Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

While President Bush “blindly” and “mindlessly” supported Israel, President Obama may be less willing to give the Jewish state “blank checks,” says Rosa Brooks, the Obama administration’s new adviser to one of the most influential Pentagon officials.

Brooks will advise Michelle Fluornoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, a position that wields enormous power regarding U.S. military doctrine in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Before accepting her position earlier this month, Brooks, who has worked on behalf of George Soros’s philanthropic foundation, served as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. A WorldNetDaily review of her opinion pieces in the newspaper found themes that defenders of the Jewish state may view as anti-Israel, including distortions of history in an apparent attempt to whitewash Palestinian terrorism.

In a 2006 column, Brooks asserted that Israel’s actions in the Middle East were fueling anti-American resentment in the Arab world.

In another piece, Brooks grossly distorts the historical record by claiming that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to blame for the failure of U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that culminated in a summit at Camp David in 2000. However, Sharon was only elected after those talks broke down.

Brooks also slams Israel’s 22-day military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip that ended this past January. She has also lamented that the two sides are not on equal footing, claiming that compared to Israel’s military might Hamas “is weak, and its weapons – terrorism, homemade rockets – are the weapons of the weak.”

She pointed out that as long as Bush was in the White House, “Israel could count on a U.S. administration that wasn’t merely ‘supportive’ of Israel but blindly, mindlessly so. Obama may be less willing to offer Israel blank checks.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has instructed his agents operating in Jerusalem to enhance their efforts at stopping Arabs from selling property to Jews in strategic parts of the city, WND has learned.

According to informed intelligence sources, the instructions coincided with a recent behind-the-scenes U.S. campaign the past few weeks that led to an Israeli government decision earlier this month not to bulldoze Palestinians homes built illegally on Jewish-owned property in Jerusalem.

Over the past two weeks, the PA has increased its efforts to stop Jerusalem Arabs from selling property to Jews. A contingent of Jewish groups, including an organization called Ateret Kohanim, works to strengthen the Jewish presence in Jerusalem by purchasing properties from Arabs, primarily in eastern neighborhoods, including in Jerusalem’s Old City. Some of the purchased properties were Jewish until Jews fled during Arab riots in the early 1900s.

Just last week, according to informed sources, the PA forcibly detained at least five Israeli Arab citizens from Jerusalem and brought them to the West Bank city Ramalla, where they were tried in PA courts for selling property to Jews.

The sources said some of the Israeli Arabs went to Ramallah on their own accord after having their families threatened by the PA. The fiasco was halted when the Israeli government stepped in and worked with the PA for the return of the Israeli Arabs to Jerusalem. The PA does not have jurisdiction to detain or try Israelis, whether Jewish or Arab.

Jews who arrived this past week to pray at Joseph’s Tomb – Judaism’s third holiest site – were stunned to discover the structure vandalized, with the headstone smashed in and swastikas painted on the walls.

“Only barbarians could do such things. People who pathologically disgrace such a holy place don’t deserve to be called human beings,” said Gershon Mesika, head of the Jewish regional council in the West Bank.

Following repeated Palestinian attacks, Israel in October 2000 unilaterally retreated from Joseph’s Tomb and, with very few exceptions, banned Jews from returning to the site, purportedly for security reasons.

Although the tomb area is now controlled entirely by the Palestinians, Mesika has been working with the Israel Defense Forces to lead monthly midnight excursions to the tomb in the hope of restoring a Jewish presence to the area.

Are the Israeli media protecting terrorists?

Israel’s Shin Bet security services announced this week that it nabbed a Palestinian two weeks ago who was responsible for the grisly ax murder of a 13-year-old boy in the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin earlier this month.

Musa Tayet, 26, is suspected of entering the settlement and using an ax to attack boys who were playing in a yard. Shlomo Nativ, 13, was killed, and Yair Gamliel, 7, was injured.

Reports in Israel’s major newspapers, including Yediot Aharonot, Haaretz, and Maariv, all claimed that Tayet had no links to any organized militant group. However, a top leader of the military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party claimed responsibility for the murder just after it occurred.

Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades also later released an official pamphlet taking credit for the attack and put out a statement to that effect on its website. The Brigades announced the attack was carried out to avenge the Feb. 12, 2007, assassination of Hizbullah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh. A leader of the Brigades said the attack was carried out by members of what he called the Imad Mughniyeh Brigades, which he said is composed of Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades gunmen.

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 book “Schmoozing with Terrorists.”