The Israeli government has built a road to the construction site of a seminary to be run by an extremist Jewish group on the US State Department's terrorist list, a TV station reported on Thursday. The site is an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank.
Channel Two TV showed the new road, freshly paved, snaking through gentle hills to "Tapuah West," where a seminary to perpetuate the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a US-born extremist denounced as a hatemonger toward Arabs, is being built.
PHOTO: AP
Kahane was assassinated in New York in November, 1990. He served a term in the Israeli parliament in the 1980s, but his party was banned from the next election because of its racism.
The Yesha Settlers Council issued a statement denying the TV report, saying that the outpost received government approval five years ago.
Posters on lamp posts and bulletin boards in Jerusalem invite the public to a ceremony at the seminary to be held tomorrow night, offering transport in an armored bus. The evening is dedicated to Kahane, as well as his son and daughter-in-law, who were killed in a West Bank ambush in December, 2000.
One of the groups signed on the base of the poster is "The Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea," the religious seminary and movement that spreads Kahane's philosophy. The group, along with others associated with the late extremist, are on the State Department's list of terror organizations.
Channel Two TV visited the West Bank site and showed the wooden school building nearing completion. The unauthorized outpost near the Palestinian city of Nablus is a few hundred meters from the main settlement of Tapuah, founded by followers of Kahane, who preached that Arabs must be expelled from Israel and the West Bank.
Kahane's followers have been repeatedly accused of attacking Palestinians. Some have been convicted, and others have been placed under lengthy house arrest.
Channel Two estimated the cost of the new road at 1 million shekels (US$230,000) but Yesha said in its statement that it had cost less than half that.
The prime minister's spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the TV report.
Under the terms of the US-backed "road map" peace plan, Israel must remove dozens of outposts put up in the West Bank since March, 2001. This week the Israeli government listed four outposts for evacuation, but Tapuah West was not on the list.
David Haivri, an Israeli settler interviewed by Channel Two next to the new building, scoffed at the government's stated intention of removing all the unauthorized outposts.
"We are the law here," he said.
Critics of the government charge that its outpost removal program is a sham, since most of the outposts taken down so far are uninhabited, consisting of a temporary structure or a container, while populated outposts have been largely untouched.
The only populated outpost on the latest list is Ginnot Arieh, with 25 settlers. Their backers pledge to bring thousands to the site to stop the dismantling. Channel 10 TV reported on Thursday that the army would send 3,500 soldiers to the site, expecting the evacuation to take three days.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS