speaker of the Social Democratic parliamentary group, believed that there was no official indication of an increase in danger for Jewish buildings, Konrad Freiberg, chairman of the police union, predicted the contrary.

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1791766/posts

Sri Lanka - U.S. Ambassador "slightly wounded" in rebel attack - Italy's ambassador also injured
AFP via translation | February 27, 2007

Posted on 02/26/2007 9:44:08 PM PST by HAL9000

Sri Lanka: ambassadors Italian and US wounded in a rebellious offensive

COLOMBO - The ambassadors American and Italian in Sri Lanka were wounded Tuesday in an offensive with artillery carried out by rebels tamouls supposed in the east of the island, indicated to AFP the minister human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe.

The ambassador Robert Blake and his Italian counterpart Prio Mariani were touched by glares of shells which struck the landing strip of the air base of Batticaloa at the time when the diplomats left a military helicopter, specified the Samarasinghe minister.

Mr. Mariani was touched with the head, without the gravity of his wounds being known, and was transported to the local hospital with eleven others wounded, indicated the director of the establishment Muruganathan Moorthy.

The American ambassador “is slightly wounded”, added the Samarasinghe minister.

TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: AMBASSADOR; BLAKE; COLOMBO; ITALY; LTTE; MARIANI; PRIOMARIANI; ROBERTBLAKE; SAMARASINGHE; SRILANKA; TAMILTIGERS; USAMBASSADOR; Click to Add Keyword
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1 posted on 02/26/2007 9:44:16 PM PST by HAL9000
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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54451

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
"Plowshares beaten into swords in Gaza
Palestinians: 'Looting and burning' of Jewish holy sites 'was a great joy'"
Posted: February 27, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

TEL AVIV –

ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Immediately after the Israeli evacuation was completed, Palestinians mobs destroyed most of the Gaza synagogues, including two major synagogues in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gush Katif community. In front of international camera crews, the Palestinians ripped off aluminum window frames and metal ceiling fixtures from the Neve Dekalim synagogues, which were situation close to each other in the center of town. Militants flew the Palestinian and Hamas flags from the structures before mobs burned down the synagogues.

Speaking to WND from Gaza, Abu Abir, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization, said the area where the synagogues once stood now is used to fire rockets at Israel.

"We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice, like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity," Abu Abir said.

(Story continues below)

"The liberated lands of the destroyed ugly and Nazi settlements [Gush Katif] is our property, and we have the right to do whatever we feel is suitable for the struggle against the occupation and for the general interest of the Palestinian people," the Committees leader said.

The Committees is a coalition of terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank responsible for launching hundreds of rockets from Gaza aimed at nearby Jewish towns. The group is accused of bombing a U.S. convoy in Gaza in 2003 in which three American government contractors were killed.

Abu Abir blamed the Palestinian desecration of the Gaza synagogues on the Jewish state, claiming the decision to leave the structures in tact was part of an Israeli conspiracy.

"The Zionists left these so called synagogues in order to make that one day media outlets like WorldNetDaily would raise the pathetic and rude argument about what we have done to the poor Zionists holy places. (Israel) left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them," Abu Abir said.

The terrorist leader claimed the mob destruction of the synagogues was not planned but was a spontaneous outburst of "happiness."

"The looting and burning of the synagogues was a great joy."