Death rhetoric from Iran

Iran’s supreme leader again spoke of Israel’s destruction. “Today, officials of the Zionist regime acknowledge that they are moving toward weakness, destruction and defeat,” Ayatollah Ali Khameini said in remarks. “Definitely, the world of Islam will see that day and hope the existing generation of the Palestinian people will watch the day Palestine is at the disposal of the Palestinian people, in the hands of the landlords.” Khameini also promised to stand by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that controls Gaza. Israel’s ambassador to the United States said that Khameini’s rhetoric was especially dangerous as Iran nears its suspected goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon. “Not since World War II has the world faced such a dangerous and significant threat,” Sallai Meridor said in a statement. “The fanatical Iranian regime, a sponsor of global terror, is threatening the elimination of another state and is striving to achieve a nuclear weapon. This should be a moment of truth for the world to take immediate actions to prevent this regime from pursuing the development of a military nuclear capability.”

Hezbollah threatens north

Hezbollah warned that it will “soon liberate” the Shebaa Farms and the divided village of Ghajar, Lebanon’s Daily Star reported last Friday. Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, Hezbollah’s leader in southern Lebanon, told supporters in the border village of Abbasieh that diplomacy over the areas had failed and the only way to regain control of the land was to use force, according to the report. “The only guaranteed way to recover the remaining occupied land is the resistance and nothing else,” Qaouk said. He added that it was Hezbollah’s national duty to fulfil the achievements it had begun with the Israel Defense Forces’ withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, according to the report.

Terrorism not an ‘act of war’

Israeli media reported that a U.S. judge allowed a lawsuit against the PLO to go forward, saying acts of terror cannot be defined as “acts of war.”
Judge George Daniels of the Manhattan District Court dismissed claims by lawyers for the Palestine Liberation Organization that attacks committed between 2001 and 2004 were “acts of war” and immune from tort action. The ruling will allow a $3-billion lawsuit filed by victims and their families to go to trial. Daniels wrote in his ruling that the attacks targeted “non-combative civilians who were allegedly simply going about their everyday lives” and “do not constitute acts of war.” At least 33 people were killed in the attacks at a Hebrew University cafeteria, on Jerusalem streets and on buses. The attacks suggested a “merciless capability of indiscriminately killing and maiming untold numbers in heavily populated civilian areas,” Daniels wrote.

Probe into al-Dura case

Israeli media reported that a new French committee will investigate the death of the Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, who, according to a French television report, was killed by Israel Defence Forces gunfire on Sept. 30, 2000, the first day of the second intifadah. The committee, set up by the French public broadcasting authority, will examine the validity of the original television report in light of repeated accusations that it was deliberately falsified.
–  from JTA and Ha’aretz