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September 29, 2008
Professor Wounded by Pipe Bomb
Jerusalem
JTA Wire Service
A professor who won the Israel Prize was wounded by a pipe bomb at his Jerusalem home. Police said they believe far right-wing activists carried out the attack against Ze’ev Sternhell, a political science professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University known for his hostility toward Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Sternhell, who returned to Israel Wednesday from an extended period overseas, has been receiving threatening phone calls recently, his wife said, and the bombing sent him to the hospital Thursday with minor leg wounds.
In a controversial article published in Israel’s daily Ha’aretz several years ago, Sternhell wrote, “Had the Palestinians the least bit of sense, they would have concentrated their struggle against the settlements and would not plant explosives on the western side of the Green Line,” inside Israel proper. A special task force will investigate the attack against Sternhell. A security detail has been assigned to the head of Peace Now in Israel, Yaniv Oppenheimer, after pamphlets were found near Sternhell’s home offering a reward for the murder of anyone connected to Peace Now.
“Something intolerable occurred that cannot be silenced,” prime minister-designate Tzipi Livni said at the annual Rosh Hashanah toast at the Foreign Ministry. “The State of Israel is a lawful state, and moreover it is populated by a society with values. It is the responsibility of the government and the Israeli society to renounce such phenomena as soon as they rear their heads.” Settlers’ organizations reject the charge that right-wing activists targeted Sternhell. The Homesh First movement said the pamphlets were a “left-wing provocation,” Ynet reported.
Olmert: Prof’s Attack Threatens Democracy
The pipe bomb attack on a professor critical of the settler movement is a threat to democracy, Ehud Olmert said. “An evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of malice, of violence, of running amok, of breaking the law, of contempt for the institutions of the state is blowing through certain sections of the Israeli public and threatens Israeli democracy, the ability of those entrusted by the State of Israel to make decisions and the ability to freely express one’s views without fear of being attacked by wild, violent law-breakers, who disregard all frameworks of proper, democratic life,” Olmert said at the opening of the Cabinet meeting Sunday.
Olmert compared the Sept. 25 attack on Ze’ev Sternhell, an Israel Prize-winning professor, to the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the 1983 murder of Peace Now activist Emil Greenzweig. He said he had directed his security agencies to investigate and bring the case to justice quickly. The investigation will likely focus on right-wing extremists since pamphlets offering a reward for the murder of activists associated with the left-wing Peace Now organization were found near Sternhell’s home and because of threatening, though undated, messages posted on a right-wing Internet forum, according to Ynet. Religious officials and fellow professors visited Sternhell on Sunday. “it’s very important that the government and the Knesset delve deep into this issue,” Sternhell was reported as saying. “They should not dismiss it silently. Rather than kill individual mosquitoes, we need to dry up the entire swamp.”
IDF Using Facebook to Catch Draft Dodgers
Israel’s army is using Facebook to track down draft dodgers. The army visited the Facebook account of a teenager who was dismissed from army service after declaring she was religious despite attending a secular school, and discovered that she did not lead a religious lifestyle, Ynet reported. Pictures on her Facebook account showed that she did not dress in a style acceptable to the religious community and that she attended parties on Shabbat. The army has since drafted her. The teen appealed the decision but was turned down. Some 44 percent of Israeli teenage females do not enlist—53 percent on religious grounds, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.