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WORLD
Iran providing training to Hamas, Israel says
A year-old international campaign to isolate the Hamas-led Palestinian government unintentionally has pushed the militant Islamic group into a dangerous and growing alliance with Iran, Israel’s top internal-intelligence chief said Monday.
Yuval Diskin, the director of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, said closer ties between Hamas and Iran were one of the “bad fruits” of a U.S. and Israeli-led economic boycott of the Palestinian government. The boycott gave Iran an opportunity to give Hamas millions of dollars in aid and military training as part of a campaign to destabilize Israel and the Middle East, Diskin said.
“Hamas headed toward the open window of Iran and this maybe strengthened the ties,” Diskin told a small group of Western journalists. “All the doors were closed, and they went to the window.”
For more than a year, Israel and the United States have refused to provide aid to the Palestinian government because of Hamas’ refusal to renounce its long-standing pledge to destroy Israel. European countries have joined the boycott.
The economic blockade has hobbled the Palestinian government, as intended. But it also created an opening for Iran to increase its influence by stepping in to shore up Hamas, Diskin said.
Iran has pledged to provide Hamas with $150 million in aid. In addition, Diskin said, tens of Hamas militants have been sent to Iran for advanced military training, and Hamas would like to send hundreds more to learn to build and operate advanced weaponry.
“I see it as the strategic danger,” Diskin said of the training.
Diskin’s remarks in a rare on-the-record briefing reflected the
growing anxiety of leaders throughout the Middle East and the United States over Tehran’s expanding influence.
There was no way to assess the accuracy of his claims independently. They came as the Bush administration also has accused Iran of providing powerful new bombs to Shiite Muslim militia groups in Iraq and as U.S. and Israeli officials continue to press for international action against Iran’s nuclear programs.
Diskin provided no specifics on how Israelis knew that Hamas members were traveling to Iran or that Hamas would like to send many more.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials also have accused Iran of helping to funnel advanced weaponry through smuggler tunnels under the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt, though they’ve provided no evidence of such shipments.
“The battle in Gaza is not isolated from what is happening in the region,” said Ayman Shaheen, a political science professor at Al Azar University in Gaza City. “The problem is that Hamas has put itself on the axis with Tehran. This is a new regional power that wants to dominate the region.”
When Hamas took power last year in legislative elections, Israeli officials were skeptical that Iran would keep its pledge to provide the new Palestinian leaders with extensive financial support. But now Israeli leaders are voicing alarm about Iranian influence in the Gaza Strip.
“They are committed to waging a jihad against Israel and the United States and this is a place where it can be done at the lowest cost for Iran,” said Shmuel Bar, an Iran specialist and the director of studies at the Institute of Policy and Strategy in Israel.
How much support Iran has provided to Hamas is debated
within the Israeli government.
“The arms come from Sinai, they come from Sudan, and who is the pusher?” Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy defense minister, said recently. “I don’t think there is a question: money from Iran. The source of the weapons is mainly Iran.”
Diskin downplayed the threat from smuggled weapons and said Israel faced a bigger danger from locally produced Palestinian rockets, which generally have small explosive power and can travel only a few miles.
Still, he warned that Israel will have to stage a large military
operation in Gaza to combat Palestinian militants if Egypt doesn’t crack down on arms smuggling, “The Egyptians will play an important role in whether there will be an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip,” Diskin said.
Iranian support for Hamas also is fueling internal Palestinian divisions. Leaders from the rival Fatah faction have tried to eat away at Hamas’ support by suggesting that the militant group is a tool for outside interests.
At a rally in January amid weeks of deadly factional Gaza Strip street battles, Fatah demonstrators in the predominately Sunni Muslim region mocked Hamas supporters by chanting “Shiite” because of their alliance with Shiite-dominated Iran.
Last month, Fatah leaders briefly claimed that they’d captured a handful of Iranian officers at the Hamas-dominated Islamic University in Gaza City. But they quickly backed off from the charge, and Diskin said there was no evidence to support it.
NATIONAL
First Muslim elected to Congress will share his story with the world
Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, had little good to say about President Bush’s foreign policy when he ran for office in 2006.
Now, two months into office, the Minnesota Democrat has plans to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top State Department officials to talk about showcasing his story as part of their public diplomacy efforts in the Muslim world.
“Hey, my country first. We can work out our political differences later,” said Ellison, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. “I’ve said I’m willing to do whatever I can to make some friends for America.”
Building on the international cachet he’s built since taking his oath of office on Thomas Jefferson’s Quran, Ellison has been profiled three times by the State Department’s overseas press bureau. On Monday he did a Voice of America interview from his office, where an American flag was placed conspicuously behind his desk for the cameras.
He’s scheduled to follow up Thursday in a teleconference with Karen Hughes, the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy. The teleconference has been tasked by the White House to promote American values and confront ideological support for terrorism around the world.
Muslim commentators and administration officials say that,
whatever controversy Ellison has engendered at home, he can help America’s image abroad, especially in the Arab world.
“It’s a very positive development,” said Voice of America’s Faiz Rehman, a Pakistani native and senior political producer. “He is the most famous freshman congressman in the world.”
Although the Bush administration is promoting Ellison as an example of American religious tolerance, part of his international cachet comes from the controversy he’s
encountered at home.
Since Ellison became a candidate for Congress last year, his religion has been fodder for political opponents, including Minnesota Republicans who tried to tie him to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
After he decided to take his oath on the Quran, Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode called it an illustration of the need for immigration changes, even though Ellison grew up in Detroit. A national talk show host asked him if he was working with “our enemies.”
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations, compared Ellison’s overseas appeal to that of boxing icon Muhammad Ali, who refused to serve in Vietnam.
“Muslims around the world know that America has a tradition of religious tolerance,” he said. “They’d like to see us live up to that tradition.”
Ellison, for his part, plays up the positive in the American experience, noting that the nation’s founders chose not to establish an official state religion.
“Religious tolerance has a much longer pedigree in America than some of the intolerance we’ve seen lately,” he told Voice of America.
But he hasn’t backed off from his criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, saying he wants people around the world to know that “there are many Americans who want to relate to the rest of the world in terms of cooperation, not military domination.”
His staffers say the State Department has shown no signs of squeamishness about publicizing his criticism of the war.
Rick Jauert, Ellison’s communications director, said he warned one State Department writer that “we don’t agree on much.”
That was fine, came the reply. “They said it’s about democracy and dissent,” he said.
LOCAL / BSU
House rejects education standards for young kids
House lawmakers voted 43-27 against a nonbinding resolution to ask agencies to establish education standards for young children, the second setback in as many weeks for advocates of boosting state
involvement in how Idaho cares for its youngsters.
The measure defeated this week said “all children deserve the right to be cared for in a safe and enriching environment” and sought to create standards to help parents differentiate between providers of preschool child care. The resolution would have asked the Department of Health and Welfare to rank the quality of day cares and channel federal money to centers based on those rankings.
But some lawmakers compared the resolution to a communist plot that infringes on parents’ rights.
“In old Russia, the state owned children for all intents and purposes,” said Rep. Lenore Barrett, R-Challis. “This is not the proper role of government.”
Proponents, meanwhile, argued unsuccessfully that establishing educational standards for young kids was a pragmatic approach that takes into account reality: Many families include two parents who work and must send their kids to daycare. As a result, the state should set standards for those operations, they said.
“In the ideal world, every mother or father would take care of their child at home,” Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, said. “In the real world, that is not happening.”
Last week, a House committee dumped a bill to boost minimum safety standards for Idaho daycare centers.
Oversight of daycare centers in Idaho is worst in the nation, according to a survey by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.
Courtesy Idaho Press-Tribune
WHAT THE ?
Dude, I could have sworn the bad guys were in here
Two young men, who had apparently been smoking lots of marijuana, called police to report that they were holding two burglars who had broken into their apartment in Reno, Nev.
But, when the cops arrived, there were no burglars.
The men explained that one of them woke up to find the bathroom door locked, leading them to believe the burglars were in there. They slipped notes under the bathroom door to communicate with them. Police found the notes in the empty bathroom, and arrested the young men for possession of 23 grams of marijuana and 10 bongs.
Sic `em, King! And Fang, and Dexter, and Fido …
A man broke into a building in Edmonton, Alberta, right next to a site where dozens of police dogs were being trained. He was apprehended shortly after he inadvertently set
off the alarm.
Five cents a pound times … What is it, like 200 tons?
Two men in Macedonia stole two 30-foot bridges. They were caught when they tried to sell them to a
scrap yard. The proprietor became suspicious when the thieves showed up there with 20 trucks loaded with 200 tons of steel.
MCT Campus Wire Services
