Israeli Secret Service Attacks Man OR YEHUDA, Israel (AP) -- An Israeli man who tried to shake hands with Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday was knocked to the ground by a secret service agent who feared the man was trying to harm the prime minister. Netanyahu later described the incident as a case of ``mistaken identity'' on the part of the secret service. The man was knocked to the ground unconscious by a security guard who jumped off a stage where Netanyahu had spoken moments before. Witnesses said the man was kicked repeatedly all over his body by the secret service agent. Israel radio reported that the security guard saw the man holding a rolled paper and suspected it was concealing a knife. Witnesses said the man extended his hand in Netanyahu's direction after the premier had spoken to a small, friendly crowd at the town's cultural center. Security around Israeli leaders was increased after a Jewish extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. ``At the end of my comments, people wanted to shake my hand. I went toward them, and then something happened that for a moment wasn't clear and the guards asked me to leave the area,'' Netanyahu later told reporters. ``Afterward, it became clear that there was a case of mistaken identity. I asked to see the man but he was unconscious, and I understood that he was being treated and taken away. I hope it won't happen again.'' The prime minister's office did not provide any information on the condition or identity of the injured man. Israel's Sharon faces probe in fraud case JERUSALEM, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Israeli police said on Wednesday they would question Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon in a case of suspected fraud involving testimony on his behalf by a former army general at a 1997 libel trial. Police questioned businessman Avigdor Ben-Gal, the retired major-general, on Tuesday about his testimony in Sharon's suit against an Israeli newspaper that accused Sharon of deception in his conduct of Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion. Under investigation is a possible link between Ben-Gal's June 1997 testimony and a trip to Russia two weeks earlier he made with Sharon, then national infrastructure minister, to explore a possible deal to bring natural gas to Israel. Police said in a statement that they would question Sharon, 71, when he returned from the United States where his wife is undergoing medical tests. Police said they were investigating suspicions of fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice. Ben-Gal and Sharon's attorney both publicly denied any link between the Russia trip and the subsequent testimony. ``These things are baseless,'' said Sharon's attorney Yaacov Weinroth. Sharon brought the libel suit against the liberal newspaper Ha'aretz for a report in 1991 that the late prime minister Menachem Begin felt misled by Sharon, his defence minister, over the planned scope of the 1982 Lebanon invasion. Ben-Gal's testimony at trial on Sharon's behalf contradicted a statement Ben- Gal made in 1987 at a Tel Aviv University conference. Ben-Gal told the conference that the Lebanon war was based on a secret plan of the defence minister and army chief which had not been approved. At the trial, Ben-Gal said he had been mistaken. Ha'aretz won the suit in November 1997 in any event and last year filed a complaint that prompted the police investigation. ``We are speaking of a complaint by an interest group (Ha'aretz) locked in a legal battle with Minister Sharon. We're speaking of a complaint without hands, without legs, and I hope that within a few days all will be cleared up,'' Weinroth, Sharon's attorney, told Israel Radio. Israeli Police Commissioner Yehuda Wilk denied any connection between the police investigation and Israel's May 17 general election. He said the probe was launched months before anyone knew elections would be moved up from late 2000. Police said their inquiry was in its final stages. Sharon lost his suit when the Tel Aviv District Court ruled there had been grounds for Ha'aretz reporter Uzi Benziman to conclude that Begin knew Sharon had deceived him about how far Israeli troops would push north in Lebanon. Begin quit suddenly as prime minister in August 1983 in the face of mounting Israeli casualties, saying simply: ``I cannot go on.'' He withdrew from public life and died in 1992, aged 78. The Israeli army eventually reached Beirut and pulled the bulk of its troops out of Lebanon only in 1985 after 650 Israelis and thousands of Lebanese were killed in the campaign, the most unpopular war of Israel's history Barak's ``One Israel'' image bombs on prime time TV By Paul Holmes JERUSALEM, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Opposition Labour leader Ehud Barak's ``One Israel'' election pitch was in chaos on Wednesday after an angry tirade against racism in the party by an offended lawmaker at a rally shown live on prime time television. Addisu Messele, Israel's only Ethiopian member of parliament, hijacked Tuesday night's rally, conceived as a celebration of unity, after he failed to secure a safe slot on Labour's list of candidates for the May 17 general election. He grabbed the podium microphone from an embarrassed Barak and, with the audience in uproar, launched a bitter assault on what he said was racism and elitism in the party. ``It looked like a jungle yesterday,'' Barak's spokeswoman, Aliza Goren, said of the debacle. She defended Barak from charges of racism and suggested Messele was a poor loser. Messele had expected to win the highest place reserved on Labour's list for new immigrants but lost it to a Russian-born woman, Sofa Landver, when the results of party primaries were officially announced at the rally. Messele accused party managers of rigging the ballot to ensure a plum spot for Landver so as to boost Labour's electoral appeal. Israel is home to some 700,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union while Ethiopian Jews number only 75,000. To make matters worse, an Arab woman who also fared badly in the primaries, Nadia Hilu, followed Messele to the stage to brand the voting system ``a joke.'' Few commentators lent credence on Wednesday to Messele's allegation of ballot fraud and Barak promised it would be fully investigated to clear it from the table. But political analysts said Barak's painstaking efforts to portray Labour as a home for all Israelis regardless of their origins had suffered a severe setback and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would benefit handsomely. ``To permit such a fiasco takes some talent,'' commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. He called the rally a ``show of collective suicide.'' Opinion polls show Barak running neck-and-neck with Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, in the build-up to the May election. Netanyahu was quick to revel in Labour's woes, saying his rivals seemed bent on self-destruction. ``The Labour party's campaign was supposed to project unity. It has become a party that divides the people rather than unites it,'' he told Army Radio. Israel's political landscape has fragmented into a patchwork of interest groups under a system introduced for the 1996 election that gives voters one ballot for a party and a second to choose their prime minister. Two large groups -- immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Sephardic Jews with origins in Arab countries -- will be key to victory or defeat in the forthcoming election. Labour's roots are with Ashkenazic Jews from Europe who founded Israel and long enjoyed privileges and influence largely denied to the more disadvantaged Sephardim. Barak has sought forgiveness from Sephardim for the wrongs of past Labour governments but the party scored an own goal last year when one of its lawmakers, Ori Orr, accused the Sephardim of lacking the ``curiosity to know what is going on around them.'' Orr was way down Labour's list for the May election with almost no chance of re-entering parliament. Moroccan-born Shlomo Ben-Ami topped the primaries but some commentators said his success had been overshadowed by Messele's outburst. Still emotional this morning, Messele told Israel army radio he did not regret his charges of racism. ``It (Labor) is a party which has learned nothing. It is a condescending party. It is an elitist party.'' Israel Religious Debate Intensifies By DINA KRAFT .c The Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) -- A female college student with a copper-colored crew cut pointed at a black-cloaked ultra-Orthodox man and demanded answers to some of the questions at the root of Israel's secular-religious divide. ``Why don't you go to the army when I have to go the army? Why do I have to pay tuition for my studies when you don't have to?'' Iris Verker, 25, asked Uri Zalisnik, a red-bearded teacher at a Jewish seminary. Zalisnik said Jews in a Jewish state should not be forced away from Torah studies to serve in the army. And Israel's Supreme Court has no right to overrule Jewish law, which the ultra-Orthodox believe is the word of God. Verker and Zalisnik were two in a crowd of some 300,000 Israelis, mostly ultra-Orthodox, who took to the streets Sunday over one of the most impassioned internal conflicts facing Israeli society today -- the role of religion in a state set up to be both democratic and Jewish. Israel's founding fathers deliberately left the issue undefined, and for the country's first 50 years, indecision became the status quo while tensions and resentment on both sides quietly boiled beneath the surface. Until now. Recent Supreme Court rulings that have weakened Orthodoxy's influence in daily life and a cancellation of a 50-year-old exemption from the military draft have drawn fury from the tight-knit ultra-Orthodox community. Their rabbis last week declared the judges and judiciary ``enemies'' and accused them of trying to destroy Judaism. Arguing that civil law and not Jewish law should prevail, 50,000 protesters representing Israel's secular majority came out in a counter-demonstration aimed at protecting the courts and calling for greater separation of religion and state. Secular Jews make up 70 percent of Israel's Jewish population. The two sides stood only a mile apart Sunday, but they were worlds away. In a sea of black coats, Ultra-Orthodox men carrying on hundreds-year-old traditions prayed together for Jewish law to prevail. Shofars, the ram horns used in Jewish ritual, blew and young men wearing skullcaps danced together to Hasidic melodies. On the other side of a Jerusalem boulevard, women with flowers in their hair strummed guitars and sang Israeli folk songs. Together with men in blue jeans, they waved placards calling for pluralism. ``You must understand this is a war, a war over the character of our beloved country,'' said Yossi Sarid, head of the left-wing Meretz party. Sarid found himself sharing the microphone with members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet. It was a first and indicated a redrawing of the political map as secular politicians crossed party lines to rally together on the issue. Religious leaders did the same, flexing power found in new numbers that included Israel's modern-Orthodox, a large community traditionally closer to the secular side. Uri Avineri, a founder of Israel's civil rights movement, called the day a turning point that would go down in Israeli history. Doniel Hartman, an Orthodox rabbi who favors religious pluralism, said secular politicians are finally waking up to the unresolved domestic issues they ignored while dealing with foreign policy or defense. Having failed to postpone the rallies to avoid alienating anyone three months before he is up for re-election, Netanyahu championed the day as an exercise in democracy and called on both sides to find a middle ground. ``There is no way but dialogue and compromise,'' Netanyahu said. ``If we try to incite the secular public against the ultra-Orthodox or the converse, we will bring about first of all a cultural war, then a civil war and then we will be left with neither a religion nor a state.'' Israeli Demands Led to Violations By IBRAHIM BARZAK .c The Associated Press GAZA CITY, GAZA Strip (AP) -- Israel's security demands on the Palestinians resulted in a rise in human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority in 1998, a human rights group said Sunday. The authority cracked down on the Palestinian opposition soon after Israel and the Palestinians signed the U.S.-brokered Wye River land-for-security agreement in October, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said in a summary of its annual report. In exchange for a further withdrawal from the West Bank, Israel demanded that the Palestinians contain anti-Israel activity. Israel froze the accord in December, accusing the Palestinians of not containing militants and in some cases encouraging them. The Gaza Strip-based group said the accord apparently prompted waves of arrests of members of the Islamic militant group Hamas and placed restrictions on freedom of speech and movement. ``More arrests led to an increase in torture,'' said Raji Sourani, the director of the center. ``Freedom of expression was restricted to counter Israel's claims of incitement.'' Palestinian police chief Ghazi Jabali denied that security forces were reacting to outside influences. ``As far as the mistakes, we are in a building process, which means it is a learning process,'' Jabali said. The center also faulted the Palestinian Authority for being without an attorney general for seven months and without a chief justice for almost a year. Israel Closes European Missions JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel on Wednesday ordered its diplomatic missions in Europe closed after Kurdish protesters tried to take over the Israeli consulate in Berlin, an Israeli official said. Three Kurds were shot in the confrontation at the Berlin consulate, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. German police said the three were killed. The protesters took a hostage who was freed later, the Israeli official said. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said no Israelis were hurt. An Israeli whose wife works for the Berlin consulate told Israel army radio that the hostage was released. ``As far as I know, the issue of a hostage ended well. She was released and there are three dead Kurds,'' Amnon Noi told the radio. Earlier Wednesday, Israel placed all its embassies and diplomatic missions on high alert. The move followed a news report, citing Western intelligence officials, saying the Israeli spy agency Mossad helped track Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. Israel has vehemently denied the report, saying it was not involved. Ocalan was taken to Turkey on Tuesday after surfacing in Kenya where he had been hiding in the Greek Embassy. Israel branded major source of CD piracy By Donna Smith WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. copyright industries said Tuesday that Israel is a major source of pirated music, movie and software compact discs and urged U.S. trade officials to take action. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which represents copyright industries, asked U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to name Israel as a ''priority foreign country'' under U.S. trade laws, a designation that could lead to trade sanctions. ``We're firing a big cannon across their bow,'' IIPA President Eric Smith told Reuters. Israel has become a key source of pirated CDs, which can be made at a cost of about 20 cents to 50 cents a piece, and a major transshipment point for bootleg CDs. The government has ignored pleas for a crackdown, Smith said. By next January, Israel must achieve compliance with a global agreement on intellectual property rights and could become a candidate for a World Trade Organization challenge if it fails to crack down on copyright piracy, Smith said. Movies, music, computer software and book publishing account for about 3.65 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and earned about $60.15 billion in foreign sales and exports in 1996, surpassing all other exports including automotive and agriculture products and planes, Smith said. The industry estimates that it lost about $12.4 billion last year to copyright pirates. The request for U.S. government action against piracy in Israel was part of an annual submission that copyright industries make to the USTR to identify countries where copyright piracy is a problem. Smith said governments needed to pay more attention to the role of organized crime in producing and distributing pirated CDs. Software & Information Industry Association Urges U.S. Government To Watch [Israel] For Piracy SIIA Estimates U.S. Industry Revenue Losses of $2.7 Billion in 24 Nations WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Because they accounted for $2.7 billion in software piracy-related trade losses in 1998, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has recommended that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) identify Bulgaria, China, Indonesia, Russia, Vietnam and 19 other countries in its annual "Special 301" review of unfair international trade practices. The SIIA has recommended that the United States Trade Representative put the following countries on their Priority Watch List: Greece, India, Indonesia, Israel, Macao, Pakistan, Philippines, and Russia ...
