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Israel

23
7-11
53-67
14
23-24
28-29
35-46
13-15
23-24
78-79
19
33-43
9-11
19
15-20
14-18
15-20
16
17-21
24-27
25
88
24
24-26
19-22
15-19
19-22
15-17
66-67
18
15-18
16-18
18-19
47-55
19-20
22
57-62
31-32
20-21
28-31
22
23-24
18-20
9-12
30-35
18-20
19
19-22
13-15
23-24
56-57
34-35
33
35-36
37-38
38-39
42-43
43-44
45-46
46-47
48
30-31
26-31
32-43
58-65
20-23
25-29
30-32
26-34
64-65
18-21
65-72
75
14-17
24-30
73-78
51-61
70-73
72-79
65-79
104-118
55-80
72-85
47-51
29-36
38-45
68-72
76-79
99-105
186-196
782-794
449-458
579-583
187-193
Dec 2006Cost of an eight-day tour of Israel’s “struggle for survival and security in the Middle East”: $1,895
Source:

Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center (Petach Tikva, Israel)

Oct 2006 Hours after the start of its war against Hezbollah that Israel's army chief sold $32,000 of his stock holdings: 3
Source:

Maariv (Tel Aviv)

Oct 2006 Percentage of Americans in July who said the U.S. had “a responsibility to try to resolve” the Israeli-Arab conflict: 33
Source:

New York Times‒CBS News Polls (N.Y.C.)

Aug 2006

Year that Israel passed a “temporary” law barring Palestinians who marry Israelis from gaining citizenship: 2003

Vote by which its Supreme Court upheld the law this May: 6‒5

Source:

Supreme Court of Israel (Jerusalem)

Aug 2006

Average amount Israel has paid to relocate each settler from the Gaza Strip: $250,000

Source:

Embassy of Israel (Washington)

Aug 2005Acres in Israel to which a born-again Christian from Texas bought oil-exploration rights in 2000 : 96,000
Source:

Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. (Dallas)

Aug 2005Number of Palestinian communities that will be surrounded by the new Israel security fence on at least three sides : 53
Source:

B'Tselem (Jerusalem)

Aug 2005Chance that a German says Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is the same “in principle” as how Nazis treated Jews : 1 in 2
Source:

Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Institut für interdisziplinäre Konflikt und Gewaltforschung (Bielefeld, Germany)

Mar 2005Estimated number of visitors each week to the grave of Harry Potter, a Briton buried in Israel in 1939: 45
Source:

Ramle Museum (Ramle, Israel)

Mar 2005Ratio of ultra-Orthodox jaywalkers in Israel to secular jaywalkers: 3:1
Source:

Tova Rosenbloom, Bar-Ilan University (Ramat Gan, Israel)

Oct 2004Estimated number of right-wing Jewish extremists Israel monitors as potential threats to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon : 300
Source:

Consulate General of Israel (N.Y.C.)

Mar 2004Percentage change since 2000 in immigration to Israel : -65
Source:

Ministry of Immigrant Absorption (Jerusalem)

Mar 2004Percentage change since 2000 in the number of Israelis living abroad : +9
Source:

Ministry of Immigrant Absorption (Jerusalem)

Nov 2003Square feet of Israeli roads under construction in the 1990s per Israeli: 57
Source:

Adva Center (Tel Aviv)

Oct 2003Percentage of Palestinians in refugee camps who say that given a choice they would live nowhere but Israel : 10
Source:

Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (Ramallah)

Oct 2003Percentage of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza who say they would relocate if compensated : 83
Source:

Peace Now (Tel Aviv)

Jun 2003Amount of new U.S. military aid promised Israel in April to offset the "burdens" of the U.S. war on Iraq: $1,000,000,000
Source:

U.S. House of Representatives

Apr 2003Number of current officeholders left on the list after the court granted Israel's Ariel Sharon immunity in January: 15
Source:

Tribunal de Premiere Instance de Bruxelles

Apr 2003Amount of import-tax revenue that Israel is withholding from the Palestinian Authority: $400,000,000
Source:

Embassy of Israel (Washington)

Dec 2002Rank of Israel and Turkey among nations in violation of the largest number of U.N. Security Council resolutions: 1, 2
Source:

Foreign Policy in Focus (Silver City, N.Mex.)

Dec 2002Chances of getting a hotel room in Bethlehem on Christmas in 2000 and 2001, respectively: 0, 9 in 10
Source:

Bethlehem Hotel Association (Bethlehem, Palestine)

Dec 2002Chance that a Bethlehem hotel expects to be open this Christmas: 1 in 5
Source:

Bethlehem Hotel Association (Bethlehem, Palestine)

Oct 2002Percentage of Israeli settlers who say they would respect a government decision for them to leave the settlements: 68
Source:

Peace Now (Tel Aviv)

Sep 2002Projected cost per mile of the security fence Israel is building around the West Bank: $2,563,600
Source:

Israeli Ministry of Defense (Tel Aviv)

Sep 2002Number of Jewish immigrants Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in June that he wants to attract to Israel: 1,000,000
Source:

Embassy of Israel (Washington)

Aug 2002Chance an American knows that more Palestinians than Israelis have died in political violence since 2000: 1 in 3
Source:

The Polling Report (Washington)

Jul 2002Chance an American believes it is very likely that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will lead to World War III: 1 in 5
Source:

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics (N.Y.C.)

Jul 2002Military budget of Israel in 1967 expressed as a percentage of the budgets of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria combined: 58
Source:

U.S. Department of State

Jul 2002 Israeli military budget today expressed in these terms: 187
Source:

Center for Defense Information (Washington)

Jul 2002Number of references to Israeli "retaliation" on U.S. network nightly newscasts between September 2000 and March 2002: 118
Source:

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (N.Y.C.)

Jul 2002Number of hours Israeli soldiers in Ramallah broadcast pornography on seven Palestinian television stations in March: 48
Source:

LAW (Jerusalem)

Jun 2002Number of the seven U.S. vetoes cast in the U.N. Security Council since 1990 that have blocked censures of Israel: 6
Source:

Global Policy Forum (N.Y.C.)

Jun 2002Months after the building's inauguration in December that Israel used three U.S.-made missiles to destroy it: 2.5
Source:

Amnesty International (London)/Harper's research

Jun 2002Number of times Israel has formally recognized the right of a Palestinian state to exist anywhere: 0
Source:

MADRE (N.Y.C.)

Jun 2002Ratio of the number of Israelis and Palestinians killed in political violence last year to the number of Sri Lankans killed: 2:3
Source:

B'Tselem (Jerusalem)/Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Solna, Sweden)

May 2002Minimum number in Israel: 100
Source:

Natural Resources Defense Council (N.Y.C.)/Harper's research

Apr 2002Number of Israeli military personnel jailed since September 2000 for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories: 34
Source:

Jewish Peace Fellowship (Nyack, N.Y.)

Apr 2002Minimum number of Israeli high school students who wrote Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last fall to refuse in advance: 62
Source:

Jewish Peace Fellowship (Nyack, N.Y.)

Nov 2001Factor by which the number of West Bank houses demolished by Israel this year exceeds the number demolished last year: 8
Source:

B'Tselem (Jerusalem)

Oct 2001Number of abstentions to reaffirming the treaty last year besides those of the United States, Israel, and Micronesia: 0
Source:

U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs (Vienna)

Oct 2001Percentage of Americans who say Israel and the Arab nations will never "be able to settle their differences and live in peace": 64
Source:

The Gallup Organization (Princeton, N.J.)

Aug 2001Age at which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon enlisted in an underground Jewish paramilitary group in Palestine: 14
Source:

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Jerusalem)

Aug 2001Percentage of Palestinians working in Israel last summer who lost their job after Israel's blockade began in October: 70
Source:

International Labour Organization (Geneva)

Jun 2001Estimated number of blank ballots cast in protest during Israel's national election in February: 56,000
Source:

Tanya Reinhart, Tel Aviv University (Israel)

Jun 2001Days before the election that the Israeli supreme court rejected a request that blank ballots be counted: 4
Source:

Harper's research

May 2001Fine that Israel imposed on a Jewish settler in January for clubbing an 11-year-old Palestinian boy to death: $17,500
Source:

Consulate-General of Israel (N.Y.C.)

Apr 2001Estimated percentage of immigrants to Israel from former Soviet states since 1998 who were not Jewish by birth: 60
Source:

Consulate-General of Israel (N.Y.C.)

Jan 2001Ratio of public housing units built in Jewish communities in Israel since 1975 to those built in Arab communities: 337:1
Source:

Ben Gurion University (Be'er-Sheva, Israel)

Jan 2001Number of land mines per square mile left behind in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces when they withdrew last May: 376
Source:

International Campaign to Ban Landmines (Washington)

Dec 2000Average number of Palestinians killed per day by Israeli security forces in the six years preceding the 1993 Oslo accord: 0.4
Source:

Human Rights Watch (N.Y.C.)/Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (Jerusalem)/Harper's research

May 2000Chance that a U.N. member country other than the U.S. or Israel did not vote for a 1999 ban on “an arms race in space”: 0
Source:

United Nations General Assembly (N.Y.C.)

May 2000Number of days of Israeli bombing it took last winter to disable a Lebanon power grid for a year: 1
Source:

Embassy of Lebanon (Washington)

Dec 1999Percentage change in the number of Israelis living on the West Bank since the signing of 1993's Oslo peace accords: +50
Source:

Foundation for Middle East Peace (Washington)

Nov 1999Number of months that a Christian group has trained a camera on Jerusalem's Golden Gate, hoping to film Christ's return: 7
Source:

Daystar International (Hereford, England)

Oct 1999Value of Pentagon-brokered U.S. arms sales last year to Taiwan, expressed as a percentage of such sales to Israel: 92
Source:

U.S. Department of Defense

Aug 1999Percentage change since January 1998 in the number of Russian Jews moving to Israel: +100
Source:

Jewish Agency for Israel (Moscow)

Jun 1999Length, in feet, of a transparent bridge Israel is building just under the surface of the Sea of Galilee: 328
Source:

Ron Major (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Feb 1999Estimated number of U.S. Christians who moved to Jerusalem's Mount of Olives last year to await the millennium: 100
Source:

Professor Brenda Brasher, Mount Union College (Alliance, Ohio)

Jan 1999Chance that a Jewish Jerusalemite agrees that sovereignty over the city's holy sites “ultimately belongs to God”: 1 in 3
Source:

Professor Jerome M. Segal, University of Maryland (College Park)

Sep 1998Percentage of Jerusalem's Jewish population that is ultra-Orthodox: 30
Source:

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (Jerusalem)

Sep 1998Percentage of Jerusalem's Jewish kindergarteners who areultra-Orthodox: 52
Source:

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (Jerusalem)

August 10, 15:00 PM , 2020Charred flint found in Israel indicated that human ancestors--either Homo erectus or Homo ergaster--mastered fire 790,000 years ago.
Source:

New Scientist

December 21, 2012 Hamas announced that it was formally ending its truce with Israel,.
Source:

New York Times

September 23, 2009With 15 minutes allotted to him, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi spoke to the General Assembly of the United Nations for more than an hour. During his address he tore up a copy of the U.N. founding charter, proposed resolving the Israeli-{Palestine|Palestinian} conflict by creating a single state called “Isratine,” and stressed that Arabs do not hate the Jews. “You are the ones who burned them,” he said to the Assembly, “not us.” He also suggested that the swine flu virus was a military weapon that escaped from a lab.
Source:

New York Times

June 10, 2009A woman in Tel Aviv was searching through the city dump after she bought her mother a new mattress as a gift and threw out the old one, which was stuffed with $1 million in cash.
Source:

CNN

June 5, 2009 President Barack Obama visited Cairo and addressed the Muslim world in a 55-minute speech that the White House arranged to be televised, text-messaged in four languages, and posted to Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. Obama quoted from the Koran, spoke in Arabic, recognized Palestine, and said that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” He visited the Sphinx and pyramids, then spent a night at the desert stallion farm of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, who presented him with the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit, a thick gold chain with a very large medallion. “Goodness gracious,” said Obama of the necklace. “That's something there.” He went on to Europe, where he visited Buchenwald with Elie Wiesel, commemorated D-Day in Normandy, and declined a dinner invitation from French President Nicolas Sarkozy in order to eat alone with First Lady Michelle Obama.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

New York Times

Source 3:

Washington Post

Source 4:

Chicago Tribune

Source 5:

CNN

Source 6:

Times

May 20, 2009Iran tested medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe or Israel,.
Source:

The Telegraph

May 8, 2009Pope Benedict XVI visited Israel, where he spoke of his support for a Palestinian state and Israeli president Shimon Peres presented him with an Old Testament that fits on the head of a pin.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Nanowerk

April 26, 2009The U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared a public-health emergency over an outbreak of swine flu that has infected at least 20 people in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and Texas. The virus is believed to have originated in Mexico City, where more than 149 people, all aged between 20 and 40, have died, and at least 1,300 people have gotten sick. Mexico's government closed all schools, universities, and zoos, canceled church services, soccer games, and bullfights, and banned visits to beauty salons and juvenile detention centers. Swine flu has been found in Canada, China, France, Israel, New Zealand, and Spain, prompting the World Health Organization to consider raising the pandemic alert level from 3 to 4 out of 6.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Yahoo News

April 19, 2009Sources identified as “two former senior national-security officials” said that Representative Jane Harman (D., Calif.) was caught on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli spy that she would try to get the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. “Three top former national security officials” said that Alberto Gonzales stopped an FBI investigation of Harman in order to win her support for the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
Source:

CQ

April 6, 2009An Israeli Arab hotel food manager named Jaaber Hussein signed an agreement with Israel's chief rabbis to become the temporary owner of all the leavened bread of Israel,
Source:

Hotels Magazine

March 25, 2009 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his far-right coalition government a “partnership of peace.”
Source:

New York Times

January 25, 2009The Israel Defense Forces deployed eight antelope to eat vegetation that might be hiding Hezbollah guerrillas.
Source:

Haaretz

January 22, 2009and Israel reserved the right to blow up Palestinian smuggling tunnels.
Source:

Hurriyet Daily News

January 21, 2009Hamas declared victory in its war with Israel,
Source:

BBC News

January 18, 2009 Israel and Hamas agreed to a one-week ceasefire in Gaza, where Gazan officials estimated that 1,300 Palestinians had died.
Source:

Hamas Agrees to One-Week Cease-Fire in Gaza Conflict

January 17, 2009A Berlin court ruled to allow the display of Hamas flags and paraphernalia at anti-Israel protests, while at a pro-Hamas rally in the city of Duisburg, German police stormed an apartment to tear down an Israeli flag hanging from its balcony.
Source:

Germany OK's Hamas Flags at Rallies... Rips Down Israeli Flags

January 16, 2009“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow,” said Sir Gerald Kaufman, a British MP who was raised as an Orthodox Jew. “A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers.”
Source:

UK Jewish lawmaker: Israeli forces acting like Nazis

January 12, 2009Roughly 900 Palestinians had died in the fighting, half of them civilians and one third of them children. Fourteen Israelis had been killed. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, reported that Israel was “getting close to achieving the goals it set for itself” and “must not miss out, at the last moment, on what has been achieved through an unprecedented national effort.”
Source:

The New York Times

January 9, 2009The war between Israel and Hamas entered its third week as Israeli forces pushed into heavily populated areas of Gaza City. A UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, which passed through the Security Council by a vote of 14 - 0 with the United States abstaining, was ignored by both sides; the UN suspended aid to Gaza after two of its workers were killed by an Israeli tank. Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, described Gaza as “one big concentration camp.”
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Yahoo!

Source 3:

The Daily Mail

Source 4:

Yahoo!

January 4, 2009 Israel extended its occupation of the Gaza strip, sending in ground forces and cutting the territory in two. Hamas fired 32 missiles at Israel. The Palestinian health ministry reported that more than 500 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including 21 children, have been killed so far; the Israeli military stated that 80 percent of the Palestinian dead were members of Hamas. “We don't intend neither to occupy Gaza nor to crush Hamas, but to crush terror,” explained Israeli President Shimon Peres. “And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson.” “We have restrained ourselves for a long time,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Source 1:

BBC

Source 2:

BBC

December 28, 2008 Israel bombed Hamas targets in Gaza for three days, killing at least 300 people, 50 of them civilians, and blowing up a mosque and a television station. Palestinians seeking to flee into Egypt were turned back; a doctor at a Gaza hospital said that after 18 months of Israeli sanctions the lack of medical facilities made it better for a patient “to be brought in dead.” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the bombing, ordered in retaliation for ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas, would be “widened and deepened as is necessary,” and an area around Gaza was declared a “closed military zone,” with access forbidden to civilians, including journalists. “No one,” explained an Israeli government spokeswoman, “is trying to hide anything.” Anti-Israeli protests and demonstrations erupted throughout the Arab world, and UFO-cultists in Tel Aviv canceled a “mega-orgy” for world peace.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Ynet News

Source 3:

New York Times

November 14, 2008 Barack Obama's chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, apologized to the Arab community for remarks made by his father, Benjamin Emanuel, who told an Israeli newspaper that his son would “obviously influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”
Source:

BBC

November 8, 2008 Israel's Supreme Court ruled in favor of the destruction of parts of an ancient Muslim cemetery, where some of Saladin's warriors are buried, to make way for a new Frank Gehry-designed $250 million Museum of Tolerance.
Source:

BBC

July 6, 2008It was reported that a stone tablet inscribed decades before the birth of Jesus described a messiah who would come back to life after three days. “What happens in the New Testament,” said Bible scholar Israel Knohl, “was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”
Source:

NY Times

June 12, 2008It was announced that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son, Omri, who was jailed for campaign-finance corruption, will be released early for good behavior, and Hamas declared that the elder Sharon's three-year vegetative coma is “a sign from Allah” in punishment for Sharon's ordering the death in 2004 of wheelchair-bound Hamas cofounder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Source 1:

International Herald Tribune

Source 2:

Israel National News

April 28, 2008The United States accused North Korea of helping Syria build a nuclear reactor on a site that was destroyed last year by an Israeli air strike.
Source:

Telegraph

April 23, 2008Eighty-four-year-old Ben Ami-Kadish, a retired military engineer who worked from 1979 to 1985 at the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center in New Jersey, was arrested for giving secret documents, including “atomic-related information,” to Israel.
Source:

LA Times

April 12, 2008A woman hitchhiking from Milan to Tel Aviv dressed as a bride in order to promote world peace was raped and strangled in Turkey. “Her travels were for an artistic performance and to give a message of peace and trust,” said the artist's sister, “but not everyone deserves trust.”
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

BBC

March 28, 2008 Israel “Cachao” Lopez, one of the inventors of the mambo, died. At his funeral, as an orchestra performed his Afro-Cuban “Misa de Mambo,” a statue of Cuba's patron saint appeared to be swaying to the beat.
Source:

Miami Herald

March 21, 2008Drivers in the Gaza strip, where Israel limits fuel supplies and black market gas costs $27 per gallon, used vegetable oil and turpentine as fuel, producing toxic fumes that result in diarrhea and stomach pain. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cancelled four global-warming research expeditions, citing the cost of fuel. American cowboys could not afford to drive their horses to rodeos, and those who lived near the border were filling their tanks in Mexico, where gas is subsidized.
Source 1:

AP via Anchorage Daily News

Source 2:

AP via Detroit Free Press

Source 3:

Houston Chron

Source 4:

LAT

Source 5:

LAT

Source 6:

WP

March 17, 2008 Israel and Germany vowed to strengthen political, cultural, economic, and social relations between the two countries.
Source:

BBC

March 17, 2008 Israel was preparing the largest emergency exercise in its history in response to escalating tensions with Syria and to Iran's bid to obtain nuclear weapons. Sirens will wail throughout the country as mass evacuations from “hit zones” and mock chemical and biological attacks are performed as drills.
Source:

Jerusalem Post

March 9, 2008A Palestinian gunman killed eight Israeli students, seven of them teenagers, at a religious school in Jerusalem. “The attacker didn't come to Mercaz Harav Yeshiva by chance,” said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, calling the school the “flagship of religious Zionism.”
Source:

Jerusalem Post

March 9, 2008 Israel declared it would build 750 new housing units in the West Bank.
Source:

Globe and Mail

March 2, 2008Responding to rocket attacks on Ashkelon, once the largest seaport of Canaan, Israel sent tanks, troops, and fighter jets to northern Gaza. Fifty-four Palestinians—eight of them children and sixteen of them militants—and two Israeli soldiers died in one day of fighting; Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said that the Palestinians were risking a “shoah,” the Hebrew word for “big disaster.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas described Israeli raids as “more than a holocaust” and, as the number of Palestinian dead rose to about 100, suspended contact with Israel.
Source 1:

BBC News

Source 2:

Wikipedia

Source 3:

BBC News

Source 4:

BBC News

February 13, 2008 Representative Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), a Holocaust survivor and superdelegate who was expected to back Clinton, died. At a memorial service, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni compared Lantos to “a shining blue Star of David emblazoned on an American Air Force jet.” Bono led mourners in an a cappella version of John Lennon's “All You Need Is Love,” and Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R., Florida) interrupted the closing speech by Elie Wiesel with a call for a vote to adjourn.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Jerusalem Post

Source 3:

Politico

Source 4:

Washington Post

Source 5:

Washington Post

Source 6:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

January 27, 2008At 20 points along the Gaza Strip's southern border, Hamas operatives detonated explosives to topple an Israeli-built fence, allowing as many as 200,000 Palestinians—13 percent of the territory's population—to cross into Egypt and shop. The Gazans purchased camels, candy, cement, chairs, cheese, cigarettes, computers, cows, doughnuts, gasoline, generators, goats, mattresses, medicine, motorcycles, pistols, potato chips, sheep, snack cakes, soap, and televisions. Supplies at Egyptian shops dwindled, prices spiked, and fistfights ensued. Several Gazan women married Egyptians, and the Israel Defense Force patrolled its southern border for would-be suicide bombers and hostage takers.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Jerusalem Post

Source 3:

AFP

Source 4:

Dublin Independent

January 10, 2008Bush, guarded by ten thousand policemen in Jerusalem, told Condoleezza Rice that the United States should have bombed Auschwitz, and was flown by helicopter to Bethlehem so that he could pass through a tiny Door of Humility and pray at the traditionally venerated birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Source 1:

BBCnews.com

Source 2:

Yahoonews

Source 3:

Reuters via Haaretz.com

October 15, 2007Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice painted an upcoming U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference as a “moment of opportunity” for Israelis and Palestinians, while film director David Lynch claimed that 250 experts in Transcendental Meditation could end that conflict by dissolving “the suffocating rubber clown suit” of hatred.
Source 1:

The Boston Herald

Source 2:

Checkpoint Jerusalem

October 15, 2007Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice painted an upcoming U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference as a “moment of opportunity” for Israelis and Palestinians, while film director David Lynch claimed that 250 experts in Transcendental Meditation could end that conflict by dissolving “the suffocating rubber clown suit” of hatred.
Source 1:

The Boston Herald

Source 2:

Checkpoint Jerusalem

September 22, 2007 Israel, a few days before Yom Kippur, declared that the Gaza Strip is now a “hostile entity,” and the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who is under investigation for corruption) announced a collective-punishment plan that includes “limiting the transfer of goods to the Gaza Strip, cutting back fuel and electricity, and restricting the movement of people to and from the Strip.” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum condemned Israel's “criminal, terrorist Zionist actions.”
Source 1:

BBC News

Source 2:

BBC News

Source 3:

ABC News

September 22, 2007It was reported that not long ago Vice President Dick Cheney considered asking Israel to launch missiles at an Iranian nuclear site to kick-start a new war.
Source:

Reuters

September 18, 2007U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently was denied an audience with the Pope, went to Jerusalem to bring peace.
Source:

BBC News

September 7, 2007 Israel announced that it would grant citizenship to hundreds of refugees from Darfur.
Source:

Haaretz.com

September 6, 2007Scientists blamed the recent massive honey bee die-offs on an Israeli virus.
Source:

New York Times

August 12, 2007A rocket launched from Gaza struck a ranch owned by comatose former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Source:

Israel Today

August 4, 2007 Israelis fired apples, chilis, corn, cucumbers, mangoes, and tomatoes into the Gaza Strip.
Source:

Daily Mail

July 25, 2007An Israeli study concluding that hummus stimulates serotonin production bolstered sentiment that eating the popular chickpea dip could help Israelis and Palestinians reconcile.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor

July 23, 2007A spokesman said that special international envoy Tony Blair would spend his first official trip to Israel, dubbed “Mission Impossible,” in “listening mode.”
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

July 16, 2007 Israelis convinced Jordanians to overcome their prejudice against barn owls.
Source:

Townhall.com

June 25, 2007 Hamas militants released an audio recording of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in which he states, “I am sorry that the Israeli government has not shown more interest. It should meet the demands of my kidnappers so I can be released.” Hamas militants released an audio recording of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in which he states, “I am sorry that the Israeli government has not shown more interest. It should meet the demands of my kidnappers so I can be released.”
Source:

BBC

June 25, 2007The Gaza kidnappers of British journalist Alan Johnston released a video of Johnston wearing an explosives vest, which he says will be detonated if force is used to try to free him.The Gaza kidnappers of British journalist Alan Johnston released a video of Johnston wearing an explosives vest, which he says will be detonated if force is used to try to free him.
Source:

BBC

June 17, 2007 Israel and the United States tacitly agreed on a policy to treat the West Bank and Gaza as separate entities.
Source:

New York Times

May 28, 2007 Hamas told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas it would accept a truce with Israel if the IDF halted air attacks in Gaza, and threatened to kill hostage Gilad Shalit should Israel fail to comply.
Source:

Ha'aretz

May 28, 2007In the desert of southern Israel a man wrestled and pinned down a leopard after it broke into his bedroom.
Source:

AP via CBS News

May 25, 2007 Israel and the U.S. provided Abbas with light arms and $84 million to fund Fatah's power struggle with Hamas.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor

May 22, 2007The Israeli embassy in Washington searched for someone to attend the funeral of Jerry Falwell.
Source:

Ha'aretz

May 20, 2007 Hamas was fighting Fatah in Gaza and sending Qassam rockets into Israel, which was bombing Gaza in return.
Source:

Reuters

May 3, 2007 Israelis were demanding that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resign due to his handling of the 2006 war with Hezbollah.
Source:

Reuters

April 29, 2007In a Ha'aretz op-ed, Gilad Sharon, son of vegetative former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, advocated stripping Arab Israelis of their citizenship. Hamas declared an end to its ceasefire with Israel, armed protestors dropped the corpse of a murdered man named Hassan Abu Sharkh in the Palestinian Authority Parliament, several rockets struck Israel from Gaza, and the Israel Defense Forces killed three Hamas agents planting a bomb by the Gaza border fence.
Source 1:

Ha'aretz

Source 2:

International Herald Tribune

Source 3:

Jerusalem Post

April 13, 2007In Saudi Arabia, a widely circulated text message claimed melons entering the kingdom from Israel were infected with AIDS.
Source:

Ynetnews

March 19, 2007A West Bank woman had developed special “queuing” socks to help her countrymen who suffer from swollen feet while waiting at Israeli military checkpoints.
Source:

BBC

March 18, 2007 The Dead Sea was disappearing.
Source:

Economist via Toronto Star

March 12, 2007The Israeli ambassador to El Salvador was recalled after police found him in the embassy, drunk and naked except for bondage gear, with a rubber ball stuffed in his mouth.
Source:

BBCnews.com

March 8, 2007A human rights group in Israel accused the country's army of using Palestinians, including an 11-year-old girl, as human shields.
Source:

BBCnews.com

March 6, 2007A BBC World Service poll of twenty-seven countries suggested that a majority of people believe Israel and Iran have a “mainly negative” influence in the world. Canada and Japan were the most positively viewed countries.
Source:

BBCnews.com

March 3, 2007A television documentary reported that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, the couple had a son named Judah, and the three were buried together with Mary and Joseph in Israel.
Source:

New York Times

February 25, 2007Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah told an interviewer he believed the United States had embarked on a secret plan to break up Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, before doing the same to the Arab nations of northern Africa. “Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other,” he said. ”This is the new Middle East.”
Source:

New Yorker

February 9, 2007In Israel, the streets of Old Jerusalem “ran slick with pulped oranges and tomatoes” as Palestinian protesters and Israeli police officers battled one another.
Source:

The Australian

January 29, 2007A mob of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem overpowered policemen and stole a woman's corpse to prevent an autopsy but later gave it back.
Source:

news24.com

January 19, 2007An Israeli couple won the right to artificially inseminate a volunteer with sperm they had harvested from their son after his death in 2002. “It's a dream come true,” said their lawyer, Irit Rosenblum.
Source:

BBCnews.com

January 15, 2007 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israeli calls for a temporary Palestinian state.
Source:

New York Times

January 12, 2007Ehud Barak announced that he is seeking leadership of the Israeli Labor Party, which was trailing Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party in polls.
Source 1:

Ha'aretz

Source 2:

Reuters

January 1, 2007King Abdullah II of Jordan complained that odors from an Israeli livestock facility were wafting into his palace on the Red Sea.
Source:

AP via Haaretz

November 17, 2006 Israeli military officials decided that Miss Israel, in order to prevent bruises on her legs, should not have to carry a rifle.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! NEWS

November 11, 2006Despite the objections of the Vatican, a gay rights rally was held in Jerusalem under the guard of nearly 3,000 police. Rabbi Yehuda Levin flew from Brooklyn to denounce the rally. “They are not,” said Levin, “being tolerant of our feelings.”
Source:

The New York Times

November 11, 2006In Beit Hanun, Gaza, Israeli forces accidentally killed 18 civilians, including seven children; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the killings as a “technical failure.” The U.N. Security Council drafted a resolution condemning the attack, but the United States, represented by Ambassador John Bolton, vetoed it.
Source 1:

The Jerusalem Post

Source 2:

BBC News

October 31, 2006Due to the Lebanon war, Israel was facing an eight-fold increase in the cost of marijuana.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

October 11, 2006In Israel, four doctors were arrested for carrying out illegal, non-consensual medical experiments on their patients.
Source:

Haaretz

October 9, 2006Floods killed 37 people in Thailand, and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed nine people.
Source 1:

AFP via Yahoo! News

Source 2:

AP via CBS News

October 1, 2006 Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon, where, according to the UN, up to a million cluster “bomblets” remain unexploded.
Source:

New York Times

September 28, 2006 Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi told reporters that it's hard for Americans to understand “what's wrong” with Iraqis. “Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?”
Source:

CNN

September 27, 2006An expert claimed that elements of Iran's atomic strategy appear to have been borrowed from Israel.
Source:

Reuters via Yahoo! News

September 22, 2006 Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah attended a rally in Beirut to commemorate the “divine and historic victory” in the war with Israel,.
Source:

New York times

September 20, 2006 Israeli tourism officials circulated a sightseeing pamphlet bearing the slogan, “Jerusalem—there's no such city!”
Source:

BBC News

September 20, 2006 Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said that Hamas would never recognize Israel.
Source:

monsters and critics.com

September 9, 2006 Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said Palestinians were wrong to think war with Israel would transform them into “some kind of golden child.” Instead, he said, it made them “a shit child.”
Source:

The New Yorker

September 3, 2006 Israeli troops were being attacked by Lebanese wildlife.
Source:

UPI

September 3, 2006Plans were underway to save the Dead Sea.
Source:

UPI

August 31, 2006 U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced Israel's use of cluster bombs.
Source:

International Herald Tribune

August 30, 2006 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to lift a seven-week-old blockade on Lebanon,.
Source:

New York Times

August 26, 2006President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at the opening ceremony for a power plant that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons, said his country was “not a threat to anybody, even the Zionist regime which is a definite enemy.”
Source:

BBC

August 26, 2006 Israel said it would gladly welcome peacekeepers from Muslim nations.
Source:

New York Times

August 25, 2006 Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said “Israel is doing the same thing as Hitler.”
Source:

CNN

August 24, 2006The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected the idea that its conduct in the war with Lebanon was “outside international norms or international legality concerning the rules of war.”
Source:

New York Times

August 21, 2006 Israeli troops detained a Hamas legislator in the West Bank and engaged Hezbollah guerillas in a shootout near Boudai, Lebanon.
Source:

The Wall Street Journal

August 20, 2006 Shimon Peres had dinner with Connecticut Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont.
Source 1:

The New York Times

Source 2:

The Penninsula (Qatar)

Source 3:

The New York Times

August 19, 2006In South Africa, Shlomo Goldwasser, father of an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hezbollah on July 12, urged the world to defeat his son's captors. “If Israel won't finish the job, you will find them here,” he said. “They will kidnap your sons.”
Source:

Independent Online, South Africa

August 15, 2006 Hezbollah declared victory in its 34-day war with Israel. “I guess,” said President George W. Bush, “I would have done the same thing if I were them.” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged that Israel would “do better” in what Defense Minister Amir Peretz referred to as “the next round.” An official said killing Hezbollah leader Sheikh Nasrallah was a top priority.
Source:

The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

August 15, 2006Dan Halutz, chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, was under fire for selling all of his stocks in the hours before the war began.
Source 1:

The Wall Street Journal

Source 2:

The New York Times

Source 3:

The Daily Telegraph (UK)

Source 4:

The New York Times

Source 5:

Breitbart.com

August 3, 2006 Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah boasted that his forces were inflicting “maximum casualties” and warned Israel that if it “bombed our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity”; he also called on his fellow Arab leaders to “be men for just one day.”
Source 1:

NY Times

Source 2:

CNN

August 1, 2006 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted that the war with Lebanon would continue, and the Lebanese government rejected an internationally-brokered peace plan, claiming it favored Israel.
Source:

Washington Post

July 31, 2006After an Israeli bombing raid killed 54 people, including 37 children, in the Lebanese village of Qana, Beirut residents set fire to a U.N. headquarters.
Source:

Daily Star (Lebanon)

July 31, 2006 Israel agreed to suspend some bombing operations for 48 hours in order to investigate the deaths, though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ruled out a ceasefire.
Source:

BBC

July 30, 2006 Hezbollah guerillas fired several hundred rockets into towns in northern Israel, hitting a laundry detergent factory and a cemetery, and injuring at least 31 people.
Source:

CGGL

July 29, 2006 President George W. Bush apologized to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for improperly shipping bombs to Israel via Scotland.
Source:

BBC

July 28, 2006The mayor of Beirut said war with Israel was bad for the environment.
Source:

Globe and Mail

July 27, 2006Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush, and Israeli officials claimed to have killed some 200 Hezbollah “operatives” since the outset of hostilities.
Source 1:

AP

Source 2:

AP via Dispatch Online

Source 3:

BBC

July 26, 2006 Israeli bombs struck a U.N. post in southern Lebanon, killing four peacekeepers. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the targeting was “apparently deliberate,” and Olmert called Annan's comments “premature and erroneous.”
Source 1:

BBC

Source 2:

Al Jazeera

July 26, 2006 Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, condemned Israel's military actions; Howard Dean called al-Maliki an “anti-Semite.”
Source:

AP

July 25, 2006The Israeli military deployed llamas in southern Lebanon.
Source 1:

Ynetnews

Source 2:

JTA

July 24, 2006 Israel insisted it had no immediate plans for a large-scale ground invasion of Lebanon, although it seized two Lebanese towns, called up 10,000 troops to the border, and called thousands of reservists to active duty. Almost 400 people (362 Lebanese, 37 Israelis) have been killed so far in the conflict. European governments debated the proportionality of these deaths, and Syrian president Bashar Assad told the international community to stop procrastinating and broker a ceasefire.
Source:

NY Times and The Australian

July 24, 2006President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran predicted that Israel had “pushed the button of its own destruction.”
Source 1:

The Australian

Source 2:

NY Times

Source 3:

NY Times

Source 4:

National Post

July 22, 2006 Lebanese were receiving late-night phone calls from the Israeli government. “I just wished I could talk back to the voice,” said one woman, “but it was a recorded message.” Hezbollah responded by sending mobile-phone text messages to dozens of Israelis.
Source 1:

SFGate.com

Source 2:

Haaretz

Source 3:

Reuters via thestaronline

July 18, 2006Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, said Hezbollah's war on Israel was a ruse to divert attention from Iran's nuclear weapons program. Kayhan, an Iranian news daily, replied that it only “wish[ed] Israel's lies were true.”
Source:

BBC

July 15, 2006 Israel said it had no plans to attack Syria.
Source:

Ha'aretz

July 13, 2006War erupted between Hezbollah and Israel after the Lebanese militia launched Operation Truthful Promise against Israel by crossing the border and capturing two Israeli soldiers. The operation was staged in response to Operation Summer Rains, in which Israel occupied Gaza and destroyed a large portion of the civilian infrastructure. Israel countered Operation Truthful Promise by staging Operation Just Reward against Lebanon, bombing roads, bridges, power stations, fuel depots, ports, and airports, and killing numerous civilians. Hezbollah bombed Haifa, surprising Israel with the range of its rockets and killing at least eight civilians. “You wanted an open war,” said Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in a recorded message, “and we are heading for an open war. . . . The surprises that I have promised you will start now.”
Source 1:

The Daily Star

Source 2:

Times Online

Source 3:

Newsday

Source 4:

Times of India

Source 5:

Zaman Online

Source 6:

AP via Yahoo!

July 6, 2006 Israel continued its push into Gaza in search of an abducted soldier. “We want to use an iron fist,” said Isaac Herzog, a Labor Party minister, “but cautiously, with a lot of consideration.” Palestinians, who did not cease to fire missiles into Israel, were busy counting their dead.
Source:

International Herald Tribune

June 20, 2006The mother of a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli air strike told reporters, “If I [got] my hands on an explosive belt, I would go and explode myself inside Israel to tear the hearts out for their children.”
Source:

Forbes via Google News

June 18, 2006It was revealed that in 2003 the Bush Administration refused an offer by Iran to end Iranian support of Palestinian terror organizations and recognize Israel in exchange for an end to sanctions and permission to peacefully develop its nuclear program.
Source:

The Jerusalem Post

June 17, 2006The Israeli military absolved itself of responsibility for the deaths of seven members of the picnicking Ghalia family from explosions on a beach in Gaza. An Israeli committee admitted that Israeli forces fired six shells on and around the beach, but found that a mine planted by Hamas (or possibly a buried shell) had, by coincidence, exploded and killed the family at around the same time as the shelling. A former Pentagon battlefield analyst said that the shrapnel and craters he found at the scene of the explosion were consistent with shelling by Israelis, as were the wounds suffered by survivors.
Source:

The Guardian

June 10, 2006An Israeli artillery shell killed at least seven civilians, including five members of one family (including young children aged ten, three, and one) who were picnicking on a beach in Gaza. Israeli officials expressed regret and said that the shell had been aimed at a target 400 yards away from the picnic. Hamas declared that it would no longer abide by a 16-month-old cease-fire and fired a rocket into Israel.
Source:

New York Times

June 2, 2006 Palestinian militants conducted a raid in Israel and abducted an Israeli soldier, whom they carried to Gaza via a secret tunnel. Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza's main power plant, two bridges, the offices of Palestine's prime minister and interior minister, and a soccer field, and by arresting as many as 64 Palestinian officials. Palestinian militants demanded that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners who are women or under the age of 18. A number of Israeli and Palestinian officials speculated that Israel's actions were intended to weaken or topple Palestine's Hamas government.
Source:

VOA News

June 2, 2006A cave in Israel was found to contain a complete ecosystem that had been sealed off for millions of years.
Source:

National Geographic

May 25, 2006Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to accept the goal of establishing a Palestinian state (and thus acknowledge Israel's right to exist); if Hamas does not comply, he said that he will call a national referendum on the issue.
Source:

CNN.com

May 17, 2006A camel ran amok on the Trans-Israeli Highway.
Source:

YNetNews.com

May 14, 2006The Israeli army announced that female soldiers must not lower the waistline of their pants or take in their shirts.
Source:

Toronto Star

April 17, 2006The Iranian government promised to give $50 million to the Palestinian Authority, now controlled by Hamas, which let it be known that it would recognize Israel's right to exist if the Jewish state were to withdraw from the entire West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
Source 1:

CNN.com

Source 2:

Democracy Now!

April 17, 2006A suicide bomber killed nine people at a falafel restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Source:

The New York Times

March 28, 2006 Palestine fired a larger-than-usual missile into an Israeli kibbutz, without any casualties.
Source:

BBC News

March 14, 2006The Israeli army attacked a Palestinian jail to seize six militants.
Source:

BBC News

February 19, 2006 Israel froze its $50 million monthly tax payments to Palestine.
Source:

The New York Times

February 14, 2006The United States and Israel were working together to destabilize the Hamas-led government of Palestine. “It's not possible,” countered Hamas spokesman Farhat Asaad, “for the U.S. and the world to turn its back on an elected democracy.”
Source:

The New York Times

February 14, 2006Sheriffs from 10 different U.S. states visited Israel to learn more about homeland-security techniques.
Source:

The Washington Post

February 12, 2006Doctors in Israel said that Ariel Sharon was unlikely to wake up.
Source:

Haaretz

February 4, 2006The IAEA voted to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council because of Iran's nuclear program; Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria voted against the measure. Prior to the vote, Egypt proposed to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, but that proposal was rejected by the United States because it would interfere with Israel's weapons program.
Source:

BBC News

February 3, 2006 Israel bombed Lebanon.
Source:

Reuters

January 26, 2006The Islamic group Hamas won 76 of 132 parliamentary seats in Palestine's parliamentary elections, unseating the Fatah party. U.S. President George W. Bush, whose administration supported open democratic elections in Palestine, said that the United States would not negotiate with Hamas until the organization renounced its chartered goal of destroying Israel.
Source:

BBC News

January 18, 2006In Iraq 30 people were killed at makeshift checkpoints, 22 people died in suicide bombings, 9 people were killed in an ambush, 5 bodies were found in the Qaid River, 4 children were killed by rocket-propelled grenades, and 2 American civilians were killed in a roadside bombing. Suicide bombings killed at least 22 people in Afghanistan and injured 30 people in Tel Aviv.
Source 1:

Democracy Now!

Source 2:

The Boston Globe

Source 3:

CRI Online

Source 4:

Sign On San Diego.com

January 13, 2006 Pat Robertson apologized to Ariel Sharon's son, Omri, for being “inappropriate and insensitive” when he said that Sharon's illness was God's punishment. It remained unclear, however, whether Robertson would once again be permitted to build a theme park by the Sea of Galilee.
Source:

BBC News

December 30, 2005A British woman married an Israeli dolphin after fifteen years of courtship. “I am just waiting for everyone to leave,” said the woman, “so we can have a private moment.”
Source:

NBC10.com

December 18, 2005 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a stroke. Palestinians celebrated Sharon's stroke and leaders of Kahane, the ultra-nationalist Jewish group, called on members to pray for the Prime Minister's death.
Source:

Y Net News

October 29, 2005 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the face of the map." Iran later said that it did not intend to invade Israel. "Westerners are free to comment," clarified Ahmadinejad, "but their reactions are invalid."
Source:

BBC News

October 6, 2005The Supreme Court of Israel ordered the Israeli Army to stop using Palestinians as human shields.
Source:

BBC News

September 26, 2005 Hamas announced that it would stop using the Gaza Strip to stage incursions into Israel after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised to crack down on the group.
Source:

LA Times

September 12, 2005The last Israeli troops left Gaza,
Source:

The New York Times

August 23, 2005In Israel, many of the settlers who were forced out of Gaza had moved to the West Bank. "We feel very welcome here," said a settler.
Source:

The New York Times

August 22, 2005Metropolitan Theofilos became Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, replacing Patriarch Irineos I, who was ousted after leasing property in East Jerusalem to those looking to increase the Jewish presence there.
Source:

BBC News

August 22, 2005The last of Gaza's Jewish settlers left their homes on armored buses.
Source:

Herald Sun

August 20, 2005Peter Schoomaker, the Army's top general, revealed that the United States was developing a plan to keep at least 100,000 soldiers in Iraq through 2009. Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Nebr.) called the plan "complete folly." "It would further destabilize the Middle East," he said. "It would give Iran more influence, it would hurt Israel, it would put our allies over there in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in a terrible position."
Source 1:

AP

Source 2:

AP

August 11, 2005Thousands of Israelis rallied against the Gaza pullout in Tel Aviv. “God will hear us,” a rabbi told the crowd. A few days later, Israel began its withdrawal from Gaza, lowering a road barrier at the Kissufim Crossing as 200 people looked on. The barrier didn't work, so Israeli authorities finally rigged it shut with some wire.
Source 1:

BBC News

Source 2:

AP

August 9, 2005In Jerusalem the biblical Pool of Siloam, where Jesus cured a blind man, was discovered by sewer workers.
Source:

Post-Gazette.com

August 7, 2005 Israel's finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, quit his post in protest of Israel's pullout from Gaza.
Source:

BBC News

August 6, 2005The Presbyterian Church USA announced that it would ask Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries, and United Technologies to stop providing Israel with the materials it uses to enforce the occupation of Palestine.
Source:

Kentucky.com

August 5, 2005An archaeologist claimed to have found King David's palace in East Jerusalem.
Source:

The International Herald Tribune

August 5, 2005An Israeli soldier was lynched after he shot and killed four Israeli Arabs.
Source:

AFP

July 27, 2005Ultra-nationalists in Israel held a “pulsa denura” ceremony to call on the angels of destruction to kill Ariel Sharon.
Source:

Haaretz

July 11, 2005 Israel planned to ask the United States for $2.2 billion to help them pull out from Gaza.
Source:

Reuters

June 24, 2005The Jordan River was filled with sewage, forcing pilgrims to bathe in special pools with treated water.
Source:

Reuters

June 13, 2005 Israeli scientists were raising a date palm from a 1,990-year-old seed found at Masada.
Source:

IHT

June 3, 2005Two Israeli soldiers said that they were ordered to take part in revenge killings of Palestinians. “It doesn't matter,” one of the soldiers said he was told. “They took six of ours, and we are going to take six of theirs.” His unit went on to kill three Palestinians in an ambush. “And we acted flawlessly,” said the soldier. “We performed superbly.”
Source:

BBC News

June 2, 2005 Israel released three hundred ninety-eight Palestinian prisoners.
Source:

Haaretz.com

June 1, 2005Haim Yavin, one of the founders of Israel's state television channel and the country's most respected news presenter, broadcast a documentary showing Israel's occupation of Palestine as brutal. “I cannot really do anything to relieve this misery,” he said, “other than document it.”
Source:

BBC News

May 29, 2005 Israeli finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview with a lit cigar in his jacket. “Can't you smell the smoke?” asked his interviewer. “What do you mean?” replied Netanyahu. “You are burning up,” said the reporter.
Source:

Reuters

May 27, 2005In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers broke into the home of a Palestinian family so that they could watch a soccer game.
Source:

Reuters

May 22, 2005Laura Bush went to Jerusalem, where she wore a black pantsuit and black shawl to the Dome of the Rock and the women's section of the Western Wall. “We commit ourselves,” she said, “to reject hatred and to teach tolerance and live in peace.” She was heckled by both Muslims and Jews.
Source:

New York Times

May 13, 2005 Israel and Lebanon shelled each other.
Source:

BBC News

April 25, 2005 Israeli settlers were accused of spreading rat poison over the fields of Palestinian farmers.
Source:

BBC News

April 20, 2005The zookeepers in Ramat Gan, Israel, fed their gorillas kosher matzo crackers for Passover.
Source:

Newsday

April 10, 2005 Israeli soldiers shot dead three Palestinian teenagers in Gaza.
Source:

Haaretz

April 4, 2005 Israel was planning to dump 10,000 tons of garbage a month into the West Bank.
Source:

Haaretz

April 4, 2005In Israel, someone spray-painted the words “murderous dog” on Yitzhak Rabin's grave.
Source:

Haaretz

March 16, 2005Evangelical Christians from the United States and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel were working together to stop homosexuals from marching through Jerusalem.
Source:

Haaretz

March 13, 2005 Israel was preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities with helicopters, guns, and dogs.
Source:

Times Online

March 3, 2005Thirty-seven percent of American Jews said that they were “often disturbed” by Israeli policy.
Source:

Forward

March 1, 2005A U.S. government report suggested that there are more Palestinians than Israelis.
Source:

Electronic Intifada

February 28, 2005The Israeli army denied high-level security clearance to soldiers who play Dungeons & Dragons.
Source:

YNet News

February 28, 2005 West Bank settlers were given stickers to prove their residency, so that they might drive more quickly through checkpoints.
Source:

Ha'aretz

February 28, 2005A suicide bomber killed five in Tel Aviv. Israel blamed Syria, which hosts Islamic Jihad, for the attack. Syria handed over Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's half-brother, to Iraqi authorities.
Source:

Economist

February 26, 2005 Israel refused to hand over security control of the West Bank to Palestinians.
Source:

CTV.ca

February 25, 2005 Israel planned to build 6,391 new homes for settlers in the West Bank.
Source:

Reuters

February 21, 2005 Israel freed five hundred Palestinian prisoners.
Source:

New York Times

February 15, 2005 Ariel Sharon announced plans to withdraw 8,500 settlers from Gaza and several hundred settlers from the West Bank. The Knesset ratified the plan, setting aside $870 million for resettlement, even though some Israeli parliamentarians compared the withdrawal to the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust.
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

New York Times

Source 3:

New York Times

February 13, 2005 Israel has also developed a bomb that stinks for five years.
Source:

Al Jazeera

February 9, 2005 Israel unveiled a tiny new drone that can be launched from a canister.
Source:

Jerusalem Post

February 8, 2005 Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon shook hands across a table and declared a truce between Israel and Palestine.
Source:

BBC News

February 2, 2005 Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to attend a peace summit in Egypt.
Source:

CBC News

January 19, 2005The day after he was sworn in as president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas asked militants to refrain from violence so as not to "provide excuses to Israel" to attack Palestinians. Two hours later a suicide bomber killed one Israeli and wounded seven, and Ariel Sharon ordered a new crackdown on factions in Gaza.
Source:

New York Daily News

January 5, 2005Earlier in the week, Abbas called Israel the "Zionist Enemy" at an election rally,
Source:

The Indian Express

January 5, 2005 Israel shut the border at Gaza,
Source:

Xinhua

December 28, 2004 Israel freed 159 Palestinian prisoners and briefly detained presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti for campaigning in Jerusalem without a permit.
Source:

New York Times

December 23, 2004 Tony Blair toured the Middle East, and called for a peace summit in London. The United States and Israel both told him to cut it out.
Source:

Scotsman.com

December 23, 2004The Siloam Pool, where Christ is said to have healed the blind (John 9:7), was discovered in Jerusalem.
Source:

National Post

December 16, 2004and Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom called Yasir Arafat's death "an opportunity we should not miss,"
Source:

Haaretz International

December 12, 2004 Israel promised to release dozens of Palestinian prisoners as a favor to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak before the Palestinian election.
Source:

AP

December 3, 2004Hours before a registration deadline, Marwan Barghouti gave word from his prison cell in Israel, where he is serving five life sentences, that he would run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority. Barghouti's popularity among Palestinian youths has caused fears that he could siphon votes from PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas and cause a split in the Fatah Party; Palestinian leaders urged Barghouti to withdraw his candidacy, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak endorsed Abbas, and Ariel Sharon said Barghouti would be able to campaign only from behind bars.
Source:

New York Times

November 22, 2004 Colin Powell visited Israel and the West Bank.
Source:

BBC

November 21, 2004A plague of locusts, which are kosher, swept through parts of Israel.
Source:

Wired News

November 11, 2004Downtown Jerusalem went wireless, with free Internet access for all.
Source:

Ha'aretz

November 1, 2004A teenage suicide bomber killed three people in Tel Aviv when he set off his explosives in a vegetable stall.
Source:

Reuters

October 16, 2004 Israel pulled back from its latest invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Source:

New York Times

October 14, 2004 Israeli police were searching for 1,000 baby crocodiles.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

October 13, 2004The University of Haifa began offering a master's degree in disaster management.
Source:

Jerusalem Post

October 10, 2004Bombings in three Egyptian resort towns killed at least 33 people and wounded 149. Many of the victims were vacationing Israelis.
Source:

New York Times

October 6, 2004 Iraqi politician was indicted for suggesting that the country open negotiations with Israel.
Source:

New York Times

September 27, 2004 Israel used a car bomb to assassinate a Hamas official in Syria.
Source:

Christian Science Monitor

September 20, 2004It was discovered that Israeli traffic fatalities rise by 35 percent in the days following a terrorist attack.
Source:

New Scientist

September 15, 2004 Israel's security cabinet approved a plan to pay up to $300,000 to Jewish families that agreed to abandon the Gaza Strip.
Source:

New York Times

August 31, 2004Palestinian suicide bombers blew up two buses in Beersheba, killing 16 and wounding at least 80.
Source:

Associated Press

August 29, 2004The FBI was still investigating a possible Israeli mole in the Pentagon.
Source:

Telegraph

August 15, 2004Roughly 1,600 Palestinians in Israeli jails began a hunger strike to protest their conditions; "As far as I'm concerned, they can strike for a day, a month, until death," said Tzahi Hanegbi, the Israeli security minister.
Source:

BBC

August 5, 2004 Israeli officials were studying whether to use marijuana to treat soldiers suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder from keeping the Palestinians down.
Source:

Agence France-Presse

July 21, 2004The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel obey the World Court's ruling and remove the West Bank wall.
Source:

New York Times

July 19, 2004The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades assassinated an Israeli judge.
Source:

Reuters

July 12, 2004An Israeli soldier was killed by a bomb in Tel Aviv.
Source:

Reuters

July 10, 2004The World Court declared that Israel's West Bank wall is illegal because it effectively seizes Palestinian land.
Source:

Associated Press

July 7, 2004 Israel's public-security minister warned that Jewish extremists might try to assassinate Israeli leaders to prevent the planned withdrawal from Gaza.
Source:

New York Times

May 31, 2004Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel was still trying to convince his coalition to go along with plans to withdraw from part of the Gaza Strip, and he threatened to fire cabinet members, such as Benjamin Netanyahu, who oppose him.
Source:

Financial Times

May 28, 2004A British journalist who was arrested in Israel for talking to Mordechai Vanunu, the scientist who exposed Israel's nuclear weapons program, was released from custody and complained that he had been stuck in a dungeon with excrement-covered walls; Vanunu was released last month after 18 years in prison and has been ordered not to talk with foreigners.
Source:

Guardian

May 24, 2004 Israel's justice minister, Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who lost his father and grandmother to the Nazis, denounced the Sharon government's latest round of home demolitions in the Gaza Strip and said: "When I saw a picture on the TV of an old woman on all fours in the ruins of her home looking under some floor tiles for her medicines — I did think, 'What would I say if it were my grandmother?'" The comment was criticized for its implied comparison of the Israeli army to the Nazis. "We look like monsters in the eyes of the world," Lapid said. "This makes me sick."
Source:

New York Times

May 20, 2004 Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip as part of "Operation Rainbow"; a tank and a helicopter gunship opened fire on protesters in Rafah and killed at least 10 people, including several children; military officials expressed "deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives" and said that only warning shots had been fired.
Source:

New York Times

May 17, 2004Palestinian families in Gaza fled their homes, often with their belongings piled on donkey carts, as Israeli forces surrounded a refugee camp and prepared to demolish hundreds of homes.
Source:

Reuters

May 15, 2004More than 120,000 Israelis demonstrated in support of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip.
Source:

New York Times

May 8, 2004The Bush Administration was trying to persuade European and other leaders to support Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, even though Sharon's own Likud Party rejected it.
Source:

New York Times

May 3, 2004The Likud Party, in a referendum, rejected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, where a pregnant Israeli woman and her four daughters, ages two to 11, were murdered by Palestinian gunmen.
Source:

New York Times

April 27, 2004 Iraq's Governing Council unveiled a new national flag that was immediately condemned for its strong resemblance to the flag of Israel, which features the same shade of blue.
Source:

Washington Post

April 27, 2004The Anti-Defamation League released a report showing that European anti-Semitism is on the decline, though negative attitudes toward Israel are up.
Source:

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

April 26, 2004Fifty former senior British diplomats signed a letter denouncing Tony Blair for following American policies in Iraq and Israel that are "doomed to failure."
Source:

Financial Times

April 22, 2004Mordecai Vanunu, the scientist who exposed Israel's nuclear-weapons program, was released from prison after 18 years, 11 of which were in solitary confinement. Israel has maintained an official policy of "nuclear ambiguity" even though Vanunu confirmed that the country possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Source:

New York Times

April 18, 2004 Israel assassinated Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who succeeded Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as the leader of Hamas in Gaza after he was killed by an Israeli missile last month; The Bush Administration "strongly urged" Israel to show "maximum restraint."
Source:

Washington Post

April 18, 2004 Israel assassinated Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who succeeded Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as the leader of Hamas in Gaza after he was killed by an Israeli missile last month; the Bush Administration "strongly urged" Israel to show "maximum restraint."
Source:

New York Times

April 15, 2004President Bush announced his support for Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and his approval, "in light of new realities on the ground," for the idea that Israel will never withdraw from its larger settlements in the West Bank.
Source:

New York Times

April 6, 2004Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel let it be known that he will no longer be held to his promise not to kill Yasir Arafat.
Source:

Associated Press

March 28, 2004 Israel's state prosecutor recommended that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted for taking bribes from a real-estate developer and submitted a draft indictment to the attorney general.
Source:

Reuters

March 22, 2004 Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas; Sheikh Yassin, an elderly, partially blind quadriplegic, was hit in his wheelchair with a missile as he left a mosque in Gaza City.
Source:

New York Times

March 21, 2004The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade apologized for murdering a Palestinian college student who was jogging in East Jerusalem; the killers thought he was a Jew.
Source:

New York Times

March 14, 2004Two suicide bombers killed eight people in Ashdod, Israel.
Source:

Associated Press

March 4, 2004An Israeli fashion designer staged a photo shoot along the West Bank wall near Jerusalem; several young models were photographed while posing under Arabic graffiti that read: "I AM A BIG DONKEY."
Source:

International Herald Tribune

February 29, 2004 Israeli forces seized millions of dollars from two Jordanian banks in the West Bank.
Source:

Al Jazeera

February 23, 2004The International Court of Justice began hearing a case against Israel's West Bank wall.
Source:

Times of London

February 23, 2004A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 8 people, including two high school seniors.
Source:

New York Times

February 13, 2004U.S. officials said that the president might support Israel's new plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and that some of the inhabitants of the prison camps in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, might never get out.
Source:

New York Times

February 12, 2004The family of Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia was accused of supplying concrete for Israel's West Bank Wall.
Source:

Telegraph

February 7, 2004 Israel attempted the assassination of an Islamic Jihad leader by firing a missile at his car in Gaza City but succeeded only in killing an aide and a 14-year-old bystander.
Source:

BBC

February 6, 2004 Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in connection with a bribery investigation.
Source:

New York Times

February 2, 2004Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel announced plans to evacuate 17 Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip. "I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza," he said.
Source:

Reuters

January 30, 2004In Jerusalem, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus, killing at least 11 people and spraying body parts into nearby buildings.
Source:

Washington Post

January 22, 2004There was speculation that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon might soon be indicted for taking bribes.
Source:

New York Times

January 19, 2004Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is also the target of a corruption investigation, said that Israel might decide to change the route of the wall it is building around the West Bank but not because of any demands made by Palestinians, the United Nations, or the International Court of Justice.
Source:

New York Times

January 17, 2004The Israeli ambassador to Sweden attacked and damaged an artwork at the Historical Museum in Stockholm; the work, by an Israeli artist and his Swedish wife, consists of a portrait of Hanadi Jaradat, a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed 19 people at a cafe in Haifa, on a boat floating in a pool of red liquid. The ambassador ripped electrical wires out of the piece and threw a light into the pool.
Source:

Reuters

January 14, 2004A 22-year-old Palestinian mother killed herself and four Israelis. "I was hoping," she said in a videotaped statement, "to be the first woman where parts of my body can fly everywhere."
Source:

ABC News

January 14, 2004"There will be a purge on God's orders, and evil will be eliminated like shadows," said the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the cult leader and owner of the Washington Times, in a recent speech. "Gays will be eliminated, the three Israels will unite. If not then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring but this is what happens. It will be greater than the Communist purge but at God's orders."
Source:

New York Press

January 12, 2004 Israel began building a wall around Jerusalem, using mostly Arab workers.
Source:

New York Times

December 31, 2003 Israel announced that the population of Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories has doubled since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.
Source:

New York Times

December 29, 2003an Israeli soldier shot a peaceful, unarmed protester. A national controversy erupted when it turned out that the protester was Jewish.
Source:

New York Times

December 25, 2003Four Israelis died in a bus-stop suicide bombing outside Tel Aviv, and
Source:

Associated Press

December 7, 2003U.S. forces were using Israeli-style tactics against troublesome Iraqis, surrounding some villages with razor wire and forcing residents to carry identification cards, demolishing homes and buildings associated with attacks on Americans, and imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas.
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New York Times

December 2, 2003 Israeli soldiers killed a young boy and three Hamas members in Ramallah.
Source:

New York Times

November 26, 2003 Israeli customs officials confiscated 400 singing and dancing Osama bin Laden dolls as well as 50 that looked like Saddam Hussein.
Source:

Reuters

November 14, 2003Four former Israeli security chiefs criticized Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a newspaper interview and said that Israel was headed for a catastrophe if it continues its current policies toward the Palestinians. "We are taking sure, steady steps," said one, "to a place where the state of Israel will no longer be a democracy and a home for the Jewish people."
Source:

Associated Press

November 12, 2003 Saddam Hussein released a new audiotape calling for jihad against Israel and America.
November 8, 2003 Israeli soldiers shot dead a ten-year-old Palestinian boy who apparently wandered into a forbidden area while he was trying to catch birds.
Source:

New York Times

October 31, 2003 Israeli police questioned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for seven hours as part of two corruption investigations.
Source:

New York Times

October 30, 2003Israel's highest-ranking military officer, Lt. Gen Moshe Yaalon, declared that his country's policy toward the Palestinians is making things worse. "It increases hatred for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations," he said. "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Source:

New York Times

October 23, 2003A former Navy lawyer revealed that President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara, his secretary of defense, ordered those who were investigating the 1967 Israeli attack on the American ship Liberty to conclude that the incident, in which 34 American servicemen died, was an accident, even though the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to the contrary.
Source:

Associated Press

October 23, 2003An Israeli helicopter fired a rocket at a car in the Gaza Strip; after a crowd gathered, another rocket was fired, killing at least eight people and injuring 70. Israeli officials initially disputed the claim that bystanders were injured in the second strike and released a videotape as evidence; upon closer examination, however, the tape confirmed the Palestinian version of the events.
Source:

New York Times

October 13, 2003 Israel raided the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and left 1,240 Palestinians homeless after demolishing up to 120 houses; Israeli officials said they had destroyed three tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt. Eight Palestinians were killed in the operation, including two children.
Source:

Associated Press

October 5, 2003 Islamic Jihad took responsibility for a suicide attack in Haifa, Israel, that killed at least 19 people, including several children.
Source:

Washington Post

October 5, 2003The bomber was a woman from Jenin, a law student, whose brother and cousin were killed by Israeli troops last June.
Source:

Washington Post

September 17, 2003The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Israel refrain from deporting Yasir Arafat.
Source:

Los Angeles Times

September 13, 2003Eight Israelis who were being investigated for terrorist attacks on Palestinians were released from custody,
Source:

New York Times

September 12, 2003 Israel's security cabinet officially decided to "remove" Yasir Arafat.
Source:

New York Times

September 11, 2003 Israeli warplanes destroyed the family home of a Hamas leader, killing his son and wounding 26 others. Ahmed Aurei accepted the position of Palestinian prime minister.
Source:

New York Times

September 10, 2003A Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus stop near Tel Aviv; another bomber exploded in front of a café in Jerusalem. At least 13 people died in the attacks. Israeli forces killed three men, two of whom were said to be Hamas leaders, and a twelve-year-old boy, who was hit by shrapnel.
Source:

New York Times

September 7, 2003 Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, resigned, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was injured in an Israeli airstrike.
Source:

New York Times

September 5, 2003Three Israeli F-15 fighter jets piloted by the descendants of Holocaust survivors flew over the Auschwitz death camp in Poland during a memorial service. The Auschwitz Museum had opposed the flyover, saying that a military display was inappropriate on such an occasion.
Source:

Associated Press

September 2, 2003An Israeli commission of inquiry concluded that police used excessive force in putting down a riot by Israeli Arabs three years ago in which 13 people were killed. The commission suggested that the police stop using snipers armed with rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse Arab crowds.
Source:

New York Times

August 31, 2003 Israel's defense minister threatened to reinvade the Gaza Strip.
Source:

Reuters

August 28, 2003 Yasir Arafat asked Palestinian terrorists to please stop killing Israelis.
Source:

New York Times

August 21, 2003Palestinians and Israelis were slaughtering one another again. A Hamas suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 20 people, six of whom were children, and wounding many more. One nine-year-old boy who survived was blown out of the bus and landed on some dead babies.
Source:

New York Times

August 15, 2003The Middle East peace process continued as Israeli forces conducted a raid in Nablus, killing at least two Hamas members; Hamas retaliated with a suicide bombing, killing an Israeli settler. The Al Aksa Martyrs brigade also carried out a bombing, killing one Israeli. Israel killed an Islamic Jihad commander, and the group promised revenge attacks.
Source:

New York Times

August 1, 2003Israel's parliament passed a law forbidding Palestinians who marry Israelis from becoming Israeli citizens.
Source:

New York Times

July 31, 2003In Jerusalem, U.S. House majority leader Tom DeLay called himself an "Israeli at heart."
Source:

New York Times

July 24, 2003A poll found that 74 percent of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would leave if paid to do so.
Source:

Financial Times

July 17, 2003 Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, traveled to Norway but refused to visit Oslo.
Source:

New York Times

July 16, 2003 Israel's transportation minister offered to provide buses to take Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea, "whence they will not return."
Source:

Ha'aretz

July 2, 2003Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas of the Occupied Territories got together on their own initiative and shook hands publicly; Abbas expressed his wish to end suffering, death, and pain.
Source:

New York Times

June 29, 2003 Israel began to pull back from its positions in the Gaza Strip.
June 22, 2003The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians continued to move forward: Israel assassinated a Hamas leader;
Source:

New York Times

June 19, 2003a suicide bomber blew up a grocery store in a small farming town in northern Israel, killing the owner.
Source:

Deutsche Welle

June 17, 2003Palestinian snipers killed a seven-year-old Israeli girl and wounded her five-year-old sister and her father;
Source:

Reuters

June 13, 2003 Israelis and Palestinians were doing their best to slaughter one another in a vigorous exchange of revenge attacks; Israel's defense minister ordered security forces to "use everything they have" to destroy Hamas; Hamas responded in kind and released a statement calling on "all military cells to act immediately and act like an earthquake to blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces."
Source:

Guardian

June 5, 2003President George W. Bush staged a handshake between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers at a summit meeting in Jordan.
Source:

Guardian

June 5, 2003Elsewhere, in the West Bank, Israeli forces shot a seven-year-old Palestinian girl in the abdomen.
Source:

Guardian

May 19, 2003 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon cancelled a meeting with George W. Bush in response to a new round of suicide attacks and restated his long-standing position that Israel will make peace with the Palestinians only after there is peace with the Palestinians.
Source:

New York Times

May 2, 2003A day later Israeli tanks invaded a crowded neighborhood in Gaza and killed 12 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including a two-year-old boy, in a hunt for a Hamas weapons smuggler.
Source:

New York Times

May 2, 2003 UNICEF reported that since the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada 92 Israeli and 436 Palestinian children have been killed.
May 1, 2003The United States, the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union, acting collectively as "the Quartet," presented Israel and Palestine with the famous "road map" to peace that President Bush promised to reveal once the Palestinians acquired a prime minister independent of Yasir Arafat.
May 1, 2003A suicide bomber, who turned out to be a British citizen, responded to the confirmation of Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister by blowing up a nightclub in Tel Aviv, leaving body parts scattered along the shore.
April 1, 2003 A Palestinian exploded in Netanya, Israel, and wounded three dozen people. Islamic Jihad said the attack was a gift to the Iraqi people.
April 1, 2003 Israeli troops killed several Palestinian children.
January 14, 2003 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was slipping in the polls after being accused of corruption and lying to the police in the matter of an illegal $1.5 million loan.
January 14, 2003 The wife of the president of the European Central Bank compared the Israeli occupation of Palestine to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
May 14, 2002 Israel's Likud Party voted never to permit the creation of a Palestinian state.
February 5, 2002 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon said he wished he had “liquidated” Yasir Arafat in the 1980s when he had the chance. A state department official said “remarks like these can be unhelpful.”
December 18, 2001 Israelis and Palestinians continued to kill one another; a poll showed that 74 percent of Israelis backed their government's “seek-and-kill” policy of assassinating Palestinian militants, though just 22 percent thought it decreased terrorism and 45 percent said it probably increased terror attacks.
December 4, 2001 President Bush sent an envoy to Israel with the aim of restarting peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.
December 4, 2001 Hamas proved that it still has the power to prevent such negotiations by sending a wave of suicide bombers into Israel, which culminated in a double bombing on a crowded Jerusalem street that left at least 10 people dead.
December 4, 2001 Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza City with cruise missiles.
November 27, 2001The United Nations Committee Against Torture warned Israel to stop torturing Palestinians.
November 27, 2001Yaakov Levy, an Israeli delegate, told the committee that a “close reading” of the 1987 Convention Against Torture, which Israel signed, “clearly suggests that pain and suffering, in themselves, do not necessarily constitute torture.” An Israeli death squad killed a Hamas leader in the West Bank who was suspected of planning suicide attacks.
November 27, 2001Five young cousins walking to school near their refugee camp in Gaza were killed by a bomb that was set by an Israeli special forces unit.
November 27, 2001A 22-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint, injuring two Israeli border guards.
November 27, 2001 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was issued a summons to appear before a court in Belgium in a lawsuit stemming from his role in the 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon; Belgian law permits lawsuits concerning crimes against humanity and genocide no matter where the crimes occurred.
November 20, 2001Three human rights groups charged that Israel has resumed the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees in violation of an order by the Israeli supreme court.
November 13, 2001 Israeli legislators voted to lift parliamentary immunity from an Israeli Arab legislator so that he could be prosecuted for advocating Palestinian resistance to Israeli policies.
November 6, 2001 Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres shook hands with Yasir Arafat, as did the Rev. Al Sharpton.
October 30, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld asserted that the Afghan war is “not a quagmire.” Israelis and Palestinians continued to make war on one another; the death count rose to 728 Palestinians and 186 Israelis.
October 23, 2001An Israeli death squad assassinated a Hamas leader while he was praying on his roof. “This is not the first and not the last,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared. A few days later a Palestinian death squad assassinated Rehavan Zeevi, Israel's minister of tourism, who had been a strong advocate of “transferring” all Palestinians out of the occupied territories.
October 23, 2001 Israel sent tanks into Bethlehem.
September 25, 2001 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon vetoed talks with Yasir Arafat for the usual reasons.
September 18, 2001 Israel invaded Jericho on the anniversary of the 1993 Oslo agreement.
September 11, 2001A Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew smiled out of the corner of his mouth and blew himself up on the Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem, wounding 20 people. It was the fifth bomb to go off in Jerusalem that day. Other bombers had better luck and succeeded in killing innocent people.
September 4, 2001An Israeli death squad using American-made weapons assassinated Mustafa Zubari, also known as Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
September 4, 2001Gideon Ezra, Israel's deputy minister for internal security, had a bright new idea for fighting terrorism: kill the families of people who kill Israelis.
September 4, 2001Secretary of State Colin Powell stayed away from the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance because some countries were insisting on using impolite language to criticize Israel for being an unkind master.
August 14, 2001 Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in a Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem; at least 18 people, including 6 children, were killed.
August 14, 2001 Israel confiscated Orient House, the PLO's headquarters in East Jerusalem.
August 7, 2001 Palestinian worshipers hurled their shoes at Israeli police outside Al Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount; others threw stones at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall.
August 7, 2001An Israeli death squad assassinated two Hamas leaders along with six others, including two young boys (seven-year-old Bilal Abu Khader and his five-year-old brother, Ashraf) who happened to be walking by when the missiles exploded. “Today is a day of one of our most important successes,” said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
July 31, 2001A watermelon rigged with a bomb inside was left on an Israeli bus; the fruit was detonated safely.
July 17, 2001 Israel resumed the demolition of Palestinian homes.
July 10, 2001 Israel's security cabinet decided that it would continue to use death squads to eliminate suspected Palestinian terrorists.
July 10, 2001 Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, was under investigation in Belgium for crimes against humanity committed during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
July 3, 2001Secretary of State Colin Powell stood next to Yasir Arafat and endorsed the idea of international observers to help enforce a cease-fire with Israel; later, standing next to Ariel Sharon, Powell clarified his previous statement, which had seemed clear enough, and said he did not support “some outside group of forces coming in.” Powell's trip also included a visit to Jordan, where King Abdullah let him drive at the “king's speed limit” in his custom silver BMW convertible.
June 26, 2001 Killings continued in Israel and Palestine despite the cease-fire; among those murdered were two Israeli soldiers, who were lured into a trap by a suicide bomber, and a Palestinian man who was thought to be “moving suspiciously” and ran when challenged by soldiers, who shot him in the back.
June 12, 2001The World Meteorological Organization, after protests from Jewish groups, removed “Israel” from the list of potential names of hurricanes.
June 12, 2001An Israeli received a new heart from a Palestinian man whose family said he was killed by Jewish settlers.
June 5, 2001Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, decided to ask for a stay of execution; his lawyer said that “the most important thing in his life is to help bring integrity to the criminal justice system.” In Israel, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a crowded sidewalk outside a beachside nightclub frequented by teenagers, killing at least 20 and wounding almost 100.
May 29, 2001 Israel declared a cease-fire with the Palestinians; Hamas responded by blowing up a car.
May 22, 2001 Israeli security forces assassinated five Palestinian soldiers as they prepared a late-night snack, which was a mistake, as it turned out, since the intended targets were stationed in another guardhouse nearby.
May 22, 2001The Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot observed that “only a revenge-seeking fool could believe that eliminations and missile fire, the demolition of neighborhoods, the killing of soldiers and civilians and the destruction of homes could restore personal calm and security.” A Palestinian suicide bomber killed ten Israelis and wounded 100 others at a shopping mall; Israel responded with F-16 air strikes.
May 15, 2001A four-month-old Palestinian girl was killed by tank fire after Israeli forces shelled a crowded refugee camp in Gaza in what one Israeli general reportedly called an “exaggerated” response to a mortar attack.
May 8, 2001 Israeli security forces using tanks and bulldozers destroyed a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza; a spokesman described the action as “engineering work.” Segregation was on the rise in American cities, according to new census figures.
April 24, 2001Miss Israel, an eighteen-year-old soldier from Haifa named Ilanit Levy, announced that she will wear a bulletproof dress at the Miss Universe pageant next month.
April 17, 2001 Israeli troops bulldozed at least 15 homes at a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza.
April 17, 2001A Charlotte, North Carolina, federal judge told a man that if he wanted to be released on bail he would have to stop living in sin, because doing so violates an 1805 anti-fornication law, which reads: “If any man and woman, not being married to each other, shall lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together, they shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.” Israeli officials raided restaurants in search of leavened bread, which is banned during Passover; violators were fined $25.
April 10, 2001A Palestinian man who was suspected of collaborating with Israel was assassinated by three men wearing hoods.
April 10, 2001 Israeli soldiers shot an 18-month-old Palestinian girl in the head from a distance of about ten yards.
April 10, 2001 Israeli religious leaders declared that Viagra was not kosher for Passover, though a rabbi can authorize its use “in the event of urgent medical need.” Customs officials in New York arrested a Canadian stripper who tried to smuggle 78,771 hits of ecstasy into the United States inside some Legos.
April 3, 2001 Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was angry about a fact-finding mission led by former senator George Mitchell; he said that allowing such an investigation into the causes of the recent Intifada was an “historic mistake” because “no one has the right, no one, to put Israel on trial before the world.” A Palestinian sniper shot and killed a ten-month-old Israeli girl in Hebron as she lay in her stroller; Israeli troops then shelled a nearby Palestinian neighborhood and other targets, including Yasir Arafat's home.
March 20, 2001Khalid Abu Elba, the Palestinian bus driver who ran down and killed eight Israelis at a bus stop last month, testified in court. “I am not sorry,” he announced. Israel relaxed the blockade of the West Bank town of Ramallah, changing it, in the official jargon, from a “suffocating blockade” to a “breathing blockade.”
March 13, 2001The new Israeli government of national unity under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was preparing to introduce legislation that would legalize the torture of Palestinian prisoners; such torture was legal in Israel until 1984, and until 1999, Shin Bet, the domestic security service, was allowed to use “moderate physical pressure” during interrogations.
March 6, 2001 Israeli security forces killed six Palestinians over the weekend, including a forty-three-year-old mother and a nine-year-old boy.
March 6, 2001A Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and three elderly Israeli women and injured many others in Netanya. A mob immediately tried to lynch an Arab bystander; police arrived just as they were about to hitch the unconscious man to a truck and drag him through the marketplace.
February 27, 2001Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister who lost the recent election to Ariel Sharon, a known war criminal, resigned from politics, then agreed to be Sharon's defense minister in a government of national unity, then resigned from politics again.
February 27, 2001 Israeli security forces assassinated a leader of the militant Hamas movement.
February 20, 2001A criminal investigation into the pardon of Marc Rich was opened; former president Bill Clinton expressed confusion over the hubbub and said that he pardoned Rich because Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak asked him to.
February 20, 2001A Palestinian security officer was sentenced to die for collaborating with the occupying Israeli security forces.
February 20, 2001 Israel assassinated a Palestinian security official; Prime Minister Ehud Barak congratulated the army on a job well done.
February 20, 2001A Palestinian bus driver ran down a crowd of Israelis at a bus stop, killing eight.
February 13, 2001 Ariel Sharon, a known war criminal, was elected prime minister of Israel; Sharon declared that the peace process was dead and that the Palestinians must submit to Israeli domination before negotiations could resume.
February 13, 2001 Palestinians set off a car bomb in Jerusalem; Israeli soldiers shot and killed a teenage Palestinian goatherd.
February 13, 2001A television station in Israel broadcast a home video of a rape. A cougar on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, attacked and tried to eat a man.
January 16, 2001 Israel's chief rabbis declared that Jewish law prohibits giving up sovereignty over the Temple Mount; the Islamic mufti of Jerusalem said much the same thing: non-Muslims, he said, are forbidden to control even “its depths, no matter how far down, and the space above it, now matter how high up.”
January 2, 2001There were bombings in Pakistan and Indonesia and Israel.
January 2, 2001A mob ran through Jerusalem chanting “Death to the Arabs!” and beating any Palestinians they happened upon.
January 2, 2001 Israeli soldiers assassinated Dr. Thabet Thabet, a senior Palestinian health official, near his home in the West Bank: Last week, an Israeli general admitted on the radio that the extra-judicial killing of suspected terrorists was an official policy of the Israeli government.
January 2, 2001 Israel immediately said it would sign the treaty.
0, 2000Jets from Israel bombed an alleged tunnel in Gaza.
Source:

BBC News

0, 2000Jews fought with Muslims at the Temple Mount, and Lebanon announced it had bested Israel's record by creating a two-ton plate of hummus.
Source 1:

BBC

Source 2:

FP

0, 2000 Israel's foreign minister accused Sweden of blood libel.
Source:

BBC News

0, 2000 Israeli housing officials denied that a construction freeze was in effect in the West Bank.
Source:

NY Times

December 26, 2000Bethlehem was empty this Christmas, devoid of lights or trees or public celebrations, having been sealed off by the Israeli army.
December 26, 2000 Jerusalem's Christian churches endorsed Palestinian demands for sovereignty in East Jerusalem; they condemned Israeli violence against demonstrators and noted that an oppressed people living under a military occupation has the moral right to resist its overlords.
December 19, 2000 After months of preventing Palestinians from entering Israel to work, thus destroying the economy of the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government “came to the conclusion,” in the words of the defense minister, “that it did not serve any productive purpose to have severe economic distress in the territories.”
December 12, 2000 Israeli snipers shot and killed more unarmed Palestinian demonstrators.
December 5, 2000 Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, his government about to fall, called for an early election.
December 5, 2000Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, recommended sending international monitors to the West Bank and Gaza, saying that life for Palestinians under the Israeli occupation was “dehumanizing.” The Israeli government issued a report claiming that Palestinians and not Israeli defense forces actually shot and killed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durah as he cowered with his father; the report, which relied heavily on civilians with no training in ballistics, was widely ridiculed. Israel's daily paper Ha'aretz wrote: “It is hard to describe in mild terms the stupidity of this bizarre investigation.”
November 28, 2000 Terrorists bombed a school bus filled with children of Israeli settlers; two adults were killed and several children were dismembered.
November 28, 2000 Israeli defense forces responded to terrorist attacks with bombs of their own, killing several adults and dismembering at least one child.
November 28, 2000A car bomb went off in the Israeli coastal city of Hadera, killing two; Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel would “get even.” There were more killings.
November 21, 2000A German general was named to head the European Union's “rapid reaction force.” Germans were horrified that Israeli soldiers had killed a German doctor outside his home in the West Bank.
November 21, 2000 Yasir Arafat ordered Palestinian policemen to stop firing at Israel's occupying soldiers; no one paid much attention, and the shooting continued as before.
November 14, 2000 Israel assassinated a Palestinian paramilitary commander by blowing up his vehicle with missiles fired from helicopter gunships; two women who were standing nearby were also killed. One witness described seeing the women's bodies with “their intestines and livers hanging out.” An Israeli general said that he hoped the assassination would “reduce the violence and bring reason back to this area.” Heavier fighting followed; two Israeli soldiers and more Palestinians, including a twelve-year-old boy, were shot dead.
November 14, 2000The U.N. General Assembly for the ninth time called on the United States to lift its embargo of Cuba; the vote was 167-3; only the Marshall Islands and Israel voted with the U.S.
November 7, 2000Computer vandals known as the Pakistan Hackerz Club defaced the website of the Israel Public Affairs Committee and stole email addresses and credit card information, which they posted on the Web.
November 7, 2000A car bomb killed two Israelis in Jerusalem.
November 7, 2000Physicians for Human Rights issued a report that documented the Israeli Army's practice of using live bullets to disperse unarmed rioters.
November 7, 2000 Israelis marked the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist.
October 31, 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called “timeout” and decided to make peace with Ariel Sharon, the right-wing opposition leader, instead of with the Palestinians.
October 31, 2000Gun sales in Israel were on the rise.
October 31, 2000The United States Congress increased military aid to Israel by $60 million, bringing the total up to $1.9 billion; Israel put a rush on its order for a new German submarine; according to some reports, the submarine will be equipped with nuclear weapons.
October 31, 2000 Islamic students demonstrated in front of the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, chanting “Kill All Jews.” Music by Richard Wagner was performed in concert in Israel for the first time; the “Siegfried Idyll” was protested briefly by a Holocaust survivor who stood up before the concert and made loud noises with a rattle.
October 31, 2000Hillary Rodham Clinton got spooked by accusations that she was not sufficiently loyal to Israel and returned $50,000 in campaign contributions to some Arabs.
October 24, 2000The United Nations General Assembly was considering a motion to condemn Israel for using excessive force against Palestinians; of the 134 people who have died in the recent uprising, all but 8 were Arabs.
October 17, 2000 Israelis killed more Palestinians; Palestinians killed more Israelis.
October 17, 2000Gangs of young men from the Islamic Defenders Front, wearing white outfits accessorized with green scarves and wooden rods, prowled the Jakarta, Indonesia, airport looking, unsuccessfully, for Israeli Jews to kill.
October 10, 2000The Mid-East peace process continued as Israeli soldiers killed 84 Palestinians, including over a dozen children, in violence that followed a visit to the Dome of the Rock by Likud leader Ariel Sharon; two Israeli soldiers and two settlers were killed in the fighting.
October 10, 2000 Clinton also called for the release of classified materials concerning Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of spying on the U.S. for Israel.
September 26, 2000 Israel was suffering an epidemic of West Nile disease.
September 12, 2000Three Israeli border police officers were detained after they beat three Palestinians and photographed one another standing on top of them.
August 8, 2000Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the rightist Israeli Shas Party, declared that the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust were reincarnated sinners who rightly suffered the wrath of God.
July 25, 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat failed to meet President Bill Clinton's deadline for making peace in the Middle East; Clinton declared the summit over and flew to Okinawa for a meeting of the G8, the world's seven richest industrialized countries plus Russia, where the leaders issued a strongly worded statement decrying the alarming lack of Internet access in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.
January 9, 2000World leaders converged in Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit, as did protesters. City officials freed 300 prisoners so that they would have 1,000 cells available, but ended up arresting only 149 people in two days. The protesters held demonstrations against pollution, global warming, automobiles, homophobia, African debt exploitation, corporate subsidies, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, child labor, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Burmese junta, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's presence at the summit. Anarchists in black sang, to the tune of the Beatles' “Yellow Submarine,” “We all live in a fascist bully state.” “I feel like it's real exclusive,” said 15-year-old Rosi Lowe of the summit, “and doesn't represent the entire world.”
Source 1:

New York Times

Source 2:

Post-Gazette

Source 3:

MSNBC

22

    December 2009

    THE GENERAL ELECTRIC SUPERFRAUD
    Why the Hudson River Will Never Run Clean
    By David Gargill

    THE MASTER OF SPIN BOLDAK
    Undercover with Afghanistan’s Drug-Trafficking Border Police
    By Matthieu Aikins

    MERMAID FEVER
    A story by Steven Millhauser

    UNDERSTANDING OBAMACARE
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    Also: Dave Hickey and Wendell Berry