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Earlier this week, the Israeli Foreign Ministry workers' committee voted to empower the Histadrut to declare a work dispute on its behalf. The workers are upset over a proposed reduction in overtime. In other committee action, the workers, with time on their hands, passed a resolution stating that they refused to move into the new custom-built, Foreign Ministry building that's just about ready for occupancy. These moves are only the latest indicators of the attitude that seems to prevail among the people charged with presenting Israel's face to the world. Israel's Foreign Ministry employs 1,000 workers, 500 in Israel ...

Saturday, February 9, 2002 Former US Consul Abington and an Israeli wrote Arafat's New York Times op-ed Aaron Lerner Date: 8 February 2002 Ha'aretz Correspondent Amir Oren reported in his weekly column in today's Hebrew edition of Ha'aretz that Edward Abington, who was the United States consul general in Jerusalem until 1997 and is now Arafat's top paid lobbyist in Washington, drafted Yasser Arafat's op-ed piece that appeared in last Sunday's New York Times along with "one of the Israeli 'guardians of Oslo'". Saeb Erekat put the finishing touches on the article.

WASHINGTON, —Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday accused Iran of helping Taliban and al Qaeda fighters to flee a U.S. military assault on Afghanistan. Asked on the ABC "This Week" program if he could confirm a Time magazine report that Tehran helped Islamic militants to escape across the border, Rumsfeld replied: "I can." More here

Filed at 11:33 a.m. ET BEIRUT (Reuters) - A senior Hizbollah leader lashed out against President Bush Sunday, labeling him the ``Great Satan'' and dismissing U.S. accusations that the Lebanese guerrilla group is ``terrorist'' organization. ``Bush is faithful to Satan, was his devotee, and is the greatest devotee in a leadership thirsty for killing and blood and aggression,'' Hizbollah's deputy secretary-general Sheikh Naeem Kassem told a rally. Kassem's comments are the first from the Shi'ite Muslim group since Bush accused Hizbollah of being part of a ''terrorist underworld'' in his State of the Union address Tuesday. Bush also called Iran, ...

In July 2001, Elie Hobeika called a press conference to announce that when the time came he would "reveal many important secrets that deal with many people" in Lebanon. The press conference puzzled a lot of people in Lebanon and there was a flood of press articles demanding he say what he knew. Maronite members of the opposition, close to former Lebanese Christian strongman, General Michel Aoun, reached the conclusion that Hobeika was trying to shake off the Syrians, particularly Razi Cana'an, head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, after Hobeika fell out with Damascus. A short while later, Hobeika announced ...

<p>Remember how it felt on the morning of September 11? One plane hit one World Trade Center tower; possibly an accident. A second plane struck the second tower; the odds of that happening by accident were well beyond belief. Then a third plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.</p>

<p>By Melanie Phillips, a columnist with the Daily Mail in London.</p> <p>Since the war against terror started, polite British society has found an enemy to target. It's neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda, however -- it's the state of Israel and Jews in general.</p>

ONDON, Dec. 21 — London's chattering classes are chewing over a drawing room scandal called, in a rare instance of English gentry venturing a phrase in a foreign tongue, "l'affaire Bernard." It is a melodrama with a rich cast of characters. There is a press baron, a lord, a silken diplomat, a high- society writer, one of the capital's most vivacious hostesses and the requisite figure for any English farce — a Continental caught unawares. To the delight of the British press, which has covered the matter in voluptuous detail, this last role was taken up by the French ambassador. ...

Poll: Bush a hit among US Jewish voters By Melissa Radler December, 16 2001 NEW YORK (December 16) -- Impressed with his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks and wowed by his unwavering support for Israel, US Jewish voters are switching allegiances away from the Democratic Party to President George W. Bush, according to a new poll commission by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). The poll, which surveyed 400 registered Jewish voters from November 28 to 29 and has a margin of error of 4.9%, shows Bush's approval rating among Jews at 80% -- four times the percentage of ...

(20:40) Palestinians on suicide bomber: 'We are proud of him' By Mohammed Daraghmeh, The Associated Press December, 02 2001 NABLUS, West Bank – The suicide bomber who blew himself up on an Egged bus in Haifa today was a 21-year-old plumber who had gotten engaged six weeks ago and was preparing for his wedding, his stunned father said. Muhiy Habashi, 65, said he had no idea his son, Maher, had been recruited by the Islamic militant group Hamas. One of the assailant's younger brothers broke down in tears and had to be restrained while his mother sat in a ...

n investment group that includes the company of the publisher Conrad M. Black said yesterday that it planned to start printing a new daily newspaper in New York City in the first few months of next year. The newspaper will "be very upmarket, certainly neoconservative in its ideological views," said Daniel W. Colson, the vice chairman of Mr. Black's company, Hollinger International (news/quote). The newspaper, which will be called The New York Sun, will start publishing at a time when advertising revenues are in a sharp decline because of the weakening economy. The Sun will enter one of the nation's ...

l Jazeera is not subtle television. Recently, during a lull in its nonstop coverage of the raids on Kabul and the street battles of Bethlehem, the Arabic-language satellite news station showed an odd but telling episode of its documentary program ''Biography and Secrets.'' The show's subject was Ernesto (Che) Guevara. Presenting Che as a romantic, doomed hero, the documentary recounted the Marxist rebel's last stand in the remote mountains of Bolivia, lingering mournfully over the details of his capture and execution. Even Che's corpse received a lot of airtime; Al Jazeera loves grisly footage and is never shy about presenting ...

Arafat orders Islamic Jihad leader freed after Jenin riots By Lamia Lahoud, Arieh O'Sullivan, and Herb Keinon November, 15 2001 JERUSALEM (November 15) - Senior Islamic Jihad terrorist Mahmoud Tawalbi was arrested yesterday by Palestinian police, then ordered released by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat after riots broke out in Jenin. A senior PA source said the arrest had not been cleared with Arafat. PA security agents, whom the source said were operating under West Bank Preventive Security Service chief Jibril Rajoub's orders, arrested Tawalbi, known as "Nursi," who tops Israel's most wanted list. About 3,000 Palestinians protesting the ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The cockpit voice recorder recovered from American Airlines Flight 587 captured the sound of the plane loudly rattling twice before the pilots lost control after take-off, investigators said on Tuesday as they sought the cause of the crash that killed up to 265 people. Evidence from the plane, the voice recorder recovered along with the flight data recorder, and the crash site near John F. Kennedy International Airport initially yielded no signs of internal engine failure or a criminal act, said officials with the National Transportation Safety Board. But, said NTSB investigator George Black at a ...

UWAIT, Nov. 10 — Osama bin Laden is not being portrayed as a hero in the Arab media. But neither is the American war in Afghanistan being portrayed as anything heroic, or even wise or necessary. Instead, the main message delivered by most Arab newspapers and television has been that the United States has moved arrogantly, blindly, even callously into conflict in a country that it does not understand, and that the consequences could be worse than if the Americans had left well enough alone. The dominant images in the Arab media have not been of warplanes roaring off the ...

JERUSALEM, Nov. 10 - For more than 20 years, a name with a plain message has animated the broadest Israeli movement to end the conflict with Palestinians: Peace Now. But now, it seems, was then, or perhaps peace was a dream. Out of realism or despair, and with a darkened sense of humor, the mainstays of the Peace Now movement are casting about for alternatives. They talk about a "Deal Now" or even an "Arrangement Now." " 'Peace' implies the idea of a warm peace with Palestinians, which went up in flames," said Janet Aviad, a leader of the movement ...

THE RECKLESS MIND By Mark Lilla (New York Review, 216 pages, $24.95) RECENT EVENTS have had many baleful effects, not least on the peace of mind of American citizens. But they have also reminded many of us, in a tonic way, of the fragility of civilized order. Indeed, a clarifying act of malevolence has led Americans to reaffirm the virtues of liberal civilization, to confront the reality of evil and to think about the sacrifices that citizenship requires. The one exception seems to be the academy, where prominent voices blame America first and demand sympathy for The Other, the supposed ...

They have blown up cars and kitchens. They have fired missiles from combat helicopters hovering several miles away. They have picked off their victims from afar with high-powered snipers' rifles. There are even plausible claims that they &#150; or their collaborators &#150; have planted explosive devices in telephone receivers and car headrests that blow off a man's head in an instant. Israel's death squads have not lacked ingenuity in the manner in which they have pursued their government's policy of assassinating suspects in the 14-month war with the Palestinians. Exactly a year has elapsed since Israel first restored extra-judicial ...

ompassionate Conservatism&#148; bombs again in New Jersey. With a message designed to &quot;reach out to minorities in the inner cities,&quot; Bret Schundler joined a legion of other Republicans who failed at trying to reinvent the wheel. Schundler got exactly the same 42 percent vote G. W. Bush received last year &#151; almost exactly district by district &#151; and proved once again that Republican efforts to attract urban black votes are counterproductive. Schundler's message of &quot;empowerment&quot; didn't attract black votes and turned off the white, Catholic, suburban men. And without the energized white, Catholic, suburban male vote, you cannot win as ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The borders and entry points to the United States leak like sieves, offering the nation little or no protection against potential terrorists who can enter the country undetected, immigration experts said on Tuesday. "It should be universally recognized that our borders are out of control," said Bill King, a retired senior Border Patrol agent and former head of the Border Patrol Academy. King told a seminar organized by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think-tank, that there were almost 9 million people illegally residing in the United States. "They can be job seekers, criminals, disease ...