By: CAROL KATZMAN Omaha Jewish Press

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2004/08/26/news/local/dscam0827.prt

It was bad enough when millions of e-mail users found themselves bombarded with fraudulent pleas from Nigerian scammers.

But last week, a new scam arrived in e-mail boxes ... this one using the Holocaust to try to defraud unsuspecting responders.

Coming from a "Mr. George Graham, a member of Independent Committee of Eminent Persons (ICEP), Switzerland," the e-mail states that the "Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT) handles processing of all claims on accounts due non-Swiss citizens. A dormant account of 'ORDNER ADELE' with a credit balance of 50,000,000 US dollar plus accumulated interest was discovered by me. The beneficiary was murdered during the holocaust (sic) era, leaving no will and no possible records for trace of heirs."

And, of course, Graham - like the Nigerian scammers before him, makes this highly suspect request: "Being a member of ICEP, I have all secret details and necessary contacts for claim of the funds without any hitch. The funds will be banked in any country of your choice outside Switzerland or a tax free country, where we can safely withdrew the funds and...share the funds and use it for investment of our choice. Due to the sensitive nature of my job, I need a foreigner to help claim the funds."

What does the "helpful" Graham want from the e-mail recipient? "All that is required of you is to provide me with your details for processing of the necessary legal and administrative claim documents for transfer of the funds to you." In other words, Graham wants details like your bank's name, your name and your account number.

Fat chance he'll get this from the editors of Jewish newspapers to which he sent this fraudulent request. According to Phyllis Braun, executive editor of the Arizona Jewish Post in Tucson, "This scam e-mail's invitation to 'a lifetime of success without risks,' juxtaposed with the suffering of Holocaust victims, is particularly repugnant."

Although Braun deletes such e-mails immediately, she worries that other people could be conned. She told the Press that Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard just issued an alert warning residents the "Nigerian Advanced Fee" scam had resurfaced and reminding them "of the simple rule: If an offer sounds too good to be true - it is."

A survivor received this e-mail as well. He forwarded it to Jeanette Friedman-Sieradski, editor of Together, American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and founder of Second Generation North Jersey. She happens to know Gideon Taylor, a member of the Claims Conference. (The International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims was established in 1998 to assist Jewish groups, survivor organizations, and the state of Israel.)

Taylor was able to persuade the staff of the Volker Committee to release a statement warning the public of this fraud.

According to Friedman-Sieradski, "a lawyer in Toronto took up to $1,000 per survivor to file claims with Brooklyn Judge Edward R. Korman and then never filed them."

William Gauberson wrote in the April 30 New York Times, "Judge Korman has ruled that such funds should be used for the 'neediest survivors.' He found that the grinding poverty in the former Soviet Union was so severe that he allocated 75% of the humanitarian funds available for Jewish survivors to that area. Four percent is to be used for impoverished survivors in the United States, with the balance going to Israel and elsewhere around the world."

Added Friedman-Sieradski, "Anyone who finds themselves in (the) situation (of being scammed) is to immediately contact Judge Korman's office in New York and file an application with extenuating circumstances - that a lawyer bilked them out of the money and never filed the claim, but they are eligible. Of course, they'll need proof they were conned," she added.

"This is a disgusting scam and one I suspect will be very painful for a number of people, added Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning. "Each of us are vulnerable at some point. People are lonely, especially the elderly. These scams are designed to capitalize on that. They work because innocent people fall for them. This one's especially horrible because it focuses on the pain of survivors."

Like Nancy Reagan's anti-drug campaign, "just say 'no'" to e-mail scammers. Or, in this case, "just delete.''

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(IsraelInsider) The IDF has developed a pungent new weapon to be used to keep Palestinian protestors at bay, media sources reported. The so-called "skunk bomb" contains a synthetic version of the odor skunks release to deter predators and will be used to break up stone-throwing confrontations without causing casualties, security officials said yesterday.

According to the reports, the new weapon was developed to replace controversial rubber bullets, which have caused numerous injuries and killed many Palestinians during the course of the Intifada. Security officials said the army, which has come under international criticism for allegedly using excessive force, has been seeking out new non-lethal weapons to deal with violent Palestinian protests.

The "skunk bomb," which is not yet operational, releases a cloud so pungent that according to initial tests it permeates clothes for five years, the officials said, according to a Reuters report.

The "stinky" weapon could be particularly unpleasant for devout Muslims since they cannot pray with clothes that smell and would have to throw them away, the report said.

Earlier this week, the Jerusalem Post reported that the army planned to equip its tanks with non-lethal 'stun shells'.

According to the report, the shells are made of fiberglass and disintegrate in the air creating a loud noise aimed at dispersing crowds. Military officials said the shells, manufactured by TASS Israel Military Industries, would become operational "within a couple of months."

The IDF has been developing new non-lethal weapons for some time in efforts to disperse Palestinian crowds without causing injuries.

On May 19, at least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded when an IDF tank fired a conventional shell at a crowd of protestors, drawing international criticism.

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By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: August 25, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/politics/25hamas.html

(New York Times) WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - A Virginian implicated in a scheme to raise money for Hamas, the militant group, was in federal custody on Tuesday, and officials analyzed what they regarded as a suspicious videotape of a major Maryland bridge that his wife shot from their vehicle last week.

A lawyer for the man, Ismael Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, said he and his wife were videotaping sights from the bridge on their way back from a beach trip. But Maryland officials tightened security at major bridges and ordered extra boat patrols because of concerns that the tape could signal possible surveillance for a terrorist operation.

Hamas has often attacked Israeli targets but has never been known to attack a United States target.

Mr. Elbarasse is being held as a material witness in a federal case in Chicago that accuses three other men of having illegally raised money for Hamas to finance terrorist attacks against Israel beginning in the early 1990's. An accountant, Mr. Elbarasse was named but not charged as a conspirator in the case in an indictment announced on Friday. Officials said he had helped the defendants launder hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas.

Several hours after the indictment was unsealed, two off-duty police officers from Baltimore County noticed Mr. Elbarasse's silver Nissan traveling westbound over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, with Mr. Elbarasse's wife videotaping the bridge, state officials said.

The officers grew suspicious when Mr. Elbarasse's wife, whose name was not released, saw their police car and lowered the camera, officials said. Mr. Elbarasse, driving with his two daughters in the back, was stopped and questioned, and state officials determined that he was on a Federal Bureau of Investigation watch list as a "person of interest" with possible terrorist connections because of his ties to Hamas.

Travelers are stopped and questioned almost daily in Maryland after being spotted taping bridges, tunnels and other possible targets, said Police Chief Gary W. McLhinney of the Maryland Transportation Authority, the bridge operator. Chief McLhinney said Mr. Elbarasse's appearance on the F.B.I. list, combined with the tape contents, aroused suspicion.

"It was the nature of the videotape itself that got everyone's attention," he said in an interview. "This went beyond the normal tourist video. They didn't seem to be focusing on what people normally focus on there, the water, the skyline, the facilities on the shore. They were focused on the bridge itself."

With the country on alert for an attack before Nov. 2, Chief McLhinney and other officials said they were concerned that the tape could be used as a surveillance tool for an attack.

"That's possible," said Greg Massoni, a spokesman for Gov. Robert L. Erlich. "We haven't drawn any conclusions, but that's certainly an issue for us." Mr. Elbarasse's lawyer, Stanley Cohen, said the idea that his client was involved in surveillance was "absolute, utter rubbish."

"Hamas's struggle is in Palestine,'' Mr. Cohen said. "Hamas has never taken a position against the United States."

Mr. Elbarasse and his family "weren't doing anything," Mr. Cohen said. "They're going over this beautiful bridge, and his wife takes out a camcorder because she wants to videotape the sights. But all of a sudden it becomes a big thing because the cops see a woman in a hajib, in traditional garb, and it's like, 'Oh my God, she must be a terrorist.' ''

"If the wife was blond-haired and blue-eyed, they wouldn't have messed with her. This is straight out of central casting."

Mr. Elbarasse, who was jailed for eight months in 1998 for refusing to cooperate in a Hamas-related inquiry, will most likely face a hearing this week in the Chicago case, officials said.

The Justice Department has relied on arrests of material witnesses with increasing frequency since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hold people who it says may be connected to terrorism. Officials are also investigating an illegal Pakistani immigrant found last month with what they described as suspicious videotapes of prominent buildings around the South. The man, Kamran Shaikh, also known as Kamran Akhtar, was indicted on Monday in North Carolina on immigration counts.

Scholar's Visa Canceled

SOUTH BEND, Ind., Aug. 24 (AP) - The work visa of a Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, who had been scheduled to teach at Notre Dame in the fall, has been canceled. Mr. Ramadan, of Switzerland, has been criticized for links to Islamic militants and for remarks viewed as anti-Semitic

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09/02/04

UPDATE: Indictment of Sami Khoshaba Latchin-PDF File Just Obtained.

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09/03/04

 http://www.ihr.org/news/040901_weber.shtml

  The still unfolding story of Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin and his alleged spying for Israel has attracted wide media attention and generated considerable discussion. Details of the FBI's investigation of his activities are still coming to light. But regardless of the outcome, one thing is certain: there will be no  fundamental change in US policy regarding Israel and the Middle East.  Support for the Zionist state in both the White House and the Congress is so fervent that Israel hardly needs bureaucrats such as Franklin to track the inner workings of the US government. Whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican, American policy is so tightly in the grip of politicians and government officials who are ardently dedicated to Israel and its interests that the Franklin case will make no difference.

  In the current administration, a cabal of high-level pro-Israel "neoconservative" Jews — including Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Richard Perle of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board; David Wurmser in the State Department; and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's Undersecretary for Policy — played a decisive role in pushing the United States into war in Iraq.

  This is so widely understood by Washington insiders that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May to declare that Iraq was invaded "to secure Israel," and that "everybody" knows it. Referring to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues to openly acknowledge this reality, Hollings said that "nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on." With few exceptions, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies due to "the pressures that we get politically," he added. In Britain, a veteran member of the House of Commons candidly declared in May 2003 that pro-Israel Jews had taken control of America's foreign  policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US and Britain into war in  Iraq. "A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians," said Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy known as "Father of the House" because he is the longest-serving Member of Parliament. "There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States," he added.

 During the 1980s, Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the US  Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with blunt exasperation about the Zionist  hold on Washington: "I've never seen a President — I don't care who he is — stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they  would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."

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17 Elul 5764

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=68404

 (Israel National news) Since 1993, the countries of the European Union have contributed, individually and collectively, over four billion euros to the Palestinian Authority - and a new report shows that much of this sum has gone towards corruption, incitement and violence. Another 250 million euros were budgeted for the year 2004.

The new report, released by the Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC), substantiates a compelling connection between European funding and ongoing Palestinian corruption and terrorism. Entitled "Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs - A Study In Transparency," it also highlights the failure of European organizations to monitor how these funds are used.

The FPC and other organizations have long stressed that the PA has soaked up huge sums of international donor aid. Even Muhammed Dahlan, a murderous terrorist himself (responsible for the Kfar Darom bus bombing in Nov. 2000 - two killed, seven wounded, including three siblings who lost legs) and now a leading PA official, was quoted in The Guardian last month as saying that the billions of dollars donated internationally to the Palestinian Authority "have gone down the drain and we don't know to where."

The FPC report shows European taxpayers that their money has not reached its intended target - namely, the people living in PA-controlled areas - but has rather been diverted towards graft, terrorism and anti-Israel incitement. Often quoting under-reported disclosures, many from Arab sources, the report also shows that terrorists are on the Palestinian Authority payroll - despite repeated denials by senior European politicians and civil servants. One of the conclusions is that the salaries of the very same people whom Europe has officially classified as terrorists, come directly from budgets provided by European government aid.

The report also documents the involvement of the European Union in funding PA textbooks replete with anti-Israeli incitement and hatred. A relevant excerpt:
"The Palestinian Ministry of Education has imposed a curriculum that fails to meet international standards. It uses inflammatory and racist messages, albeit in somewhat less obvious forms than were found in previous versions. The materials carefully exclude all Jewish presence from the contemporary and historical Middle East. When a child is taught that every Muslim has the personal obligation to eject a foreign presence by Jihad, the intent to indoctrinate is clear. The result of this education can be seen in the expanding and escalating violence in the region, and in the increasing number of young perpetrators."

Asked whether the European Commission had misled the European Parliament, FPC spokesperson David Winter noted that there have been "countless reassurances that the PA payroll is tightly controlled [- yet] the payroll has been found to be bloated with fictitious names or comprised of groups adjudged as terrorists by the EU itself."

Excerpts from the extensively footnoted report:
"The most conspicuous example of an unsupervised and unaccountable departmental budget is Chairman Arafat's office, where expenditures during 2003 averaged almost $6 million per month - $12 million for the month of August 2003 alone."

"In at least two cases, [several European Parliament Members] found clear evidence that money from the combined [PA] account had been diverted to terrorism. Given that the vast majority of disbursements from this account have not been adequately identified and traced, these cases can be assumed to be just a small sampling of a concerted effort aimed at funding terrorism from the monies that were intended as aid for the Palestinian people."

"The Europeans can argue with some plausibility that they have tried to monitor their payments. A team, led by Henry Siegman of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations and by Michel Rochard, MEP and former French Prime Minister, enabled the EC to conclude that payments were subject to the 'most extensive and intrusive monitoring system in any post-conflict situation.' The reader is left to draw conclusions as to the adequacy of this monitoring system, in light of the evidence presented in this study."

"Bearing in mind the evidence produced in this paper, particularly the direct contradiction of previous European statements and the complaints of leading Palestinians, the Funding for Peace Coalition cannot help but pose the following questions to the EU, EC and in fact, the PA itself:
* Why, after decades of deceit, does the PA continue to issue false reports?
* Why, despite everything, do European political leaders and their civil servants believe these reports so readily?
* Why do EU funds continue to flow unchecked and unmonitored, when the Palestinian people themselves are in the midst of an uprising against corruption and against misuse of the funds that by rights should be used to improve the quality of their lives, their educational systems, and their health care?"

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http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=68367

(Israel National News) A special mid-summer recess Knesset session next week will be highlighted by a discussion of ways in which the release of Jonathan Pollard might be attained.

Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in a US prison for passing classified information to a US ally. The data in question included information about Iraq's offensive weapons capabilities. Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally. Despite the fact that the median sentence for this offence is 2 to 4 years, Pollard is well into his 19th year of his life sentence.

Pro-Pollard activists spent the past week bombarding Knesset Members of all parties with phone calls requesting their support for a special Knesset session on Pollard. The required 25 signatures were attained, in an effort spearheaded by MK Tzvi Hendel (National Union), and the mid-recess session is scheduled for next week. More issues have since been added to the day's agenda.

A group of new immigrants from North America, together with Israeli high school students, began a ten-day hunger strike on Pollard's behalf on Wednesday. Coordinators of the initiative, including Youth for Jonathan Pollard, Magshimei Herut and the Re'ut (Friendship) Movement, hope it will spread to high schools, army bases, yeshivot (talmudic academies) and seminaries across Israel.

From 5 PM to 8 PM on each day of the strike, pro-Pollard activists intend to hold protests outside the Knesset in Jerusalem. Rabbis, professors and Knesset Members will take part in the demonstrations.

Pollard activist Eli Yosef explained why the coalition of students and veteran activists decided that now was the time for a coordinated effort on Pollard's behalf: "The Hebrew month of Elul is one of repentance, and so we as a nation must make amends for the way we have neglected Jonathan Pollard in prison. This is the 19th year that Jonathan will spend Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot alone in a cell instead of with his people."

Yosef believes that both the social and security problems in Israel today stem from the failure of Jews to feel the pain of their fellow Jews. "The reason we are holding this hunger strike is to convey the message that Jonathan's plight literally hurts each one of us," he said. "The tragedy is that members of the government truly believe they can escape the pain - and so each of the hunger-striking young people will be speaking to four or five Knesset members. It is our hope that through this simple act, the government of Israel will begin to feel the pain of Jonathan Pollard."

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Five Acquitted in 1994 Argentina Bombing

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/88-09032004-359517.html
 

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 By Arlene Peck

        The Arabs are bombing, murdering, mutilating, raping and causing havoc all over the  Judeo /Christian world. Israel has nothing to do with it…nothing! The front page of my LA times today headlined, (besides the Israelis who were savagely bombed in Beersheba) that  that these same sub-human savage “militants” who had killed twelve Nepalese workers want more! More concessions and more blood!

They also captured two French journalists as hostages, so as to influence French domestic laws. This is especially interesting since Mr. Jacque Chirac and France has gone out of his way to alienate their western allies and welcome them with open arms into the country

 They want to pressure the French to change their laws on headscarfs. Otherwise, they were going to kill them. Folks this is only the beginning. Within five years the required fashion in Paris will the burqas.

 Page two in the Times continued with a story how a female “suicide” bomber wearing an explosive device stuffed with metal bolts killed at least nine people in a Moscow subway station in a blast and injured about a hundred more And, now they are holding hostage hundreds of children without being allowed food to be brought into them. Does anyone remember the massacare of kindergarten children at Maloot? 

This, in addition to the two airplanes that the Arab fundamentalist blew up a few days ago in Russia where over a hundred more Russian countrymen were killed. I can’t even look at the television and see the nightly death toll of our soldiers in Iraq. President Bush makes speeches regularly about how we’ve brought democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Do you honestly believe these people want or will accept anything that’s brought to them in the way of ‘freedom’?

I haven’t even begun to get around to the holocaust which is happening by their rampaging, raping and killing hundreds of thousands in the Sudan by these same Arabs.

Personally, in the case of Israel and especially at this point in time, I think this would be the best time to begin to put a plan into place. The first step is to complete, as soon as possible, the security barrier. No matter what the world court or any other hysterical, politically correct audience says for its own self interest.

On a personal level , I believe a plan should be implemented where  announcements are made that anyone who even tries to bomb anyone in the Jewish state will be shot by bullets soaked in pig blood. Then they will be returned to their families who raise these homicide bombers  wrapped in pig skin for burial.

Flyers should be dropped in the neighborhoods which harbors them, allows their arms to be smuggled under their houses in tunnels and then dance on the street celebrating the latest Israel disaster, stating it will be bombed with missiles dipped in pig oil. And, then do it!

But, it won’t happen. Peres will have more secret meetings with his old friend Arafat. Sharon will make promises to Powell and Bush to not do anything to upset the election and ‘show restraint’. When did the leaders of Israel turn into lapdogs? 

It doesn’t matter where they are. It all boils down to the fact that the Judeo /Christian free world is at war with an evil, vicious, seventh century barbaric Islamic culture. These people kill indiscriminately. The Islamic Muslims don’t care who they target. Children, old people, people ridding on buses, teen-agers going to discotheques, eating in pizza parlors are all fair game. Even other Muslims. I think that finally though, the world is finally seeing that it’s not just Israel who is the target. It’s anyone who isn’t “THEM”, And, by that, I mean anyone who isn’t a Fundamentalist Muslim and what these reptiles consider to be ‘infidels.’

At the moment I’m writing this, there are two hundred babies in a school in Russia who they are holding as hostage. I have yet to see one out of the 1.3 billion marching in the street protesting   with outrage actions such as these are! Yet, they are quick to ‘dance in the streets and pass out candy’ at the joy of seeing the carnage in Israel’s misfortune.

Ironically, most people here that I’ve spoken with don’t even comprehend that this is a long term    problem that has been foisted upon us by 1.3 billion people. My daughter said, “Mom, my friend, Selena is an Arab and isn’t like that.” Well, that’s quite possible. Maybe there are millions of them that are like her friend Selena. Yet, where is the outcry from the Muslim community? The newspapers and television are filled with the outrages caused by her culture. Show me one mosque or protest by those peaceful Muslims? ONE!

We have been so caught up in not ‘hurting feelings’ and trying to show compassion that we have overlooked the master plan which is death and destruction from a culture that has absolutely no reverence for life. Hell, these people probably feel that they’re doing a favor to everyone by killing them as the only thing they’ve been raised to revere is death.

 Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She travels extensively worldwide, reporting to her audience about political events, social happenings (Cannes Film Festival, London event for the Variety Club, etc.) and "must see" spots. If there is a place to see and be seen, she'll write about it for her international audience.

Arlene's syndicated column is read weekly by millions and her television show ("Wow! It's Arlene Peck!") can be seen throughout Southern California every Monday night.
Arlene can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com

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