Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

Israeli college professors who label their country a Nazi apartheid regime, teach that the Torah is full of myths, urge the downfall of the Jewish state, and speak at conventions calling for the boycott of Israel?

Universities in Jerusalem that give awards to academic papers complaining that Jewish soldiers don’t rape enough Arab women and encourage students to protest the anti-terror policies of the Israeli military?

These are real examples of the trends rampant across Israeli college campuses, according to the Israel-Academia-Monitor.com website – which has been documenting what it calls the anti-Israel and at times anti-Semitic behavior of the senior staff at major Israeli universities.

Some 20 to 25 percent of the humanities and social sciences staff in Israel’s universities and colleges have “expressed extreme anti-Zionist positions,” according to Israel Academia Monitor.

“In addition [the university staff] have engaged in public demonstrations, prepared and signed petitions addressed to Israeli soldiers to disobey their commanders’ orders and not serve in Judea and Samaria, and have been active in encouraging academic organizations abroad to boycott Israel universities and academics,” states a new Monitor position paper.

The Academia Monitor website documents hundreds of such cases of anti-Israel activism. Theorizing in its recent policy paper on the motivation of Israeli academics, Israel Academia Monitor notes that some Israeli academics appear to subscribe to a globalist ideology.

“Not a few of the anti-Zionist academics were lifetime communists and adhere to a Marxist ideology that opposes separate nationalism beyond the international brotherhood of the proletariat. To dismantle Israel is a first step in this direction, despite the fact that other nations oddly enough refuse to follow suit,” states the paper.

“These people are among those who teach our youth in the universities and who exert enormous influence on their ideas, attitudes, values and strivings,” the paper states.

Israel has arrested a suspected Syrian militant operating on Israeli soil and suspected of preparing attacks against the Jewish state. The militant was arrested July 29, weeks before Israel’s Sept. 6 air raid on a remote site in Syria that was described by independent analysts and some U.S. politicians as a potential Syrian nuclear reactor.

Security officials would not say whether the arrest was tied to the air strike. According to security sources, the individual’s activities were known to Israeli intelligence agencies for at least a year prior to his arrest.

Sources indicated the arrest was ordered as part of a series of steps to forestall Syrian retaliation following the Israeli air raid. The Syrian, whose name is being withheld by security sources for operational reasons, was a legal resident of a Druze village in the Golan Heights.

Security sources involved with the arrest told WorldNetDaily that the Syrian is accused of gathering intelligence on Jewish communities and Israeli military positions in the Golan Heights and passing the information to the Syrian government and to elements in Syria seeking to use the information to mount Hizbullah-style guerrilla raids and attacks against the Golan.

The Israeli army last week acted on specific information that members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization who were granted amnesty last summer by Prime Minister Olmert were planning suicide bombings inside Israel.

This past Thursday the IDF raided the northern West Bank city of Nablus, the stronghold of Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror group, in an attempt to arrest a Brigades cell that was actively planning terror attacks, according to IDF sources.

Three of the four Brigades members who were surrounded by the army were among those granted amnesty in June as a gesture to bolster Abbas’s organization.

Olmert granted amnesty to 178 Brigades members, and was considering pardoning hundreds more on condition that the terrorists disarm, refrain from terror activities and restrict their movements to the area in which they reside for three months.

Many Brigades leaders openly defied the conditions of their amnesty by publicly retaining their weapons and committing scores of attacks.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has rejected Olmert’s explanation for waiting until the final 60 hours of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon to launch a massive ground invasion – as requested by the Israeli army at the start of the 34-day conflict.

Thirty-three Israeli soldiers died in the last-minute ground operation, which was canceled after Olmert agreed to a cease-fire.

Bolton’s statements could have disastrous political consequences for Olmert. The official probe into his handling of the Lebanon War is scheduled to be released next week.

According to sources close to the probe, titled the Winograd Commission, Olmert testified that he launched the ground incursion just days before the cease-fire because a major troop advancement in Lebanon would result in better truce terms for Israel.

But in an interview this week with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Bolton rejected Olmert’s claim.

“The Israeli military operation did not play a role in the talks on drafting UN Security Council Resolution 1701,” said Bolton, speaking from Jerusalem. Olmert’s decision to allow the massive ground invasion has been a bone of contention for many lawmakers, soldiers and the general Israeli public, with many calling for his resignation.

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief  for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs and is the author of the recently published book “Schmoozing with Terrorists.”